With "Free Dilbert" as its rallying cry, Herman Miller's Resolve design team set out to liberate the beleaguered cartoon office worker from the confines of his cubicle and place him in an environment offering light, air and collaborative stimulation

For more than 30 years, the Action Office^® II, the world's first open office system designed by Bob Propst for Herman Miller, has been de rigueur in companies around the world. Today 58% of American office workers sit in such paneled cubicles. But as successful as the cubicle has been, even Herman Miller recognized the need to reconsider the system it pioneered. Laptops, cell phones, pagers and email access have made it possible to work anywhere, anytime. Project-based work teams that include temps, part-timers and consultants have emphasized collaboration over hierarchy. Exorbitant real estate costs have put office space at a premium.

"We knew we needed to do something," says Jim Long, Herman Miller's director of research, adding that the company decided to explore two approaches. "One was to take everything we knew about systems furniture and optimize the cubicle design," Long reveals. "The other was to start over."

Starting over quickly won out, with Turkish-born Ayse Birsel of Olive 1:1 selected to design a radical new system, named Resolve. The choice of Birsel's two-person (herself and an intern) Manhattan firm was daring for such a breakthrough product, but Herman Miller has a history of making bold moves, with such designers as Charles Eames, George Nelson and Bill Stumpf. "We believe that variety is very important to the creation of design," says Rick Duffy, who leads Herman Miller's Genesis Team, which gets involved in all matters of innovation and invention. "And our belief is that that variety only comes from outside perspectives."

Although Birsel had no experience designing office furniture, she had earlier sent Herman Miller a concept proposal asking why offices couldn't capture the feel of a garden and suggesting that the tangle of technology cables in offices could be managed in an aqueduct-like system. While that proposal went nowhere, it must have left an impression. Months later, the company invited her to fly to its Michigan headquarters to respond to one of its infamous problem statements: If you were Bob Propst today, how would you design the Action Office?

Birsel dispatched the first part of the question by pointing out, "If I were Bob Propst today, I would be a 70-year-old white man." She then went on to explain why merely modifying Propst's renowned cubicle would not be enough. "A lot has changed in offices and in how we work since 1968," Birsel told them. "Today people can work anywhere and yet they still come to offices. Why? I believe they come to belong, to be part of a community, to be part of a group. The emphasis should be on connecting people, not on separating them." Herman Miller agreed. "They told me that was where their heads were at, too," she says.

Indeed, her assessment confirmed much of their initial findings. A research-driven company, Herman Miller conducts ongoing studies of workplace issues and makes research an important part of the design process. So the first step after bringing Birsel on board was to form a "concept team" that included representatives from marketing, engineering, applications, planning and research. Together the team toured offices of various sizes to identify issues companies were confronting. "When I saw the offices," Birsel recalls, "my first reaction was, if this is how people work, I don't want to work in a corporation." Dubbing it the "Dilbert Syndrome" (the cartoon middle-manager created by Scott Adams), she observes that "offices had become places that box people in. Liberating Dilbert became our passion."

To do that, Birsel came up with an unorthodox solution aimed at putting people and their technology at the center of everything. Her idea revolved around a vertical pole, braced by two fabric-covered beams set at a 120-degree angle. To keep the power and cable delivery system from dictating the office arrangement, she proposed running the wires through overhead troughs, out of sight yet accessible, and bringing them down to each workstation through the poles.

At first, Birsel considered dividing the workspaces into 90-degree angles, but soon concluded that 120 degrees made for a more stable and inviting structure. "The difference between sitting in 120 degrees and 90 degrees is like night and day," Birsel discovered. "One makes you feel welcome while the other seems to push you outside. 120 degrees is the angle you intuitively make when you open your arms to welcome someone.".

It matches the body's natural movement as well, she noticed. "It's almost an equal reach on all sides when you sweep your arms. It's less confining than 90 degrees, yet it surrounds you and still feels open." It is also nature's favorite angle, as evidenced in honeycombs, snowflakes and soap bubbles.

The pole-and-beam concept, however rough, seemed viable to Birsel, but figuring out a way to explain it to the Herman Miller team was a challenge. "I went to the meeting with a dozen pencils, all kind of standing up, set them on the table and told them this is what the concept is based on. They agreed, but asked, 'How you are going to get the poles to stand up?' This was kind of funny because here is a company that has been standing up walls for years and they thought poles would be hard to deal with."

Returning to her office, Birsel set about constructing a full-scale mock-up with off-the-shelf parts a Speed-rail scaffolding system connected with slip-on tubes used for chain-link fences, plywood cut into desks, blankets from Ikea for divider screens, sweater bags for storage holders, and plastic cut into circles for floor mats. As a finishing touch, Birsel added a porch light and bud vase. "We built eight workstations. They were very crude, but complete," she says. "When we invited the Herman Miller team in, they were totally convinced, and said they wanted to build the next mock-up with their own engineers and model shop."

