The Office of the Future: a vision at the FedEx Institute of Technology (FIT)

Author: Lee McCauley (mccauley@memphis.edu)
           Department of Computer Science
           Institute for Intelligent Systems
Date: June 24, 2004

The concept of the Office of the Future has been around since the 1940s when it was called the “Paperless Office.”  Computer advocates and futurists of the time saw a workplace where all business was conducted digitally; the office would become as much or more of a virtual place than an actual location. While such a day may come, the intervening years have clearly shown us that that day is not in our immediate future. One thing that the original proponents of the paperless office failed to take into account was that people are primarily sensorimotor creatures. Most of us function best when we can actively manipulate and interact with our work.

As children, we learn about our world, what we can do with it, how it works, and our place in it by engaging all of our senses and manipulating the things around us.  Our brains are designed for just this sort of environment. Moving, feeling, seeing, hearing and talking are all integral parts of how we live and how we work.  The paperless office promised to change the way that we worked by eliminating much of the sensorimotor activity that provides a foundation for our life.

 The office of the future will change the way that we work not by removing our need for interaction, but by allowing us to engage our sensorimotor creativity in ways never before possible.  Not by removing our need for human interaction, but by providing revolutionary ways for us to communicate and cooperate even more.  Workers will be more efficient, more productive, more ingenious, and happier.

 What will make this all possible? There are currently two prevailing visions for what this futuristic workplace will look like. IBM and Steelcase have provided the most visible concept through their Bluespace prototypes.  These oversized cubicles consist of furniture enhancements, easy environmental control, an “anywhere” display, and special entryway lighting to allow co-workers to see whether you are available from a distance. The focus of Bluespace is to encourage and enhance collaboration while providing a comfortable and adjustable work setting. The other major player shaping the future of the office environment is Microsoft. While the world's largest software company has dominated the computing desktop paradigm, their workplace of the future takes the form of a common lounge called EasyLiving. Within this space are couches, coffee tables, large area displays, and several standard computer terminals along with special purpose sensing technology such as 3-D cameras, a thumbprint scanner, and an overhead camera for picking out the location of specific items. Microsoft's EasyLiving project focuses on person tracking and the interoperability of the various devices located within the space.  For example, a user can enter the room with their wireless laptop and then make use of the wall display or sound system from that laptop.  Similarly, the wireless keyboard and mouse can be used to control any of the various devices within the space.

 There are important concepts illustrated by these two projects. Microsoft's strength of providing infrastructure foundations is no less apparent in the software that makes the EasyLiving environment work. Their world model and sensory integration seems solid, robust, and easily extendable. The Bluespace project, on the other hand, does an excellent job of making collaboration easy and more productive. In particular, here are the concepts from these projects that will be essential for the office of the future.

• Dynamic and adjustable displays – the ability to adjust where and how the information you need is displayed is one of the almost universally agreed upon features of the future office.  As the EasyLiving project clearly demonstrates, the term “display” should be interpreted in its broadest sense to mean a device that presents information through visual, auditory and even other modalities.
• Person identification and tracking – the ability to know who is around and where is essential to the realization of an interactive office environment. The methods for accomplishing this vary, but they should be noninvasive an invisible to the user.
• Seamless device interaction – the resources for any given device should be available at any moment.  Minimally, this requires wireless networking capabilities together with OS level software that can dynamically reroute device I/O.
• Complete user control – the user is the primary focus. The user should have ultimate control over what happens and how. In addition, the system should adapt to the user not the other way around.

There are several other projects each of which focus on different aspects of intelligent environments that are less visible but no less interesting.  For example, the Metaglue project at MIT provides a solid distributed infrastructure that can reroute requests or replan actions even when systems have crashed. This is an important aspect since it is generally agreed that the computing power necessary to run the office of the future will require multiple computer systems. Depending on the load, these systems could be shared by several offices.

 Despite these good first steps, what has not yet been pursued is a focused synergy of the best aspects of these projects. In addition, they have concentrated on what could be done rather than on what would make their systems useful in the workplace. It is exactly in these two areas that the research going on at the FedEx Institute of Technology (FIT) promises to change the landscape of how people work.  In the Intelligent Environment Laboratory at the FIT work is being conducted that will free users from having to use cumbersome devices like keyboards, mice, outdated filing systems, limiting visual displays, and even desktop phones.  The focus here is on using what has already been perfected in other labs, combining the technologies, and extending them in ways that leverage how people currently work and how they naturally interact with other people.

 In not so distant future a person, let's call him Robert, walks into his office and is greeted by the familiar voice of his virtual assistant.

“Good morning, Mr. Phillips.”  As he hangs up his coat the voice is joined by a friendly face that asks if he has seen the news report that morning related to one of their partner companies.

