The future of the home office

Will Howe, director of Map, the forward-looking design studio founded by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in 2012, shares how technology can make home-working easier and more creative…

What is so wrong about how we work from home now? The problems that arise stem largely from not being able to collaborate properly and not having the right set-up or space. Interactions become more formalised and serendipitous moments, which spark ideas and creativity, are lost. How do you think the home office of the future will look? Meetings can be stilted when working from home, so designing tools that make digital interactions feel as seamless as in-person encounters will be paramount. Currently, we are limited to a predetermined set-up: a fixed laptop camera that only provides one viewpoint. In the future, we may have multiple cameras that support different needs in a more natural way.

Ambient technology will also be huge. People are already speaking to their devices for information and this idea can be used to get people away from screens, to communicate in a more intuitive way.

Has the pandemic changed how industrial designers think about the challenges of remote working? Definitely. The success of tech at home is inextricably linked to good industrial design. We foresee a balance where at-home working will be adopted for part of the week. So people will be looking for tech products that have relevance for work and play. We will see a rise in tech that will become more discreet within the home as we all become more comfortable with having it around us. mapprojectoffice.com