Workspace Design Lab | Healthy Spaces, Lasting Impact
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Workspace Design Lab | Healthy Spaces, Lasting Impact
How AI Will Make Offices More Human featuring Bob Cicero
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Workspace Design Lab | Healthy Spaces, Lasting Impact
Join host Sylvanna "Syl" VanderPark as we explore ergonomic office design, modern interiors, and sustainable workspace solutions with architects, designers, and industry leaders.
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It's the most consequential change I think we've experienced in our lifetime, right? As people think about the internet when everything was connected, and they're already starting to see that, right? And so the notion of workplace and workspace design needs to really think about those collaborative moments. But in order to get all this right, you can't think about technology last. Technology has to be brought forward in the design. We think about the design process where project goals are set and the architect and doing all the programming, the schematic design, all those components, you might start bringing your consultants in. A lot of times IT was last. And the questions were, where are your Wi-Fi access points going to be? What kind of screen are you going to hang on the wall? And then the rest of it, IT was going to go worry about.
Syl VanderParkYou've spent years talking about smart buildings, but lately you've been talking about future-proofed workplaces. What's changed?
SPEAKER_01When you think back around the notion of a smart building, you know, if you rewind the clock a decade, it was really around connecting the unconnected. And how do we connect all these systems to create great experiences, great outcomes for either inhabitants, operators, owners, et cetera? The transition in terms of what we've seen is when you think about a future-proof workplace, it's really about embracing this notion of what we don't know what the future is going to bring. But if we think about this as a foundational platform approach, like we think about in the IT world, we're going to be prepared for anything. And so, as you know, as a company for like Cisco, we started this journey way back in 2019. The first location that we built from a future group workplace standpoint was in 2022. Now we're thinking about how AI agents are going to interact with all of us on our daily basis when you think about AI. But we're in the position now to take advantage of all that because we've rethought how do we look at the workplace through a lens of bringing technology first and forward into the process versus thinking about technology as a bolt-on afterwards. It's a fundamental thread throughout the design process of how do we bring technology in.
Syl VanderParkYou often say offices need to earn the commute. What does that actually mean today?
SPEAKER_01Coming out of the pandemic, we all saw the notion of what two years at home did. There was resistance for people to go back to work and be in the physical location. Now, some industries mandated it, some organizations mandated it, some didn't have a choice if you're in healthcare, et cetera. But a large portion of the population was wondering what's the value of my commute going in. And so when we looked at this, we said, we've got to rethink the workplace. And when we saw a lot of the companies going back early was they would sit on a platform of your choice meeting, whether it's Zoom Teams, WebEx, et cetera, they'd all be on the same meeting, all in the same location, but they were never in the same room. And what we realized was the fundamental construct of how these spaces were built. We needed to change all of that. We really needed to make this notion of earning the commute front and center from just not the architectural aspect of it, but technology was driving the entire experience for all of us. But how do we look at not just the technology, but how do we align around the human needs for all of us and thinking about all the other elements that are important to most organizations? So we really anchored around four key criteria. One is how do we think about mixed presence, right? This notion of physical and virtual coming together and thinking about that through design. How do we think about electrification differently? How do we think about removing embodied carbon and operational carbon, all those elements from an ESG point of view? How do we bring health and wellness front and center? And so health and wellness in terms of how do we maximize natural daylight? How do we think about air quality? How do we think about all these human-centric elements that we know based on biology is best for us? And how do we align around industry principles like well for that component? And then even in our some of our further sites, we really thought about neurodiverse population in terms of how do we design for those individuals, which is arguably 20% of the world's population, identify as neurodiverse. And then the fourth is that if we think about all these elements being threaded through with technology, it's really data. And data gives us insights to around how people utilize it and what's the effectiveness of the space. But then also from this notion of now we see fast forward, data forms everything we need to think about from an AI point of view. And so when we thought about all this coming forward around this earning the commute notion, is that we put all those pieces together, it becomes a phenomenal workplace. And so for us, there was no mandate. It was a magnet approach. And so this notion of earning the commute played out in real time where people wanted to be in the new locations that we built, just not because they're beautiful, just not because of, hey, they're new. It's because of all these human elements that we thought about as we move forward through the design process.
