Episode 131 | August 4, 2021
For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work.
In this episode of The New Future of Work series, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan (opens in new tab) and Principal User Research Manager Ginger Hudson (opens in new tab) share how people evolved their home office setups throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and they explore how information workers used various devices and peripherals to put their best self forward as the shift to remote work quickly unfolded. They also talk about what an “anatomy of hybrid work” might look like and some considerations for making a hybrid model of work sustainable in the long term, including the expansion of workspaces to outdoor environments.
Learn more:
- Project page and report: The New Future of Work
- Future of Work digital magazine: WorkLab
- Guide: Hybrid Work: A Guide for Business Leaders
- Guide: Hybrid Workplace Flexibility Guide
- Guide: Remote work solutions with Microsoft Surface
- Microsoft Surface feature: Eye Contact
- Microsoft Teams-enabled devices
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Editor’s note: The privacy and protection of data is of the utmost importance to Microsoft. Research under The New Future of Work initiative, which includes qualitative and quantitative data, is conducted in accordance with the rigorous privacy standards developed by the company (opens in new tab).
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYS UNDER DIALOGUE]
GINGER HUDSON (TEASER): Mobility patterns have changed. We’re kind of talking about it in the research as just new mobility, right? Whereas before, as you mentioned, we might have been going from conference room to conference room, and to the cafeteria, and having these spontaneous interactions with people—and that’s all great. In our work-from-home environment, people may have to move to a different room to address the demands or the needs of some other person or a pet or something like that. They may walk outside or take a walking meeting. So, to answer your question about peripherals and mobile devices, we’ve actually seen an uptick in mobile device usage.
JAIME TEEVAN: Welcome to the Microsoft Research Podcast, where you get a front-row seat to conversations on cutting-edge technology. I’m Jaime Teevan, and I’ll be your host as we investigate how work practices have changed because of COVID-19 and what it means for creating a new and better future of work.
[MUSIC ENDS]
As we continue through the chapters that make up Microsoft’s recently released New Future of Work report, we now turn to the chapter on devices and physical ecosystems. And Ginger Hudson joins us today to talk about some of the key findings in that chapter. Ginger is a Principal User Research Manager here at Microsoft. Her team does user research for our Surface products and is responsible for ensuring our first-party hardware is accessible to all people. She has a background in experimental psychology and has done hardware-related market and user research for the past 20 years. She’ll be sharing insights into what our physical workspaces are like now, based on research that she and her co-authors, Bill Buxton and Tiffany Smith, have synthesized from numerous studies. Welcome, Ginger.
GINGER HUDSON: Thank you, Jaime. Glad to be here.
TEEVAN: So glad to have you here, too. So, it feels like the move to remote work happened overnight.
HUDSON: Yes.
TEEVAN: Do you think that people knew back in March how long they would be away from the office?
HUDSON: No. [LAUGHTER] They certainly did not. Um, and I think one of the surprising things that we found in our research, kind of looking at this over time, right, with some of these longitudinal studies that we did, is that, you know, like you said, we were kind of thrust into this very spontaneous situation where we had to, you know, start working from home almost overnight. And a lot of companies allow people to bring equipment home with them, you know, like a monitor or keyboard or a chair to keep things comfortable for them and people working efficiently. And I think what we had expected to see over time is that people would have really continued to evolve their workstations in significant ways, you know, we thought, “Hey, this might be a month,” right? “And I’m going to make do with what I have.” And then it became clear that this situation was going to play out much longer. And so I think we really thought we’d see, “Oh, wow, you started with this very simple setup, and you’re going to keep adding things on over time to make it better and better.” And I think what we saw instead was that people kind of got to this place within the first month or two after we started working from home, and then things kind of leveled out, you know? People didn’t add a whole lot of new equipment on and so forth, other than smaller things, lower-cost things like headphones, earbuds, a new coffee mug, a new plant, like, things to keep your workstation more cheerful. So—
TEEVAN: Ha!
HUDSON: I think that was one of the— [LAUGHTER]
TEEVAN: You’re making me feel guilty, though, because I actually left a plant in the office. [LAUGHTER]
HUDSON: Aw!
TEEVAN: That I’m sure is dead. I’m like, “I should have gone back and grabbed more.”
