Neocon East Steelcase Showroom

Did anyone notice that Martha Raddatz, the moderator for the U.S. Vice Presidential debate, was sitting in a Steelcase Leap Chair?

Daffodil Gala 2012 Hope Platters made by our very own Cinda Yandell

For more than 40 years, Melbourne-based American Business Interiors has helped companies around the Space Coast not only decorate offices but create more productive environments for employees.

Vice president of interior design Diana Gonzalez-Villamil shared her views on creating the ideal work space.

Question: Why is it important for businesses to consider the look and feel of their interiors?

Gonzalez-Villamil: People probably spend more time in their office than they do in their house. That’s where they have to produce work, so you should also consider the well-being of people. It’s very important to provide an efficient workplace, an inviting workplace. Nowadays, you also have to attract the right employees, and they want a nice place to work.

Q: What has changed in recent years in terms of workplace design?

Gonzalez-Villamil: People are thinking more about having a collaborative workplace. I think it’s going away from the structured conference room into a more casual environment where two, three or five people can get together and have a conversation on the next product they’re developing, for example.

Q:What’s new in terms of design or colors?

Gonzalez-Villamil: People like the spaces to feel a little warm, so they’re using nice wood colors and things like that. For example, we do a lot of health care, and they don’t look like they used to. They’re trying to make the patient feel at home, and they’re going toward what we call the hospitality look, creating nice-looking spaces that you would find in a hotel environment.

Q:Do ergonomics still play an important role in office interiors?

Gonzalez-Villamil: That is extremely important, and we stress it as much as we can. It makes a huge difference to an employee who has to sit for eight hours a day or even one who has to sit in front of a computer for four hours. If you’re not thinking of ergonomics for people, you are really asking for problems in the long run. You have to provide the person with a comfortable environment to produce.

Q:How have 3-D visualizations improved your business?

Gonzalez-Villamil: It helps our clients immensely. Some of our clients have a very good visual of what they want. Others, not so much, and they need to see things in 3-D and see what the space can look like. It really helps clients visualize what they would be getting.

Q:Why should companies hire a design consultant versus, say, buying their own office furniture online?

Gonzalez-Villamil: You really want to create the whole function of the space and address things like who needs to have close proximity to whom, what type of privacy is required, what lighting will you provide in each individual workspace. … We know how to maximize space. You might be thinking you need a bigger space when we know we can provide the same functions in a smaller space by, for example, providing storage bins above work stations and things like that. We are consultants to providing better spaces.

American Business Interiors is at 2015 Waverly Place in Melbourne. Visit abinteriors.com or call 321-723-5003.

The Verb saga begins with Steelcase’s unusual approach to product development, which starts with open-ended research. Typically, the company decides on a potentially profitable market—in this case, classrooms—then studies trends within that market to understand the direction in which it’s headed. “Four years ago, when we started to focus deeply on education, we discovered a growing outcry for greater student success,” Sean Corcorran, the general manager of Steelcase Education Solutions, recalls. “Then we asked, ‘How do we get there?’” According to Corcorran, Steelcase found that although “students have different backgrounds and experiences than they did fifty years ago, and they’re deeply immersed in diverse technologies and multimedia environments,” the classic sage-on-a-stage classroom model, with people fixed in columns and rows, still predominates. Coupled with the company’s secondary research into how information is absorbed—which revealed, Corcorran says, “that people learn best when they construct their own knowledge, as opposed to just having it given to them”—Steelcase came to the conclusion that the twenty-first-century classroom needs to be a more “flexible, active, multimodal” environment that helps students to learn in a broad range of ways.

Released in the summer of 2010, the first Steelcase product to respond to this need was Node, a tablet arm-chair with casters, a swivel seat, and, beneath it, a dish capacious enough to hold a backpack. These small but transformative changes to traditional classroom furnishings permitted students to look around easily and thus better relate to one another, to rapidly arrange themselves into small or large groups, and, thanks to the under-seat dish, to not waste precious time gathering up their things whenever they moved.

Yet, while Node facilitates the swift reconfiguration of a classroom to accommodate different styles of learning, it remains, says Lennie Scott-Webber, Steelcase’s director of education environments, “a chair-based solution. You need to provide different choices for different scenarios, and some people want a table-based solution.” Accordingly, Verb—the name is derived from Steelcase’s overarching focus on active learning—scales up the Node concept for situations requiring larger work surfaces, but does so without sacrificing flexibility. “It allows many different kinds of teaching modalities, as well as an easy switch between those modalities,” Scott-Webber says. Corcorran calls it “a classroom ecosystem.”