Syl VanderParkWhat's the biggest mistake companies make when trying to bring people back? And what's the best example you've seen of a workplace that truly earns a commute?
SPEAKER_01I think every industry is different. And the notion of the way that you know employees are developed and careers are developed, you know, and you think about the apprentice model of work, a lot of that is in person, right? So organizations were naturally going back. And then you've seen this sort of pendulum swing around these mandates. And even with mandates, right, you'll find that people when they actually measure it, people really aren't coming in all the time. And so Cisco has really been the poster child for this notion of earning that commute where we built these locations and people wanted to go there. And there was no mandate. And the reason why is because the workplace works. It's for the humans, right? It's not for us to do heads-down work. It's for us to come together in these collaborative moments to really drive the you know the mission forward from the organization.
Syl VanderParkI imagine that you work with them to assess what's important to each worker, to each stakeholder, each department, et cetera. But I'm curious, you know, in Cisco's, what made it successful? Like what are these human factors?
SPEAKER_01A lot of organizations look at the personas, right? In terms of the personas that they're servicing and really what does that look like? But why we were successful is we had we had engaged leadership. We had engaged leadership from the top down from the viewpoint of our CEO saying it needs to be a magnet and not a band-aid. But then every single site gets activated by a senior leader that's there. And this notion of the leader is responsible for the location, if you would. So, yes, we have our corporate culture and we have the culture that we've built over 40 years, but this notion of engaged leadership has proven to be one of the keys to success when we look at this notion of how do we bring these people together without the mandate approach and have it to be organically happen. And so part of this, what happened was is that we built the first location and everyone said, I want one of those. I want a pen. And so, what do you really do you want just a new site? No, no, we want the entire experience, we want all these components that we brought together, we want this human aspect of it. And then it became this movement, if you would, across the company. And is for us, we were thinking about this that horizontal platform approach, as we talked about before, of how do we bring the same pieces, the same design criteria, the same operating model? Because at the end of the day, we all know how costly space is to an organization. And if we can do that on a global basis, like we're gonna win in the long term. Um, and that's what's played out.
Syl VanderParkEveryone talks about AI changing knowledge work. When you talk about AI changing physical space, what does that actually look like?
SPEAKER_01We're in the early days of AI, right? We think about the first time someone probably lied on the ChatGPT, maybe had it write a poem for you or something that was, you know, you said, wow, this is amazing technology. And now, as we've seen the technology develop, we've seen all the frontier models, if you would, the Clauds, the Geminis, the Chat GPTs, et cetera, out there with these notions of really chat bots, right? And this notion of chatting back and forth and giving it a task and doing really good prompts to get the model in a frame of mind that is going to be appropriate for what you're trying to accomplish. Then we're now, when you think about the technology industry, it's gonna be agents. And so all of us will have digital workers in the not too distant future. And so these digital workers are gonna be working hand in hand with us on a digital basis. It's a lot of work that we all do every single day, where it's like we're doing heads-down work, we're working on a spreadsheet, a document, presentation, et cetera. Like those types of tasks are really gonna be done by the workers, the digital workers, right? The agents. And as a human, right, a human worker, we're gonna have to figure out, you think about leaders managing people, everyone's gonna have to be a leader of sorts. They're gonna have to think about how you work with your digital workers. But what's gonna happen is the offloading of all that work, I believe, is what's gonna bring all of us back together. And it's gonna be those collaborative moments that are gonna be really around this notion of why humans are coming together in the workplace, of to be able to achieve whatever goals you have as an organization. But it's gonna be this human, amplified human interaction that's gonna occur because the agents are gonna be off doing the work that you used to do alone to free up the time for you to really engage with humans. But how do we drive these collaborative moments and make it super, super easy and seamless with all the wellness components I mentioned before, to bring these people back together in these collaborative moments? And so AI is gonna have a profound impact there. And then the journey after that is really the physical AI component. But when we think about space design and design of space, AI is gonna have an impact there too, in terms of how do we really think through space based on data sets that we should all have from our existing spaces in terms of figuring out what works, what doesn't work, to help inform the designers as we go through the process and really provide that AI lens on top of it.
