BEING VISUAL, Chapter 9: Rich Media Workspaces

A Guidebook for Strategic Presentation in the Rich-media Communications Era

By Robert L. Lindstrom

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Think back to the glory days of the print document--before digital docs, before even microfiche. When you wanted to see information, you fetched it from a file drawer. If the drawer was locked and you didn't have the key, the information might as well not exist. The situation is the same for digital info. To be of value, it must be accessed and seen. That is why there are hundreds of millions of monitors on hundreds of millions of desktops around the world, not to mention all the laptop screens traveling around out there. These proliferating displays--whether on a desktops, laptops or beaming from a projector--are the access points, the outlets, for the rich media information that flows inside our knowledge systems. A business without information displays is like a plumbing system without faucets--the pipes are full, but no one can get a drink.

My point here is not to deify information displays, or to convince you to give up your job and become a plumber. My intent is to drive home the fact that in the Information Age, information is inseparable from the devices and environments that display it. As more and more knowledge is created in rich media formats and accessed dynamically, there arises a greater and greater need for tools and spaces that allow us to access, view, share and modify our rich media knowledge base.

Warning: One of the biggest mistakes a company can make today is to approach the design, development and deployment of rich media workspaces as a purely tactical concern. As businesspeople we must get it into our heads that the tools and environments for rich media communication are now as strategically important and mission critical as selecting the Board of Directors. It is no overstatement to say that in the age of rich media the environments and tools for information display are as vital to a successful business organization as a viable business plan and a reputable auditor. Well, at least a viable business plan.

While the strategic importance of rich media spaces may not yet have penetrated the executive suite in every company, clearly many businesses already are alert to the vital need for rich media display capabilities throughout the organization. From the corporate lobby to the cafeteria, from the boardroom to the storeroom, information displays are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain. The constantly rising sales of CRT and LCD monitors, plasma displays and data/video projectors confirm the fact that business is adding eyeball outlets everywhere. Yet, many businesses do not realize the proliferation of audiovisual displays throughout the workspace (and in public spaces) transforms the entire working environment into a sort of living knowledge center where we can see, hear, and sometimes touch, the information that flows all around us. It is as if the buildings themselves are becoming gigantic information displays. In a sense, we have begun to do business from inside the filing cabinet.

Photo Courtesy of MCSI

This dramatic transition requires us to think differently about the places where we pull up a chair and sit down to work together. We must purge our outmoded notions of boardrooms, training rooms, meeting rooms and other passé representations of the Old World Order of business. We must aim our laser pointers at a new horizon. We must point our seats  in a new direction. The rooms with a view of the 21st century require a new set of buzzwords, such as executive education centers, knowledge-persistent collaboration spaces, virtual reality centers, executive briefing centers and multimedia education environments. Those are just a few of the monikers used to describe the many flavors of evolving rich media workspaces.

Rooms with a Clue

The evolution of a rich-media language in business and society completely changes how we look at the traditional workspace, asserts Paul Siebert, creative director for Steelcase Global Environments. "Work surfaces used to be primarily horizontal, we now think of work surfaces much more in the vertical plane," he says. Work cultures are becoming project based. They tend to be media rich. Workspaces are in some ways being designed to mimic what computers do--manage and store information while making it easily accessible. We are on a logical course, he says, toward total audiovisual immersion in which "the whole space is your hardware and software." 

Siebert cites companies such as Ernst & Young, IBM, First Health, Accenture, Charles Schwab, Monsanto, Deloitte & Touche and others as organizations that are creating rich media communications infrastructures designed to incorporate audiovisual information into the workflow as seamlessly as traditional paper documents are today.

IBM's Chicago E-Business Innovation Center, for example, poured a major portion of its recent $3.4 conference room project budget into creating a proprietary operating system for the facility that allows cross-platform compatibility across all media types. Arguably, if the entire world of business could develop such a system it would be a bigger leap forward than when documents became standardized around the 8½ x 11-inch paper size. The 50,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art IBM facility also transforms the traditional conference room table into a live, rich media work surface. Images from media sources are projected from the ceiling onto the table in front of each person. A touch-sensitive membrane in the tabletop allows the meeting participants to control and edit the information directly on the table surface.  

