Technology Advances Drive Changes in the Design of Workspace Furniture

The increasing use of mobile devices gives rise to "the chair as an office"

By MICHELLE HSU

Whatever you call the space where you work at home--studio, workstation, home office--the furniture you use there is undergoing drastic changes along with the evolution of lifestyles and working habits brought on by the use of PCs and mobile devices.

Advances in information, communication, and network technologies have driven the rise of new work patterns all over the world, and the virtual office, mobile office, and home office are growing in popularity. One result of this development has been significant changes in the design and quality of the office environment and its furniture.

During the era of the PC, a computer desk is all people need to be efficient, organized, and comfortable at work or at home. Built to serve as an ideal workstation, a computer desk is composed of drawers and storage space where users can keep their files and resources handy, along with more than enough surface space to ensure that everything they need can be neatly kept right in front of them.

Today, mobile handsets have become a major tool for work. Documents that used to be on paper can now come in electronic form and no longer need a large physical storage space. What people need to handle documentation now is a small desk and a handy mobile phone or tablet PC with a large storage capacity and connection capability. This has led to major changes in the “office setting.” Some people claim that desks have become completely unnecessary, and that only a single chair is enough to support someone at work.

Changes differ, and along with them users' needs, in different areas and countries. According to press reports, with city dwellers striving for ever more efficiency and greater information exchange, Europe and the United States have long had the speed and convenience provided by rural urbanization and urban ruralization. Today, there is no great difference between lifestyles in the city and in the countryside in these areas.

In the Asia-Pacific region, however, there are still significant differences between the two. In recent years in China, the urbanization of townships has been increasingly rapid and is now irreversible. This, naturally, also affects the development of the furniture and decorating industries. Network and television marketing have now entered the RTA (ready-to-assemble) age which first saw light of day in the West.

Functional Furniture

 “Today, the furniture of a working space is required to be much more functional than ever,” observed Dan Ihreborn, a Swedish designer who has been working with Taiwan's Soflex Furniture for years. Lifestyle habits today tend toward the use of multi-functional mobile devices as the main tool for work. Sometimes a lounge chair is enough; in that case the chair becomes more functional, and this leads to greater room for changes in design.

“Simplicity is not only for saving space or materials," Ihreborn pointed out, "but it also makes the furniture lightweight and convenient to move, and thus suitable to go along with mobile devices. A combination of simple appearance and multi-functions is a major feature of the furniture design for a working space in either the home or office building.

The Kuoching Group, one of the leading chair makers in Taiwan, introduced several new chairs earlier this year; at first glance all look like leisure chairs, but they are represented as being suitable for use as working chairs because lots of people like to sit and work with a mobile handset.

With this trend, providing a comfortable seat for work is the key issue in the design of work furniture. Also, the colors chosen for such furniture are mostly the bright and light shades, which are considered to have the “function” of cheering people up.

Given the present widespread demand for personalized products, product diversification is another key trend in design for the Kuoching Group.

SOHO Furniture

While chairs draw much more attention in the design of office furniture today, Sing Bee Furniture Co.,Ltd., one of the leading home office furniture manufacturers in Taiwan, emphasizes the design of desks and chairs equally. After all, it takes both to make a full set of work furniture.

As company executives observe, “Integrated system furniture and European-style independent desk systems are becoming new mainstream trends.” Sing Bee is one of the oldest computer desk manufacturers in Taiwan, transformed from a major school desk and chair maker. Be constantly adjusting its product line to fit the latest trends, Sing Bee has developed a wide range of computer desks and chairs, including models designed for use with mobile devices.

 “In the future, mobile office furniture and SOHO (small office and home office) furniture will also become the concept furniture for the new kind of office,” company officials believe.

Ever since its founding, Sing Bee has held to a policy of "research innovation, insistence on quality, and shared honors,” and it is this policy that pushes the company to consistently develop new products that meet consumers' demand for high-quality, multi-functional, and diverse products, and to improve on its own competitive edge by using creative, sophisticated, and market-segmentation development strategies to strengthen its advantage in the industry and establish its own export brand.

Sing Bee develops home-use products such as children's growth chairs and tables along with ergonomic chairs that meet children's learning needs. It has established direct sales and service channels in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

From the outset the company has been well aware that for Taiwanese office furniture to enter the international market and for the industry to produce value-added products, it would have to constantly cultivate a pool of professional design talent and strive toward the development of ergonomic, multi-functional, high-quality office furniture made from recyclable materials.

And the results are impressive. Not only has the company repeatedly won Taiwan furniture design awards, it currently holds 106 patents and continues adding to the number each year.

The company specializes in making children's desks and chairs, computer desks, furniture hardware, OA chairs, row seating, display racks/storage racks, chair mechanisms, and parts. It's well-rounded R&D team has been working out a succession of superb products for years.

While developing new product designs, Sing Bee also continuously improves its old products, combining the diverse objectives of furniture which is DIY-ready, easy to assemble, time and labor-saving, beautiful, artistic, and creative.