Syl VanderParkI imagine it's it's a separate computer, perhaps. Is each digital worker a computer? Where do they reside?
SPEAKER_01The digital workers, the agents will be, they could be in your premise, what we call on premise in the tech world, like the site you're in, the agents could be operating there. They could be on your workstation, but they could be communicating with agents that reside outside of your premise in your own private data center or in the cloud. We believe what's gonna happen is the amount of you know network traffic that is gonna be generated by these agents is if you think about today, you make a query on one of those frontier models and you give it a task to do. You give it the task, it comes up. And if you can imagine, like it's doing its you know stuff right from an AI perspective, and it comes back, which is the answer. The agents are gonna be talking all the time. And so the level of communication is gonna be accelerated significantly. I think, I believe, to elements that we've never even thought of before. When you think about what's happening in some of the, you know, the hyperscalers, it's gonna be consistent because they're gonna be communicating all the time, right? If we don't need to feed them, they're gonna be on all the time. And so that's what we're really preparing for.
Syl VanderParkIt's data centers, basically.
SPEAKER_01Data centers or on your premise. It's got to be a combination of all that. And so there could be agents on your laptop, or if you're, you know, there's also this notion of desk side computing that's being developed by, you know, the big players in the industry of AMD or NVIDIA. That's gonna be where your your agents are running for you as a you know an employee with your digital workers that are gonna be helping you throughout the day.
Syl VanderParkI've only really dipped my toe using AI. I'm trying to not rely on it too much personally, but it's fun talking back and forth and saying, you know, I had this thought, and you have somebody to talk with about things that you might be shy to talk about somebody else with. I guess the point is that, you know, I really don't know a lot about AI. I know very little. But I guess it's what I do experience with it is that all of a sudden you can find yourself your business can expand into different areas as soon as you say, Oh, I've got this knowledge now because of what I've learned on AI, and you've got like a you can develop a whole plan for it. And so businesses can explode if they want to into different arenas that are connected to the initial, like like like we haven't seen before, you know, or or there's ideas that get generated or ideas that connect suddenly and you say, Oh, that's that's great, you know, I can apply what we're doing in our business to something else, and that can be a business model right there. And so you basically have to have the the power, like computers to run all this kind of stuff and all this analysis, and then you have your agents kind of interacting with it. And so Am I right in thinking that the future workplace could be a lot of computers compared to actual physical work workplaces where people work?
SPEAKER_01We're still gonna have physical workplaces because I think that's where the human interaction is gonna happen. But the workplace needs to be designed around sort of, you know, we flipped our design model where we were looking at 30%. We used to traditionally build 30% of collaborative space and 70%, you know, me space, right? Focus work, desk work. We flipped that model and we said we're gonna do 70% collaborative, 30% desk. Because we fundamentally believe that it was really this notion of you're gonna, if you think about the journey of just first hybrid and embracing hybrid work, you're gonna have people that are gonna, you know, do their work from home. We have a saying of don't commute to compute, do that work at home. So it's really gonna be those collaborative moments that brought together. AI is gonna amplify that notion.
Syl VanderParkBecause now there's more time to be human with each other.
SPEAKER_01More time to be human with each other.
Syl VanderParkYeah. Having a workplace that has the you know, the technology for all the AI, digital workers, and all of that bandwidth kind of thing, it has to have all that infrastructure, right? And then you've got the spaces for people to come together and come up with whatever they come up with, you know, new ideas or working better or this. So it's it's quite exciting when you think about it that we're now freed up to a large extent.
