Workspace Organization with a Personal Touch

We always remember our firsts. First day at school, first home run, first kiss, first job..

What about the first time that you made something that people were willing to pay for? We see products every day and wonder, what were they thinking when they designed this, it could have been so much better. One of my favorite scenes in the biographical film of Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle, is at the end of the film. Jobs is making amends with his daughter and notices that she is carrying an old CD version Walkman that is the size of a brick.

To break the tension, he tells her "I'm going to put music in your pocket... A hundred songs. A thousand songs. Five hundred songs. Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand songs. Right in your pocket. Because I can't stand looking at that ridiculous Walkman anymore. You're carrying around a brick playing a cassette tape. We're not savages. I'm gonna put a thousand songs in your pocket."

She responds, "you can do that?"

We're very close...

Steve Jobs inspired me to think differently.

You see, we all have the capability to see something that can be done better, and to make it happen. For me, it was in 2015 during the seemingly overnight and unpopular transition to dense office benching. Due to the skyrocketing cost of rent, companies began to eliminate cubicles and private offices in favor of cramped trading desk type benches. You can imagine that it was not well received. Human beings are not great at sudden change, and they are even worse at prolonged forced proximity. Either companies did not understand this, or (as many negative news articles would remind us) they put aside employee preferences for costs savings.

At the time I had a NYC based furniture dealership and virtually every mock up presentation pitch for new business consisted of my dealership, and 3 competitors all showing the same small desk with the same ugly storage. Users were not happy with the solution, and I was not happy with being forced into a commodity box.

After seeing far too many looks of terror in employee's eyes as they viewed their new five-foot wide plywood home that they would be chained to for 8 hours a day, I realized that there needed to be way to make this more livable. The footprint of the workstation was not changing, but what you did in that footprint could be a whole new experience.

Most of the concerns on open plan were grounded in three things: Lack of privacy, lack of personalization, and lack of space. If we could come up with a solution that improved all three, as a dealership we would be in a much better position for project awards.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

So, with zero background in industrial design I figured, why not design a product!

I sat down with my internal project team and developed the concept for our current Divyde desktop organizer.

The idea behind Divyde was to create a substantial (most space dividing screens at the time were made from flimsy low density particle board wrapped in cheap fabric), metal screen that was heavy enough to stand without being bolted to the desk. The screen would have 3 plugs integrated and 2 USB charging ports because desk space was so tight you needed to get phones and iPads off the desk. Finally, we integrated an accessory rail where the user could post pictures of their family, dog, or place their personal .

My project designer sketched up the screen and converted it to CAD, then we went to the only local metal fabricator we could find willing to make the unit in 3 weeks.

Just in time for a major mock up presentation, we had our Divyde unit (albeit a very unpolished unit) completed. Within three minutes of our first presentation the focus shifted from whose laminate was better to answering questions on the Divyde! We had solved a problem and our perspective client took notice.

We went on to win that mock up (and many more!) primarily due to our innovative new product, the Slyde Divyde.