“No,” Robert replies “put it on the wall.” Rob heads to his desk while the news story begins to play on a large section of the wall which had previously contained the same stylish wallpaper as the rest of the room.  His desk is nothing out of the ordinary, classically elegant, medium-size dark wood construction, and decorated with the usual pictures and knickknacks. Seemingly missing from the desk are the usual tools of modern business: a telephone, computer, keyboard, and mouse; all there is a wide inward curving monitor hovering over one corner on a flexible arm that allows it to be positioned almost anywhere over or around the desk.  Robert sits down at his desk and finishes watching the national news coverage displayed on the wall.  “Mark that and send a summary to Julie,” he adds as he looks down at some of the papers on his desk. 

“I've created an e-mail for Julie Simon summarizing the news article.” The face appears in a small visible section of Robert’s desk that moments seemed like solid mahogany.  “Should I include a link to the video footage?”

“Yes, please.”

“The e-mail has been sent,” the voice confirms.  After a few seconds, while Robert continues to look through the papers on his desk, the face begins to slowly fade back into the wood.

“Computer,” Robert begins, and the face returns to his desk. “Where is my copy of the sales brochure we've been working on?”

“You gave it to Brian Reynolds yesterday.  It is currently in his office.  Brian is also in his office.  Would you like me to ask him to return it?” the voice asks.

“Yes, and tell him that I would like his opinion on it if he has the time” Robert suggests.  Then, as an afterthought, he asks, “do I have any other meetings this morning?”

“You have a videoconference scheduled with the X7 project team at 9:00 and your wife and son are coming by for lunch at 11:30.” There is a short pause than the voice says, “Brian Reynolds is on his way.”

“Good,” Robert begins. He sets some papers to the side clearing off a large portion of his desk.  “Bring up the sales brochure here,” Robert says tapping a location on his desk. Immediately, the front of the sales brochure appears at the indicated spot.  Several other buttons appear, from Robert’s perspective, at the top of the desk. He puts his finger on one end of the toolbar and drags it, and the toolbar along with it, across the desk to the side where the bar changes orientation so that it goes up and down the side.  At about this time, Brian Reynolds arrives at the door.  Robert gestures for him to sit down and asks his opinion of the sales brochure.

“Well,” Brian begins “the cover is good, but the inside needs a little work.”  He touches the brochure’s cover and makes a motion as though he were flipping the page of a book. The digital brochure smoothly opens at this suspended just below the surface of the desk.  “Here,” Brian says indicating one of the pages filled with text. “There needs to be something else; maybe a picture of the prototype.”

“I think you're right. Computer, put a picture of the X7 prototype here.” A picture of the prototype appears in the designated spot.  Robert doesn't look quite pleased.  “No, the angle isn't quite right,” he says. “Bring up the 3-D model.”  The brochure seems to sink into the desk and become translucent as a large model of the prototype takes the foreground. Robert again uses his fingers to manipulate the model, turning it several different directions before he seems satisfied. “That's it.  Computer, add a blue background.” A field of blue appears below the prototype. “Darker,” Robert says and the background becomes a darker shade. “Now let's add a shadow.” He begins to move his hand over his desk and a shadow of the prototype is cast down onto the background. As Robert moves his hand, the shadow moves as though light were emanating from his palm.  “Good,” he says.  “Capture that as an image and put it into the brochure.”  The image of the model shrinks as the brochure comes back to the foreground and the two meld with the image of the prototype taking its place where the previous one had been.

“Much better,” Brian says “let's show this to Stephanie and see what she thinks.”

“Computer, is Stephanie Sparks available?”

“Yes, she is currently in her office,” the computer replies.

“Good, set up a vid link on the wall.” Within a few seconds, a line video image of Ms. Sparks appears on the far wall. It looks as though the businesswoman is standing a couple of feet on the other side of a glass wall. “Stephanie, thanks for letting us bug you. Brian and I think we have the sales brochure done and wanted your opinion of it.  Computer, put the latest version of the brochure up on the wall for us to share.” the sales brochure instantly fades from the surface of the desk and fades back in at about chest height in front of Stephanie. It looks as though it is floating in midair in front of her. She looks at it for a few moments, reaches out and flips it over using the same motion Robert had used earlier, and says,

“It’s good, but this picture needs to be smaller.” She reaches out and puts her fingers on the edges of the picture and moves them together slightly until the picture is the size she wants. “There.  Let's send it on to the printers.”  The three agree and the brochure is transmitted to the printing department.

Many people will see parallels between the office of the future envisioned at the FedEx Institute of Technology and the science-fiction of 25th century Star Trek. But this vision is not 400 years away; all of the technology needed to make this vision a reality is available now, scattered amongst visionary corporations, research institutions, and universities. The FedEx Institute, with its numerous corporate and research partners is in the unique position to bring these technologies under one roof and can incorporate them into a single focused project.

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