SPEAKER_01It's the most consequential change I think we've experienced in our lifetime, right? If people think about the internet and the the internet with everything was connected, they're already starting to see that, right? And so the notion of workplace and workspace design needs to really think about those collaborative moments. But in order to get all this right, you can't think about technology last. Technology has to be brought forward in the design. We think about the design process where you know project goals are set and the architect and doing all the you know the programming, the schematic design, all those components, you might start bringing your consultants in. A lot of times asked IT was last, right? Consultants last. And the questions were where are your Wi-Fi access points going to be? What kind of screen are you gonna hang on the wall? And then that was the, you know, then the rest of it, IT was gonna go worry about. But when we think about this notion of AI and of workforce radically changing and to have great collaboration experiences, you have to think about table shape first, right? When we think about this notion of design process, we're thinking about user experience first. We're pick picking technology second. Like what's the design intent of that room? What are people gonna do in that room? We pick the technology second, we pick orientation and shape of table third. Last thing we do is draw the walls. And so, but that notion of bringing technology forward is gonna be super, super critical as we think about the impact of AI because the journeys of humans going throughout the space with those digital workers are going to be working with you. So imagine we were gonna have a meeting in a room, and the people that were in that room prior had an issue, right? And they didn't have connectivity to say they could say through using AutoCAD, right, a Revit. And they couldn't reach the Revit cloud. And the network and all the agents, the digital agents, were saying, Oh, we have an issue here. What's the issue? They're all communicating back and forth to figure out what the issue is. And say it happens to be a wireless challenge. And the issue was that your neighbor turned on wireless that impacted your wireless, and the agents know that I can't get this fixed because we have a meeting coming in here. Let's redirect the participants to another room. Well, in order to redirect those participants to other room, I need to know exactly what the status of those rooms is, of course. But I should be querying and understanding what people actually like from a historical construct standpoint. They like the room cold, they like it warmer. Where is that room? And then direct the human and send a message to your device and say, here's wayfinding to get you to the new room. And you walk into that room and you're ready to actually go have your meeting without missing 10, 15 minutes of trying to find a space.
Syl VanderParkMy company, we we we make furniture for mission critical spaces, so trading rooms and control rooms, et cetera, et cetera. And typically the the IT, so monitors, uh screen size, you know, quantity, all that kind of stuff dictates the the the layout of the desk that we design and ultimately produce for that. But just thinking about mission critical uh places, are those going to where people are monitoring all day screens and information on that screen. Do you see AI kind of relieving any of that, or is that still going to be a human function?
SPEAKER_01If you think about the evolution of trading where you're on the floor of the stock exchange, it was all manual transaction, and we went to online trading, and you start seeing some of these AI components starting infiltrating to the research side of the world. For sure, it's going to be used throughout their business. They can't say if it's going to be an AI trader versus, you know, at the desk. What we're seeing is the infusion of the tech throughout all the work elements that need to occur inside the organization.
Syl VanderParkFive years from now, what decisions inside a building will be made by people versus AI agents?
SPEAKER_01It's a great question. In five years, I think what we've seen already that people can sort of feel the pace of change that's happening, right? And AI is driving a lot of that. Then it's only going to accelerate, right? The frontier models are getting better, but then you see these other use cases and then this world of agentics, right? Which is really the digital workers being able to work together without instructing them. Like they're figuring it out by themselves. And so I think about in that workplace, that example I used of the ability for us to have a meeting and find a new space and have the agents do all that. I think that's going to be table stakes. I think the entire operational component, and I think this is where some of the business models of the past are going to be deconstructed. The agents are going to sort of disrupt that, if you would, where you think about building operations and all those components are going to have an AI agent point of view. You know, don't think that's going to be the case, but it's going to be absolutely AI agent assisted. I think that's going to be able to achieve some of the goals. And when you the first question was around, you know, this notion of smart buildings and how it's migrated. And is the challenge with smart buildings was everything was bespoke. And it was a giant integration project, right? It was those Legos. You had to go build together and you had to build a bunch of software to tie it all together. And everything was bespoke. If you we do this right, the agents will take care of all that for us. And I think there's going to be the starting to see the notion of physical AI. And so as an organization, you can imagine we're constantly pushing the envelope in terms of really where AI is. And so we're working on a project right now where a lot of it was vision was done through AI around like what the space was going to look like. It was animated with AI. And these are all off-the-shelf tools that we used. And so when you think about in a construction process of, say, 50,000 square foot, floor layout is done. It was typically done all manual. We brought in a robot to actually do the floor layout and draw on the concrete slab. Also mark out where it's a post-tension stress building and mark out where the, you know, the post-tension stress elements are in the building. So you can't obviously drill there, et cetera. That was all done by a robot. And so that notion of physical AI, what you think about robotics and some of those other elements, I think are going to emerge here as well in the next five years.