Verb’s signature component is a two-student table that’s V-shaped on one side, flat on the opposite, and slightly angled on both ends. “We tried hundreds of different shapes, and built prototypes and tested them with students, before landing on this one,” Corcorran recalls. This particular iteration carried the day because, as Steelcase discovered, it successfully balanced privacy, communication, and flexibility. The V-shaped side lets students sit next to one another at an angle, facilitating eye contact and collaboration, but preserving a sense of separation. Two Chevron tables (as they’re called) can be pushed together so that their flat sides touch, forming a four-person team table. And when they’re butted end to end to form rows—“we call that ‘lecture mode,’ ” Corcorran says—the angled table ends produce a gentle curve that enables students in the row to see and to communicate with one another more effectively. (In keeping with Verb’s goal of maximizing utility, student tables are available in five widths, three depths, and three shapes, including four-person “double chevron” and rectangular team tables. All come with casters, to facilitate quick shifts between individual, team, and lecture situations.)

The student tables can also be accessorized with side hooks and board holders, which allow students to hang up the Verb system’s individual whiteboards when they’re not in use, or to mount them for display. There are also small center troughs for stashing markers and erasers. “I call it a ‘team machine,’” Corcorran says of the fully equipped table. “When you move, everything can be stored and nothing gets in the way.”

As for Verb’s double-sided, ceramic-and-steel whiteboards, in Corcorran’s view, “they hold the whole system together,” enabling students to take notes or sketch individually, to share information with a desk mate or a team, or to make class presentations using Verb’s mobile easel or wall-track display systems (on which the boards can be hung singly or in groups). When I confess to Scott-Webber that I come from the pre-whiteboard age, and don’t grasp the boards’ value, she explains that the Verb version is actually a new take on a popular, preexisting Steelcase product called the Huddleboard, which caught on “because it was giving students permission to actually use different tools in the classroom.” The whiteboard stresses the continuing importance, in an increasingly digital world, of analog capture and display. “More and more, 3M Post-it pads are used in generative, team-based projects,” Corcorran observes. The whiteboard “gives you a non-disposable, quite ‘green’ alternative to that.” (The whiteboards can also be attached at the midpoint of the tables and used as screens when students are taking tests.)

The teaching station—perhaps Verb’s most elegant component—grew out of what Scott-Webber calls “our ethnography research, where we spend time in the classroom doing participant observation and taking photographs, so we can bring information back, code it, and look for patterns.” One of the things this Margaret Mead–meets–Mr. Chips exercise revealed was that the head of a classroom is often plagued by what might be described as teacher-station creep: “We noted that there was often a lectern on the floor or a half-lectern on the teacher’s desk, and then there was a table you might have for a student conference,” says Scott-Webber. Verb’s solution is an object with different zones: a standard writing surface, a built-in lectern, and an end designed to make it comfortable for a student to pull up a chair for a one-on-one powwow. “In a much smaller footprint, you are enabling a teacher to work in three separate modes,” Scott-Webber says. The lectern, in particular, reflects the thoughtfulness with which the product has been crafted. Mounted on a curved arm that rises from one side of the desk, the lectern can rotate 360 degrees, allowing a teacher to use it above or beside the desk, and it has ample room for papers and pens, because teachers, Scott-Webber observes, “are always losing their stuff.” The designers also added a cup holder, and a bag or briefcase caddy to provide quick access to books and papers during lectures.

“Our overall focus is on doing research that leads to insights that we leverage into solutions,” Corcorran says. Or, as Scott-Webber puts it, the products consist of “evidence-based information implanted into design.” Verb, an active-learning system meant to support and encourage classroom success, represents that philosophy in action.

Of primary concern among the various possible sprains and strains for nurses are back injuries. These can be particularly debilitating for a hospital or nursing home worker whose main job involves helping patients transfer to and from beds and chairs or recliners in their room. In 2001, for cases involving days away from work among registered nurses (total of 24,719), 4,547 were categorized as overexertion in lifting and 14,832 were listed as sprains or strains. Nearly one-sixth of all the days lost for RN’s in 2001 were caused by too much lifting; and with back injuries being unpredictable and often notoriously slow healers, a strained back can leave a nurse unable to work indefinitely.

Additionally, estimates for the year 2000 show that the incidence rate for back injuries involving lost work days was 181.6 per 10,000 full-time workers in nursing homes and 90.1 per 10,000 full-time workers in hospitals, whereas comparative incidence rates per 10,000 full-time workers were 98.4 for truck drivers, 70.0 for construction workers, 56.3 for miners, and 47.1 for agriculture workers. That’s mind-boggling – it’s considerably more dangerous, in terms of back injuries, to be a nurse than it is to be a miner or a construction worker. These back injuries are no surprise however, when you realize that nurses on average lift nearly 1.8 cumulative tons during a single shift. From helping patients transfer from bed to recliner, to pulling them up in bed or supporting their body weight on the way to the shower, nurses and caregivers are constantly exerting themselves and being put in awkward physical positions, and it’s in these awkward physical positions that injuries are most likely to occur.