Steelcase and other space designers are leading a trend toward creating what many like to call "smart rooms" or "intelligent spaces" in which the audio and visual information in a room becomes an extension of the people working within it. The rooms are "aware." They sense the activity that is going on inside and adjust themselves to facilitate that activity. "We are already seeing companies making major investments in smart spaces," Siebert says.

Photo Courtesy of MCSI

At Sun Microsystems, based in Santa Clara, CA, the company's entire work environment is designed around the idea of collaboration and presentation as workstyle. Sun employees can walk into any media space, whether a small team collaboration room, a casual break area or a fully equipped conference room, without any computing device at all. By swiping their ID card through a card reader, the room recognizes them and the computing and media devices at hand instantly display their personal computing environment--their desktop is wherever they are. Because they are presenting from the network and the network is everywhere, employees at Sun can work, collaborate or present from essentially anywhere in the building. In such an environment, plasma screens, projectors and monitors graduate from mere media displays to rich media collaboration tools. Even laptops being used outside the building and connected to the Sun network function as "smart" remote collaboration centers.

Team Environments

"More and more the expectation is that anyone can see and use multimedia information wherever they are--in an office, a meeting room, the break room, at home, on the road--anywhere," says Roseanne Bell, president and CEO of Bellwether Designs, in Tulsa. Bell's conceptual design and consulting firm specializes in the very hip and happening business of creating electronic-communications-enabled environments. The emphasis in space design today, Bell explains, is on getting the information to the eyeballs of whoever needs it in whatever form is most effective. 

Photo Courtesy of Bellwether Designs

"There is a lot of experimentation going on in work environment design. It's not just about how far away the screen is anymore," she adds. "We used to think a lot about color and design. Now we think about communication and message. You cannot have a disconnect between what you are trying to communicate and the space you communicate in." The trend, she adds, is toward designing workspaces that use technology to seamlessly integrate form and function.

Photo Courtesy of Bellwether Designs

"We have noticed a huge change in the last eight years of how much audiovisual technology permeates the workplace," agrees Lisa Bottom, a principal of Bottom Duvivier, an interior architecture design firm based in Redwood City, Calif. Much of the change is being driven by the fact that people don't have the time to sit, read, focus and absorb information as they once did. "We are raising an entire generation of fast movers and slow readers who have to be able to work quickly and visually," she says. The new generation of workspaces is designed to engage the senses of sight, sound and touch as much as possible because multi-sensory input and feedback accelerate and deepen the communication process, adds co-principal John Duvivier. 

Photo Courtesy of Bottom Duvivier

"We are designing workspaces that adapt to the team activities and accommodate media interaction," says Duvivier. In these next-gen rooms, lighting and acoustics adjust automatically to large and small workgroups. Audioconferencing levels conform to the position and voice of the participants. Lighting shifts to enhance conversation, presentation or videoconferencing. The firm designs its rooms for flexibility. Instead of single, large conference tables, many rooms use movable tables. Control devices, cables and other operational systems are kept out of site. "These rooms are technologically complex. There is a lot of control going on behind the scenes. But we design the rooms to be tech-support-free environments," he says.

The nation's largest audiovisual systems integration company, MCSI Inc. in Dayton, Ohio, reports that companies are increasingly asking for worry-free workspaces that, in essence, operate themselves. Enterprises are coming to the clear understanding that the communication that goes on in rich media-enabled meeting rooms is mission critical. They know that if a communication line goes down or a projection lamp blows out, it can be devastating to the business at hand, explains Sharmila Rao, vice president of corporate communications for MCSI. 