Syl VanderParkWhat happens when AI agents become occupants of the workplace alongside humans and trying to visualize? Is it robots? Is it going to be somebody who sits there so you can understand, you know, psychologically, oh, this is an agent? In a way, it's kind of like, I guess agents are somewhere, you know, they're ethereal beings. But to actually see the assistant, is that that's going to be a future thing?
SPEAKER_01I think what happens is, right, is you start using the technology and you start thinking about the tasks that you do every single day. And you're like, I would love to have a readout in the morning of everything at the top of mind and goes through my email, goes through my calendar, goes through all the interactions that I've had and said, This is this, Bob, this should be your day. The agents are going to do that for us. And so I think as humans, we're going to get used to having these agents working with us, not for us, but with us, to free us up for the moments that matter. Right. The moments that are going to drive that human interaction because the end of the day is we humans are social beings and we want human interaction, which is what brings us all together. We could have this notion of a, you know, a robot around, and maybe the robot is delivering people's lunches, right? As an example. And we've already started to see that. It was in a United Lounge recently, traveling and sitting there, and a robot came by to put my tray on the robot, and the robot drove around collecting everyone's tray. I think it's going to be this fusion of where we really need to think about, yes, agents, of course, and it's going to be physical. But before we get there, right, this whole notion of workplace and workspace design needs to be based on data. And organizations need to be in a position of really understanding what's happening inside their space through a data construct and not looking at just badge data or manual occupancy studies or the things that the industry has traditionally relied on. Like we're doing all that with the native technology, it's in all in the space. Like we know what people like, right? We know all the components. I think that's a massive adaptation that before we get to agentic, before we get to physical, we need to ground ourselves in that concept to be able to move forward.
Syl VanderParkAs I prepared for today, one question kept coming back to me. For years, we've optimized offices for individual productivity. Now AI is becoming a productive partner for knowledge workers. Does that fundamentally change the purpose of the office? Does the office become less about getting work done and more about building relationships, trust, culture, mentorship, and human connection?
SPEAKER_01I think when we look at all the digital workers that we're going to have and all the tasks that it's going to do on our behalf, it's really going to be the amplification of the collaborative moments, like the social being aspect that humans crave and what we do and how we collaborate and work better together to solve the problems. I often think that when we look at like some of the elements, I know students are thinking about what to go into school, like there needs to be a layer of emotional intelligence for all of us, right? In terms of thinking about how we interact, which is going to be really one of the key ingredients as we move forward in an AI-enabled workforce.
Syl VanderParkSome of the most valuable opportunities in my own career didn't come from scheduled meetings, they came from chance conversations. Are we in danger of optimizing away those serendipitous moments?
SPEAKER_01I don't think we are, right? Because I do, if we think about, you know, this notion of AI augmenting and doing all of your task work, et cetera, you're going to have this notion of more human interaction, which is going to give you those water cooler, you know, proverbial water cooler conversation. I also think that, you know, when you look at like some of the changes that we've made as an organization is that we've broken down this notion of neighborhoods. You used to think about organizations were saying this neighborhood is for this business function, this neighborhood is for this business function. I think for lateral mobility inside of any organization, the more serendipitous, you know, encounters that you have with others outside of your particular business group is enabled through the space and place. And if we like break down again that neighborhood construct, it gives people an opportunity to really understand from others in terms of what do you do in an organization? And it's that curiosity factor that's going to move us forward so people can build these relationships and they're going to have more time to do that because you're going to have some of the work that you traditionally do with the heads-down desk work be done by the AI workers.
