We've Seen the Future of Work and It Works, But Very Differently

To demonstrate the way work really is, Alexander picks up a sheet of paper. "What would be ideal would be to take this document," he says, "and put it here" -- at arm's length, about head high -- "and have it just stay there. Then there is a cloud of stuff around where I am, at arm's reach. I know where it is, because where my hand left it is where it is."

Stuff that floats! Up in the air! In a cloud! Meet Project Bottle Brush, Reuschel and Alexander's furniture-in-process designed for work-in-process -- a workspace that defies the laws of gravity, that allows stuff to float.

The Bottle Brush resulted from two minds thinking about different problems -- and reaching the same conclusion. "We were sitting down together one day," says Reuschel, "and in five minutes, we realized that what we're really dealing with is a layer of organization somewhere between the active -- right in front of me, that I'm working on now -- and what goes in a file. It's work-in-process."

Reuschel and Alexander have constructed a working prototype of the Bottle Brush -- renamed The Wake for its upcoming launch because, says Alexander, "It keeps evolving, churning over, making changes in the workspace visible rather than hidden." The model has a horizontal axis off of which come a handful of platforms for stuff -- a way of creating a holding pattern for paper stacks in the air. There are several music stands bolted to goosenecks: you put a stack on each and position it where you want it. There are some clips -- the kind you can use to reclose bags of chips -- also on goosenecks: you can clip up a memo or a To Do list and keep it in visual range. There are some boxes and half-boxes for holding things: a place to put your lunch, your coffee mug, your phone directory.

"We called it the Bottle Brush because it has a center spine, with things coming off it," says Reuschel.

"It allows people to organize things just the way they want them," says Alexander. "It's a product that's intended for everyone, but you can still make it special to the way you work."

"This is trying to emulate the way your brain functions," says Reuschel. "Brian described it once as the orthographic projection of the inside of your skull."

Why shouldn't your workspace work the same way your brain works? Reuschel and Alexander figure that if your space mirrors your brain, you aren't wasting time keeping track of how two different spaces are organized.

What Reuschel and Alexander and their group are on to is something called cognitive ergonomics -- the relationship between your surroundings and the way you think, the connection between your physical environment and your ability to be creative. Imagine: office space designed to maximize communication, interaction, and creativity; space to accommodate noisy collaborative work and private concentrated work. Old economy factories were designed to maximize standardized production. Why shouldn't new economy offices be designed to maximize individual creativity?

"We believe work settings do a lot more than just put things conveniently at reach," says Reuschel. "Work surfaces can communicate; they have knowledge embedded in them."

It all comes from an epiphany about the new physics of work -- the recognition that chaos theory does a better job of explaining the way we work than the old assembly line. "The way the universe works is not the way we try to do things," says Reuschel. "Structure is a bad thing in many respects. It's solid, any disruption breaks it down. Better to have an environment that's fluid, that's readily adaptable. Nature works that way."

Order and Chaos, Order and Chaos

Over at Herman Miller, only a few miles away, there's another furniture person grappling with the implications of chaos theory, decoding the new physics of work. Think of Betty Hase as Herman Miller's archaeologist of work. As a manager in the company's Advanced Applications group, Hase unearths what's going on in the workplace, pieces it together, then presents it as a coherent whole. Her approach, says Hase, is intentionally eclectic. "I read widely," she says, "including obscure books, like The Intelligence of Dogs, and books on American Indian culture. I come up with what I see happening, and then I relate it back to Herman Miller, to figure out the directions business environments are headed in."

But for all her own digging, Hase recently found herself so perplexed by the changes going on in the world of work that she scheduled a formal appointment with her husband, a physical chemist, so he could explain chaos theory to her. "I kept hearing from people, there's order and chaos, order and chaos," says Hase. "I said, I need to understand this." Her aim: to connect what's going on in the new physics with what's happening in the new economy.