To make matters worse, the average nurse is in their mid to late forties, and thus more susceptible to both injuries and longer recovery times. This aging workforce has implications for nurses’ work environments. The loss of strength and agility that often accompanies aging affects the ease with which nurses can perform patient care activities that require them to turn, lift, or provide weight-bearing support to patients. Focus groups of nurses have revealed that, among nurses who plan to stay in the field, many are concerned that they will be unable to do so as they age because of the heavy physical demands of the job.

The physically demanding nature of their work combined with their increasingly fragile physical condition makes the need for easier patient transfers even more apparent. Studies have shown that 18% of patient falls occurred with transfers to and from the bed or chair – by making this transfer easier, the patient room gets a whole lot safer.

These concerns are addressed in Eileen Malone and Barbara Dellinger’s Evidence-Based Design Furniture Checklist. Two points on their eight point checklist are particularly relevant to a conversation involving furniture’s effect on patient and caregiver safety:
1.) Reduce patient falls and associated injuries.
2.) Decrease patient, family member, and staff stress and fatigue.

Please read their research for a well-rounded look into how furniture design can affect healthcare outcomes, and help prevent the far-too-commonplace injuries today’s nurses suffer from. After all, a healthy and physically comfortable nurse does his or her job better, and helps deliver better healthcare outcomes to their patients.

by Sayeh Pezeshki

I have a perfectly good office desk and chair but sometimes I find myself wanting a change of scenery. I don’t want to hit up a coffee spot, sometimes I want to just lounge and work off my lap. For any of you who have actually tried this, you know that having your laptop on your legs for long periods of time can be painful (hot hot hot!) and not the most comfortable way of working. So how should you work off your lap?

Super awesome “Lap Wing”- Lap Desk

Do’s

-Use a lap desk of some kind; Having something that protects your legs and makes it easier to type off your lap is essential.

-Pick a comfortable place to sit/work; If you want to sit outside, be sure to choose some sort of comfortable seating. Working off the ground isn’t ideal and the discomfort will effect the work you’re doing.

Super awesome “Lap Wing”- Lap Desk

Don’ts

-Place your laptop directly on your legs; as mentioned, the heat from your laptop can easily burn your legs and the very least make it uncomfortable.

- Sit completely hunched over your laptop; The idea is to sit comfortably not to permanently give yourself a hunchback

Campfire Personal Table, a very stylish way of working away from your desk

Keep in mind, I’m not saying this is the way you should work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. Working off of your lap is an easy way to get out of a work rut or pump up your creative flow by stepping away from your desk. It’s definitely not a way I’d suggest anyone should work, all day, every day. Everyone should step away from their desk at some point, if you don’t agree then see our top 10 reasons why you should.

10 reasons to leave your desk

by Jodi Schaap

When it seems that all of your productivity can be done while sitting at a desk and starring at a screen, there are still plenty of reasons to unplug and leave your desk.

one

Walk around. Yes, it’s as simple as that. Move your legs. Get up for 5 minutes and move your body. Circulation helps and the literal movement can sometimes get your brain to the next task if you find yourself in a slump.

two

Hydrate. Maybe while you’re up you can refill your water bottle.

three

Take a breather outside to catch up on your google Reader, a memo you can take with you or a quick phone call home.

four

Leave your desk to make calls if you can. Are you set up to be able to make some of your important calls from your cell phone? Get away from the desk and distractions of your to-do list to focus on the conversation at hand. Walk the halls if you have to.

five

When the weather permits grab your lunch and eat away from your desk. Does your office have an outdoor courtyard? That’s for you.

six

Conference calls require your desk or the conference room most of the time – but don’t feel like you have to sit in on it. It’s ok to walk around and talk with your hands. Wear a head piece and move around the office if it’s not too distracting to your coworkers.

seven

Go to the bathroom. Seems elementary to mention this, but I know I can be so in the zone and focused that not only am I forgetting to hydrate or eat, I’m forgetting to give my body the break it needs to release toxins. Just walking to the Rest Room will feel better.

eight

Wireless. WIFI. Detached. All the things we love to hear in our (im)mobile world. Your printer might be wireless but you still need to retrieve your papers. Take a lap, say hi to your coworkers, grab a glass of water.

nine

If you’re really stuck on a project or task, set your the timer on your phone for 10 minutes, then 2 minutes. Alternate concentrating on the task and making small headway and then when your 10 min are up, use the 2 minutes as a break to surf the web for inspiration, take a walk outside for some fresh air or return a quick phone call.

ten

Take a meeting. Get some face to face time with your client or coworkers. Leave your sanctuary and get your creative juices flowing. Collaborate.