Syl VanderParkCisco collects enormous amounts of workplace data. How do you balance optimization with employee trust?
SPEAKER_01When you look at any company, right, from a culture standpoint, one of the key cornerstones of our culture is trust. And so when you think about us as an organization in 40 years in the tech world, like our customers trust us, and that trust is just ingrained through everything we do. And what we found is that if you're transparent, if you're transparent around data and what you're doing with the data, and so that is super critical. And so if you, you know, you could go to Cisco's Trust Center, we ex we you know, we expose all of that publicly, right, around this notion of anything that we have data on, et cetera, with our products. But that's fundamentally infused into who we are. And so once you get through that notion of making them able to get the construct of saying this is what is actually happening, they get comfortable with it. I'll never forget when the first time we decided as an organization to actually publish our air quality inside the space in a building that we don't own, right? We're a tenant. And the question was ran into all these questions around what happens if it gets to bad air quality, what are we going to do? And so my view was we should be exposing it. We shouldn't be hiding behind the fact that this data is gonna have people have a heightened awareness to air quality because I think it's healthy for us to understand air quality because what we learned through the pandemic, et cetera. And that that sort of mindset shift then led to, I'll never forget the think about New York in particular, the wildfires that occurred in Canada a few years ago. And the city was orange of all the smoke that came down from Canada. People were taking pictures of the air quality and says, I know I'm safe here because it was still in the green area. Right. So something that we questioned in terms of, well, we're gonna really expose this, turned into being an asset where people celebrated it, knowing that they were actually safe.
Syl VanderParkIf you could only measure three things inside a building, what would they be?
SPEAKER_01I think I'm gonna give you some big buckets. I think the industry measures like space utilization, right? Or like floor-level utilization. I think we need to move away from that. And you know, when that whole utilization construct is maybe floor, but you really don't know how space is being occupied. Every space, I think we need to move to effectiveness. How effective is the spaces that we are creating and building? And people are going to vote with their feet. And so, like for us as an organization, I have data about every single location, every single room that we have, because the technology that we've embedded inside the room that we make, right? Our the video technology is also think about as that is like the ambient compute in the environment. We have all this data. So now we know exactly how people are utilizing it. Are they utilizing it the right way? Right. Like how effective, effectiveness, I think, is what we need to sort of pivot to. That's one big big bucket. The next one, I think, is like we really need to bring health and wellness front and center inside of all of our, you know, discussions and conversations and what we measure. Like, as I mentioned, as an organization, we we do align with well. So depending on the location, it could be well platinum, well silver, et cetera. We think our job as technology providers, like we're measuring temperature, humidity, volatile organic compounds in the IT technology. You would think about that as traditionally being in real estate side of the house, operating technology, but we're embedding that in the IT side of the house. So I think that whole health and wellness side, maximizing natural daylight, thinking about ambient noise, right? All those pieces I think are super critical for us to really think through as an organization. Um, and I think the other piece is that measurement, I think the measurement comes back to collect making sure you're collecting the right data to position yourself for that notion of future proof. When we first like mentioned, I launched Penn in 2022, four years ago, we now have four years of data, of understanding how space is utilized. And we all know that the more data you have, the better AI models that you're gonna have as we as we move forward. So, this notion of really thinking through that that data lens is a measurement of, I think, the technology capabilities of the space, that's a super key element as well to really think about data first. And like, so we built a CEU as an example around data-informed design or designing with data, because that is so critical moving forward.
Syl VanderParkWere there any surprises over the four years in terms of data or something that you said, oh shoot, we missed that? And then you added it on.