Photo Courtesy of MCSI

As a leading supplier and integrator of presentation, broadcast and associated network technology, MCSI has responded to the complexity of the environments as well as their increasingly critical role in business by developing rooms that are run from remote centers. In one case, a client ordered the installation of 20 rich media-enabled rooms located across the country. From a centralized location, MCSI monitors and controls everything that happens in the rooms, including network connections and the readiness and condition of the audiovisual equipment. "When there is a glitch, our network operations people, the ones who understand the technology framework, are able to proactively address the problem," she says. "When the people walk into the room, the room is already set and ready to go. That was just not possible to do even a few years ago," she adds.

Memory Rooms

The increasing demand for media-rich information combined with the growing trend toward team-based collaboration is pushing the demand for new types of work environments that not only display information but also assist workers to be more effective by letting them work naturally. At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) researchers are experimenting with information workspaces in which screens placed around the work environment are programmed to not only display information, but also organize and memorize it by location. In any given project, workers spend a lot of time visually managing the space. We create a mental map of where information is located and when we need a bit of information we check the map in our heads to locate it. In your office, for example, you make a visual picture of where documents are filed, or piled. 

In the experimental rooms PARC has designed there are multiple display screens, including on the walls and tabletops. Members of the team can place electronic information in a specific location and leave it there for reference, or move it to a different location. They can cause the displays to feature just one item of information, or they can see all of the materials in relationship to the whole. The visual space is adjusted as the team moves through different tasks. "You can have a screen size as big as the table if you want it," says Stuart Card, Xerox Research Fellow and the manager of the User Interface Research group at PARC. The trend toward very large virtual spaces created with display technology allows for information to be persistent, Card says. It allows for visual organization that reduces clutter and accommodates patterns of human visual recall and visual analysis. 

Photo Courtesy of MCSI

In the evolving visual work environment the group owns the space for the duration of a project. Participants post their rich media data the same way an elementary school teacher posts the alphabet around the top of the schoolroom. It's always there. It's predictable. It's persistent. There is constant exposure to the information. In the rich media technology-enabled workspace, teams start with a naked space and end up with a physical manifestation of their thinking process. The room is connected to the information system and is smart enough to assist the team as opposed to merely providing an enclosure for work. The computing power and visualization technology becomes ambient, like lighting or wall coverings.

Rich Media Learning

"The rooms are definitely getting smarter," says Scott Walker, principal of Waveguide Consulting, Inc. in Decatur, Georgia. His technology-consulting firm, which specializes in audiovisual design, data telecom consulting and acoustics, has watched media-enabled work rooms become increasingly complex, but at the same time easier to use. In the best rooms, says Walker, the technology keeps a low profile. The emphasis is on better communication using media systems, not on style or flash. 

Waveguide's business has gravitated steadily toward the higher education market in recent years, prompted by paradoxical shift in the marketplace. Traditionally corporations have been the first to adopt and adapt new audiovisual technologies for better communication, with education and entertainment riding their technological coat tails. Recently, however, the edge in innovation and state-of-the-art implementation has flip-flopped, says Walker. Educational institutions are aggressively designing, redesigning and upgrading their facilities to enable rich media learning. They have little choice, notes Walker. They will soon live or die by the quality and capabilities of their multimedia educational capabilities.    

Photo Courtesy of Waveguide Consulting

Corporations that want to understand how communication spaces are changing should look to the universities, he says. "We are designing student-centered spaces. Now, it's all about students learning from students," he says. The teamwork phenomenon that has already taken root in business is flowering in education and for the first time education is leading the way in technology, according to Walker. In one recent university installation, Waveguide created classrooms with trapezoidal, boardroom-style tables instead of desks. Six tables seat six people each. A room that once held 70 students in tidy rows now holds half that many arranged in teams. The walls are covered in displays and collaborative visualization tools. There are computer hookups for everyone. There is no front of the room.

"The old AV rules don't apply," says Walker. Space designers today have to understand the application and use of the environment, not merely its technical specifications. "The gear is getting really good. But you can spend a lot of money on what you don't need. You have to understand the communication function intimately." 

