Herman Miller: Exclave
Herman Miller sought to foster true collaboration in contemporary offices. To find the solution, they partnered with Continuum to produce the Exclave suite of products.
Herman Miller sought to foster true collaboration in contemporary offices. To find the solution, they partnered with Continuum to produce the Exclave suite of products.
01
Challenge
Traditional views of collaboration imply organization and formality, but research has shown that collaboration is primarily spontaneous, sometimes even a little chaotic. It’s often unplanned and undefined. In our work for global clients in a number of industries, our teams at EPAM Continuum work daily with the challenge of enabling collaboration that generates ideas and solves problems to drive organizational success.
Unfortunately, most areas of the office landscape are not designed to foster collaboration: Conference rooms are formal and inflexible, inhibiting the trust and spontaneity that is essential to human collaboration, while open floorplans don’t offer digital tools and vertical collaboration spaces. Perhaps most importantly, neither of these spaces allow a smooth flow of ideas from one to another. White boards are stuck in project rooms, making it difficult to maintain momentum when meetings are over.
02
Research & Insights
03
Solution
Exclave™ features highly flexible and interdependent tools that can be calibrated to each workspace and type of work, empowering high-performing teams to collaborate anywhere, and keep their ideas moving and evolving.
Lightweight tackable and writeable boards and wall-mounted rails allowed elements to be placed, moved, and replaced as needed. Cameras and monitors moved, tables morphed, and whiteboards shifted through the space. Some elements, such as the guitar-pick tables and the media tile, came together to provide unparalleled eye contact between participants.
This highly collaborative flexibility ultimately became the hallmark of Exclave™.
04
Results
EPAM Continuum’s success has been founded on our acute sensitivity to design as well as our understanding of how people work. Exclave™ is the latest in Herman Miller’s Living Office offering, a brand-wide approach to re-consider the furnishings and work methodology of today’s workplace. By working with EPAM Continuum to help collaborative teams perform their best, Exclave™ looks to cement Herman Miller’s place as both a world leader in workplace furnishings as well as a thought leader in collaboration and modern office productivity.