SPEAKER_01We did find things that people liked and what they didn't like. And so you can imagine, like we've now have you know 30 plus sites around the globe as we go through our modernization of space and place. And so, for example, like we learned in our first location that soft seating huddle rooms, like our huddle rooms were built for three people because we had the data that showed our average meeting size was less than three people physical. People don't like soft seating huddle rooms, right? So, like that's a design change, right, that we're thinking about moving forward. And so we we made a bunch of changes there. The other piece is that you know, if you can think about any organization grows and shrinks depending on economic, you know, business divested or acquisitions. In our particular case, we made an acquisition of a very large company. And so a bunch more people came into the workplace, and now we're using data to actually think about our occupancy planners that used to go to work before. They still go to work, but we're really looking at it through that data lens. So that has proved to be incredibly valuable. But as we get more around the globe, now we have a global viewpoint as well. So you can think about some of the cultural aspects that come into play. And depending on where you are in the globe, if someone has smalling liver living orders at home, then they're gonna want to be in the office, right? Um, is actually super interesting to study.
Syl VanderParkI mean, it's like anthropology, right? It's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_01It really is. But again, it has to, you have to think about technology. I'm not gonna say first, but forward. You can't think about it at the end of a project. And you can't just leave it up to IT. Real estate leaders have to be engaged and thoughtful about, you know, how you infuse it into the consultants that you hire and the design team that you hire and how all that comes together, because I think it's gonna be this amplification of space and place that's gonna enable the people to AI happen in the future. And of course, then the amplification of people to people.
Syl VanderParkWhat's one workplace metric executives obsess over that don't actually matter?
SPEAKER_01I think you know, the traditional measure has been has been utilization has been the traditional metric, right? Well, what I've you know, X percent utilization of my space, and then it goes back to what's the allocation you do per fur foot, right? Per person. I think like that whole construct is again depending on the business, it comes back to like that space effectiveness side and like really how are people utilizing the space? And again, it's not putting in bespoke sensors and all these things that we've seen throughout the years in the industry. It's we're at a point with the right IT technology, you're gonna have that data. How do you use that to really get an effectiveness aspect of the space versus just a pure utilization? Like as an organization, we've shifted our metrics to align with the business. And so whether we're trying to go into an area where we need to hire people from a talent perspective, we'll put a location there, like the measure of effectiveness for us is how many people we've hired. I think that space and place need to be so intertwined with the business because it's so critical. Because again, it's it's that human aspect is how do we really change those business metrics to align with the organization?
Syl VanderParkI think the answer to this will AI ultimately make workplaces more human-centric or less human-centric. I think they're human-centric, but what would your answer be?
SPEAKER_01Human-centric, without a doubt. It's going to amplify the human connection. Because again, it comes back to getting the work done for you that is task work, and it's going to free up time for all of us to interact.
Syl VanderParkOkay, so it's 2035. I walk into a Cisco designed workplace, what would I experience that feels almost unbelievable today?
SPEAKER_01I think we will be well on a path to agenting for sure. I think that with the example I used about what's going to be possible around the notion of, you know, understanding on the IT technology side that you have a terrible experience for an individual, right, inside of a room or a group of individuals, rerouting that person, physically interacting with the operational technology side of the house, the real estate side, say at temperature and all the pieces and having all that customization, that's going to be table stakes. I think what we're going to start to see is that notion of these agents are going to be amplified, if you would. And then it's going to be this notion of physical AI is going to be front and center in terms of what we see and whether that's robotics or whether that's, you know, there's a lot of discussion of holograms, et cetera, that are going to be out there. But 10 years is a long time in tech. And so we've already seen the pace of change so far with AI and we're just getting started. It's it's hard to imagine, right? But, you know, broadly speaking, right? It's going to be that magentic piece that's going to be solved and done, and then it's going to be moved on to physical AI.