Visionary Venues

As with most things in business, often the best way to gauge a major trend is to watch where the big dollars are flowing. To catch a glimpse of the future of rich media workspaces, one of the best places to look is inside facilities known as executive briefing centers (EBCs). These sophisticated environments, which integrate presentation, consultation, demonstration and hospitality, are where high-tech companies such as Apple, SGI, EDS, Xerox, Amadeus, AT&T and others sell their fast-changing and complex wares to their biggest and most important accounts. To facilitate sales in the rarified air of the really-big deals, hundreds of high-tech companies around the word have pumped steroids into their meeting rooms and demonstration facilities to create EBCs. 

At the Hewlett-Packard Briefing Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for example, customers and prospective customers enter a Web-enabled and wireless "smart environment" that knows who they are even before they arrive. Upon entering the 45,000 square-foot, 17-room briefing center the customer receives a handheld personal information device similar to a PDA. Via wireless connection, the device keeps track of the personal agenda, questions and needs of the customer during the visit. It also wirelessly downloads presentations and any other information requested by the guest, creating a record of their visit.

Photo Courtesy of SGI

The rich media-enabled meeting rooms know who is scheduled to participate in a briefing and automatically configure the media systems for the presenters. "We do not put a proprietary control panel in each of the rooms," notes David Akers, operations manager of the HP Briefing Center. Instead, all of the rooms are linked using Web protocols to control the power, temperature, lighting and audiovisual equipment. "We link the environment and media tools with the participants' needs," Akers explains.

Every morning the automated briefing center scheduling system checks to see who is using which room that day. Rooms that are scheduled are automatically powered up and a system check is run. "As a presenter, I can go onto the Web, click on my presentation room and check to make sure it has everything I need," says Akers. The smart system includes Web cams that monitor every room. Using the wireless network, Akers and his staff are able to log in to any room or any presentation. "I can be in the back of one room watching a live presentation while monitoring a presentation in another room using my laptop," says Akers. 

"EBCs serve both as state-of-the-art presentation spaces and as showcases for company products and the corporate image," says Roxanne McCreery, executive director of the Association of Briefing Program Managers (ABPM), a trade organization serving EBC managers. "The strategic value of this kind of integrated, media-enriched environment is becoming apparent to all sorts of businesses beyond the high-tech sector," says McCreery. She cites companies such as Eli Lilly, Coors Brewing Company, American Express, Coca Cola and Harley Davidson as examples of established organizations from non-tech sectors that are investigating investment EBCs.

Capital Spaces

In business today, EBCs and other extreme examples of intelligent, rich media workspaces are the exceptions, not the rule. But if we cut through all the technological wizardry and architectural inventiveness of these installations, we see that what we are asking of our technology is quite basic and applies to every business of every size. We want our workspaces to give us our rich media information wherever we are, at any time and for whatever purpose. We want the technology to get out of our way and let us work in environments that extend our minds and our senses without adding interference and complexity. Simply, we want workspaces that adapt to the realities of the age and help us do our jobs better.

Photo Courtesy of MCSI

Technology development and business investment in rich media workspace innovation are still in their infancy. We've only just begun to understand the wide-ranging impact of the rich media communications revolution on the places we work. We don't understand with any great depth yet how rich media-enabled spaces relate to human behavior and vice versa. It is all still new to us. But we do know that in the old business model, workspaces were about task, status and rank. In the new model, they are about idea creation, human communication and the emerging new language of rich media. 

Rich media workspaces are not merely places to do business. They are new capital tools that leverage ideas and increase knowledge. Whatever their architects and designers may call them, rich media workspaces represent one of the most important trends in business in the 21st century.

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Copyright c2002, Robert L. Lindstrom

All rights reserved

No part of this material may be copied or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author. 

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Learn more about Robert L. Lindstrom, the author of The Business Week Guide to Multimedia Presentations and director of the Digital Exploration Society, in our Contributor's section.

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