As unconventional as Birsel's approach was, it satisfied the parameters that Herman Miller had placed on the design: 1) that it be free-standing from the architecture; 2) that it be a modular system that one decision-maker could order for an entire company, and 3) that it be economical to construct, ship and maintain. "We are committed to the philosophy of 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' with an emphasis on reduce," says Duffy. Resolve proved to be one-third the weight of a comparable panel system and could be put up in a fraction of the time. "It can be shipped blanket-wrapped instead of in cardboard," Duffy adds. "And we can fit three times as many workstations in the same container, which reduces shipping costs and energy usage."

The pole-and-beam system offered other advantages as well. On research tours, Birsel recalls that every one of the offices looked the same even though they were in diverse businesses. To address that issue, Birsel took advantage of vertical display areas created by Resolve's translucent divider screens. The screens, which slip snugly over the metal frame, can be digitally printed with any graphic treatment logo, pattern, picture or even directional signs and changed with relative ease. "With the computer, work has become about vertical display," she says. "You have this rectangle image maker where you can display family pictures, the Internet, any program you're working on. Once you have that, it seeps into the rest of the environment. An analogy is 42nd Street at Times Square, where you have images over images."

Birsel also made use of Resolve's vertical infrastructure to create mounts for objects that are usually spread out on horizontal planes. Through hooks and shelves that attach to the infrastructure, everything from paper trays to computer monitors can be raised off the work surface.

As Birsel worked out details in the early models, the research team, made up of employees and consultants, including Cheskin Research in Redwood City, CA, field-tested the concept. Jim Long and his team showed a videotape of Birsel's first models during one-on-one interviews with 200 facility managers, architects, designers, information technology managers and corporate decision-makers. "While Resolve generated excitement, we received a mixed response, tending toward negative," Long reveals. "That's the response we were looking for. We expect that the more innovative we are, the less certain people will be. That told us we were taking enough chances. Anything else and it would have said we were being too imitative."

What also reassured them were the answers participants gave when asked who would use the system and what kind of work it would support. Although they said they wouldn't buy it themselves, they could see how it could be a benefit to others. "Their answers confirmed we were headed in the right direction," says Long.

The company put more weight on the response from the 60 end-users testing the full-scale prototypes for up to ten weeks. "People liked the openness of the system, which allowed them to communicate more effectively," Long says, citing some feedback. "Many said the 120-degree angle is a better feeling than working into a corner. From a performance standpoint, they liked the convenience of the electrical outlets."

A more thorough test to work out specific details was conducted at the company's Design Yard complex in Holland, Michigan, where a full-scale Resolve office environment was constructed to observe people using the space and to conduct interviews.

These various studies helped to shorten development time as well as address issues raised by participants. One change made in response to the feedback was the addition of a more versatile display screen. "At test sites, we had some display screens that were translucent and tackable, and some that were thick and Velcroable," says Birsel. "Users said they loved the translucent screen because it lets light through, but also loved Velcro as a function." Herman Miller responded by developing a fabric that was translucent, Velcroable and tackable all in one.

Another issue acoustics concerned testers less than the Resolve team expected. "We felt that acoustics were going to suffer, but our emphasis was on connecting people rather than separating them," Birsel admits. "We felt people come to the office to be part of a group, for information-sharing and spontaneous exchanges." Questionnaires filled out by participants after testing the system for two months, however, rated Resolve equal in sound level to cubicles. "We couldn't believe it," says Birsel. "When we went back and asked them, they said in Resolve, you have a sense of the people around you and modulate your voice accordingly. In a cubicle, you feel you are alone, so you may talk louder. Another reason is that Resolve screens are not made of hard material, so sound dissipates. That was a happy surprise."

Another surprise was that conservative companies became the early adopters. The consensus was that the first customers would be dot.coms and creative agencies. "Funny thing was our first client was a bank, and our first test installation was a utilities company," says Birsel. "Since then, some of the most conservative companies have been buying Resolve. They see in Resolve elements that are in harmony with how work has changed."

Birsel credits this acceptance to Herman Miller's "sensitive team of men and women" who acted as the users' advocate. This informed her design approach dramatically. Birsel cites as an example: "When I showed them things like a flower vase that might make users happy and individualize their space, they were totally supportive and pushed me to go further." These details have led people to remark that only a woman could have designed Resolve, but Birsel believes that what they respond to as "feminine" is the care that the team took in welcoming users. "We were very much into making sure that they were cared for in ways that went beyond the physical and quantifiable," she says. "The bottom line was we were passionate about the user."