Syl VanderParkYeah, I guess the hopes is that we can make such advancements that you know we're going to be facing, I mean, fortunately and unfortunately, you know, a new set of problems that we have to deal with. You know, maybe it's cures for certain illnesses and and and such like that, that, you know, and uh hopefully nothing new major comes along. But, you know, you always hope for cancer to be put to rest. Like maybe that's something, and then what's the next frontier? And so I'm curious to know what we're gonna be working on, what are gonna be our concerns, you know, 10 years from now? Are they gonna be that much different because of AI? Or is it still going to be a lot of the same? You know, there's still human tendencies, there's politics, there's things that kind of hold us back a little bit. You know, what will the World Cup look like then? Is there gonna be what is a refereeing gonna be substantially better, you know, to go into something completely controversial? But but I'm sure you've probably got some good seats up there. I think you're in New Jersey, right?
SPEAKER_01There is, and we've already seen Roboumps, right, in Major League Baseball, first year for RoboUMPS and players tap their head, you know, say, look at that ball or strike. You know, when we think about the notion of AI, we truly believe that 8 billion people on the earth are going to feel like 80 billion, right, from a productivity standpoint. And the key is gonna be how do we do this responsibly? And so when you think about like the cybersecurity side of the house, there's a whole notion that's happening there. And, you know, there's a lot happening in quantum computing as well. And there's, you know, data out there that shows that there's a you know, a math problem that was just recently solved that would have taken 250 years for a computer to solve the world's largest supercomputer that was solved in like an hour with quantum. And so we're preparing ourselves for just not the traffic load when you think about AI, but the security aspect, because it has to be secure, because it's not about humans anymore, it's about the agents and identifying agents and the security piece there. And then what, you know, especially on the security side, we call post-quantum cryptography, which is how do we get ready for quantum as well.
Syl VanderParkIt's exciting. When you look back over your own career, what have your coworkers given you that technology never could?
SPEAKER_01I think that as humans, right, we obviously crave social interaction that we've talked about a lot today. I think it's hard for AI in terms of the current construct today to really understand you as a human, right? The emotional side of it. And so it's really the emotional piece that you know, coworkers or or mentors, right, have said, highlighted either, hey, this is a blind spot, or you've got a you know, a gift perhaps. You should really consider this, right? That guidance and that coaching throughout your career, right? Again, that emotional construct is is not there with AI.
Syl VanderParkThat's all my questions for today. Was there anything that you wanted to talk about?
SPEAKER_01First of all, thank you for the time today. I think that if we could just leave with one thing, right? It's this notion of how do we think about technology forward and this whole platform approach. Like that's really, really key for design and design teams to really think through. And it's not just, you know, thinking about it the same old way. And if you look at like an AI readiness index, if you would, AEC, architecture, engineering, and construction, is actually behind agriculture. And so from an industry standpoint, we know it's it's coming and to embrace it because I think it is going to give us the opportunity, right, to create not just beautiful places, but spaces that are you can really measure effectiveness and you can, you know, think about well, it's all those pieces that we talked about today. But it's so key to think about a platform because we've seen so many times in this industry that you know, think about technology that's come and gone. And then IT came along, and now we're counting people with our endpoints in the room and wireless is everywhere, right? Like the data is there, right? You have to think about it and break down those silos. And I get it, that's the way the industry grew up, right? Those silos have to be broken down. And I think that's the opportunity for everyone.
Syl VanderParkThis is super fascinating. And I'm probably going to come up with a bunch of other questions. So, but again, thanks for your time. What is the best way for people to kind of reach out to you?
SPEAKER_01LinkedIn is best, and we're always sharing. And, you know, there's also, as mentioned, with the robot doing a floor layout, we're also pushing the envelope. And so we share openly what works and what doesn't work.
Syl VanderParkI'm also going to be sharing a bunch of articles and such to get more information on this and looking forward to seeing what comes and what Cisco develops out there and helps to put out in terms of workplaces. So thanks for checking out Workspace Design Lab. If you're an architect, interior designer, or workplace professional looking to stay ahead in ergonomic office design and modern workspace interiors, make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast platform. For more resources on sustainable office furniture and human centered workspace design, visit us at Novalink.com. Until next time.
