The Perceptive Workspace of the Future

The evolution of the perceptive workspace is futurecast by the design problem-solving of today. Office spaces have embraced the colorful changes brought into the working life of millennials, but the future of office design will embrace a multigenerational workforce. Employee working needs and the importance of health and emotional wellbeing in the workplace will drive these workspace design changes. The success story of a business is now deeply tied to employee happiness, which improves the overall efficiency and the integral success of the workforce.

The boundaries between work and social life have significantly blurred as workspace design has embraced huddle spaces and communal working environments. This will continue to be prevalent in the workspace of the future. What lies ahead are working environments that support the need for physical and mental wellbeing with more sophisticated ways to incorporate downtime. Perceptive spaces that anticipate your needs before you even arrive at your desk are coming.

The workplace of the future is gearing up to be multidimensional, multigenerational and interactive. The first archetype of the emerging future office is the very perceptive and feeling Sentient Workplace.

So, what if the UI/UX experience that we all take for granted within our smartphone and computer environment became the new workspace environment? User experience design is the hidden seamless integration of code that allows intuitive interaction in the digital platform. You are blissfully unaware of it, it just works. It knows what you like, it anticipates your needs, and it accommodates your online experience.

Perceptive Workspace Design

Merging digital perception with the physical user experience is what the Sentient Workplace is all about. It will be an intuitive, human-orientated environment designed and built with thousands of sensors which interact with an employee’s wearable devices and smartphones. Their daily working output will be measured against their surrounding environment through artificially intelligent desks, wearables, and apps which will, in turn, offer employers essential insight into ways to further enrich the workplace.

All inner office smart systems will interact with each other to gauge employee stress, energy, and even hydration levels, along with their seating and lighting preferences, to create an intuitive, very personalized working environment.

In addition to these intuitive features, workers will no longer be expected to clock in as their devices will do this for them and the building itself will align their workspace with their preferential lighting, humidity, and temperature, along with the resources and data they need for a productive day.

The Sentient Worplace

With women now accounting for 46.6% of the workforce, the Sentient Workplace will become increasingly aware of occupant gender and be more perceptive to women’s specific wellbeing needs.

Workspace designers have been progressively gaining ground on this trend. Many businesses are already developing perceptive office spaces with the integration of furnishings that blur the lines between home and office.

Smart desks are already on the market from furniture manufacturers like Herman Miller. Offices are being upscaled and redesigned so that employees feel more at home in their working environment.

Conversational areas with comfortable seating, works of art, rugs, and accessories are replacing dedicated conference room meeting spaces. Providing a less traditional, more relaxed dialog for productivity.

The wireless office has been around for a while. So most of these perceptive modifications have quietly been seeping into the workspace environment. We’d love to know what you think about these trends and how they could fit into your present or future office. Our customer service and design teams are very interested in your opinions as part of our process to create an inspired workspace design that you can grow with.