interior design office manager job description
ideo: building a better cubicle narrator: as the creator ofdilbert, the hugely popular comic strip character withattitude, scott adams pokes fun at the modern miseries ofcorporate life, especially that icon of the contemporaryworkplace, the office cubicle. mr. adams: i probably get 300messages a day by email from people who work in cubiclesand half the time they are complaining about their cubicleand i realize at some point i might be the world's expert onwhat is wrong with cubicles.
so we thought, oh, would not itbe fun to get together with some of the smartest design guys inthe world and try to figure out if we could makethe cubicle better? narrator: how do you changewhat millions of people work in? scott adams chose to go to oneof america's leading industrial design firms, ideo. it is a company that has notonly designed objects, like chairs and cameras, but entireoffice environments like the stanford universitylearning lab.
tim brown is the ceo of ideoand he sees his company as specializing in creativity. reporter: how do you turninnovation into a business? mr. brown: by having ideas thatare actually useful to people. reporter: they may not havedesigned the proverbial better mousetrap, but they havedesigned a better mouse. mr. brown: this is the originalmicrosoft mouse which they sold untold numbers of. it is a very simple, quitebeautiful, little piece of
industrial design but the realinnovation in it came in we found that if you just shove theball to the front it made people much more accurate because theball was actually under their fingers. narrator: but for their client,scott adams, the assignment was to design a cubicle thateven dilbert might enjoy. reporter: when you came to ideodid you expect them to take you seriously? mr. adams: i never expect anyoneto take me seriously and that is
going to built in asan occupational hazard. narrator: for a prominentdesign firm like ideo this was a somewhat peculiar project but itquickly became a challenge, an exercise in innovation andan intense examination of the american workplace. mr. dust: no one can tell ifyou are in the cubicles ever. so i thought it will be greatjust to have this kind of in-out balloon. it is in great except for thati always forget to change it.
so... narrator: it turns outcreativity has its own rules. mr. dust: i become like arabid believer in the process. narrator: and for design teamleader fred dust the first rule is to observe. though they work in a wide openoffice space spectacularly set under san francisco's oaklandbay bridge, the team built their own little cubicles to fullyexperience the problem. mr. adams: i have heard thereare 35 million cubicles in the
united states alone. narrator: the goal: come up withideas that could change cubicles as we know them. mr.dust: couplethings really quickly. visual, visual, visual. we want you to draw things. do not say them, drawthem, draw them, draw them. you do not have a lot of time sowe need to get them out really quickly.
narrator: the ideas, hundredsof them, came fast and furious. designer: the panel actually isa purity x-ray so you get to see who has really gotgreat intentions. narrator: and theoutrageous was encouraged. designer 2: the office has, it is justthis complete forest of dangling strings and you get given a bigpair of golden scissors on your first day and you snipyourself out a space. reporter: you are makingeverybody work really fast. when you could say to people,"take a week, figure it out." no.
mr. dust: no. reporter: why not? mr. dust: because what we reallyneed have people saying is, "what is the biggest idea, what is thecraziest idea?", and that happens under speed and it actuallyhappen under duress too. mr. brown: you put a bunch ofpeople in a room and say, "think only, think of the ideas thatyou know you can make. only think of the ideas you knowthe right ideas", they never come out with good ideas.
designer 1: and then you couldpull out like this inflatable cube. designer 2: a two-story cubicle soyou can have, you can go upstairs and take a little nap. narrator: the post-it drawingsare posted on a board for everyone to judge. mr. dust: what is nice aboutthat is: you come out of it with wide open possibilities and thenyou start to sort of question. and we always sort of say that,it is like to start with your
head in the clouds and you endup with your feet on the ground by the end of the project. designer 3: haveyou been to the... narrator: so next the teamputs feet to pavement to find supplies to build models. reporter: what is on the list? designer 4: um, a lot of stuff,like from near pink sheets, cloth, duck tape, balloons, play-doh. reporter: play-doh?
designer 4: anything thatmight, we might find useful. reporter: or amusing. designer 4: right. narrator: and thenit is time to build. three teams are given two hoursto come up with a presentation of their ideas. mr. brown: we kind of like havingfun, that is sort of part of why we do this job isto have some fun. mr. adams: so far it is chaos.
we are in the pandemonium chaos. i am not sure anybody knows whatis going to happen in the next few minutes but a lot people aredoing stuff, so that is good. so we will see what happens. narrator: but there isa method in the madness. the first group builds a cubiclein which the walls are screens for the computer and for familyphotos and foam cubes become a kind of mobile workstation. mr. dust: this is going to bewhen you actually go to your
other cubicle, you can wheelyour landscape with you. narrator: in the second groupscenario the walls are alive and actually givedilbert a group hug. designers: aw. narrator: behind the humor isthe idea of making the cubicle more human. and the third team proposes aportable work pole that opens like an umbrella. designer 5: you want to have awriting surface, you use this
here and you just swivel thisif want to use your keyboard. [applause] reporter: as projectmanager at the end of the day how do you feel? mr. dust: i feel fantastic. one of these were just saying isthat, it is amazing to see this and see the lack of repetitionand ideas so that things actually each group can putvery different concepts so we could not be happier.
it is the sort, isthe hard part now. narrator: and finally aftera month of sorting through hundreds of ideas, here itis, a full-blown prototype of dilbert's dream cubicle. mr. dust: everything is modular. narrator: the team's earlyideas of a more personal, more adaptable space, have evolved. mr. adams: i saw the germs of alot of these things early on... mr. dust: yeah.
mr. adams: but nothingis the first thing. mr. adams: everythingturned into another thing. mr. dust: i think that... narrator: but thespirit is still here. mr. dust: it is abuilding block system. in fact if you actually start topop some of them off they have these kind of little pluginsso that they actually snap into place. narrator: this cubicleis constructed of fully
customizable cubes. mr. adams: i like the fact thatall the storage is like built right into the walls. mr dust: yeah. narrator: that allow you tohouse some homey touches, like your goldfish or atherapeutic punching bag. mr. adams: i see this ascustomizable for the boss of your choice. mr. dust: exact... [laughter]
narrator: or a hammockfor that stress-relieving siesta. mr. adams: now this is thecoffee warmer here. mr.dust: yeah. the modular persian sowhen you really want to kind of dress up the place. narrator: and remember theteam's desire to have a window through which to escapethat monotonous space. mr. dust: your computer monitoris no longer just on your desk.
that is why... narrator: ideo solved thatproblem by building the computer screen into the wall. mr. dust: like if you actuallydo not touch the keyboard. basically your background view,which is from outside of our studio now as we speak,basically comes in so you have that window that we wereall talking about so much. mr. adams: so the final thing isa little bit different from what anybody had in theirhead, better, i think.
narrator: fred dust andhis team are exhausted. designer: i cannotbelieve it is over. and now... narrator: but in the end forideo it is all about ideas that are useful. mr. adams: they came up with astructure, it is so good i would not be surprised if eventuallythis turned into a marketable product.