HUDSON: Well, I’m over—[LAUGHTER] If you want me to go check on it today, I’m more than happy to. [LAUGHTER]
TEEVAN: What kind of equipment did people bring home initially? Was it monitors? Was it chairs?
HUDSON: Yeah, I think initially it was things that were more grab-and-go, maybe a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor. Monitor’s popular. So many people in the office, as we well know, right, rely on multi-mon setups in their office, uh, environments to really maintain productivity. And so, yeah, grabbing a monitor was very common. A lot of people kind of went back later for the chair once they realized, like, “Okay, I guess I’m in it and I’ve been using this really uncomfortable kitchen stool for a month now, and my back’s killing me. So I’m going to try to get the chair.” One thing that I think surprised us also is that, um, you know, we’re very lucky here at Microsoft that we got a stipend to add new things to make our workstation more comfortable at home. But in the research that we did—kind of just a few months ago—most companies did not offer that. So people were either left without, to kind of maintain things on their own with their own money, or they just went without, right? They just kind of made whatever they had work.
TEEVAN: Oh, yeah. So what were some of the big challenges people faced when trying to figure out how to set up their workspace at home?
HUDSON: Yeah, I think, uh, two main things really influenced, like, where and how people were working, and that is the space that they had to work with in the home environment and then also the social aspect of the home environment, right? A lot of people were home working alongside kids doing remote school—if you have children. A lot of people are working in even multigenerational households, where other people are needing care and pets needing care, et cetera. And then other people are living with housemates, and often in really small situations, you know? Like, think of a New York City or Brooklyn apartment where you may have housemates. It got a little tricky for people, just even having a private place to work. So, I think just the space constraints for a lot of people really dictated what equipment you even thought to bring home or could bring home from the office or that you wanted to tack on with maybe your own money—or money that your company gave you—to blow out that workstation a little bit better. And then some people, just the demands of how they had to work. Maybe you could start out in one room, but somebody needs you in a different room later on, you know? So, you’re more of a home-working nomad, you know? You kind of have to move around the house all day, which would then dictate, you know, “Hey, I got to make it work with a laptop all day and maybe even my phone and a pair of earbuds.” So, I’d say those two things, the social situation and the space constraints, really had a huge influence on the kinds of equipment people actually used.
TEEVAN: Can you tell me a little bit about the different kinds of configurations that people ended up landing on for their home setups?
HUDSON: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wish I could just show you my whiteboard right now, right? [LAUGHTER] I guess I could, right, behind me, but no one else would see it. We kind of identified four different categories of home-office setups, right? The first one we call the executive command central. So, this was an office that existed before COVID and maybe got embellished after we all started working at home. Dedicated space, has a door, has a large screen, maybe multiple large screens, maybe some smaller screens, a nice ergo chair, nice furniture, and space, right? More space and maybe even a nice view of Lake Washington or the opera house, depending on where you are, right? And so that was kind of like the gold star kind of office that maybe everybody wishes they had, and certainly some did. And then there was the new COVID home office that popped up that could either be in a private space, like a bedroom, or some other kind of space in the home, but definitely did not have to get dismantled every day, right? You could kind of stick it in a corner, put it in a room you weren’t using, and that was your new office setup. And that usually involved, like, you know, one or two monitors, keyboard, your laptop, maybe even a personal device like a tablet or a phone or et cetera to use. Then we have the people who maybe needed to set up shop in a part of the house because they need to be available for other people in the home, like children, et cetera. And that was more of this makeshift workstation that we saw, which was usually driven by a laptop, maybe a keyboard and a mouse tacked on to that. But most often those workstations would be seen at, like, a kitchen table or a basement table or, you know, places that weren’t really—you would think of as a home-office setup, but really, out of convenience, really sprung up, right? And then we have the home nomad, which I think I’ve mentioned already. But the home nomad is somebody who is all over the house all day. Maybe they’re even outside. Maybe they’re in the car for a little bit of the time, taking kids to a daycare situation or whatever. And that is much more reliant on, you know, laptop, a lot of phone usage, lots of smaller screen usage for those individuals. And, really, the flexibility that they need is going to dictate the device that they use, which did tend to be a laptop or a two-in-one and also a lot of phone usage.
TEEVAN: So, I know one of the things that drove a lot of people’s setup was the desire to show up well in video calls.
HUDSON: Yes.
TEEVAN: Um, do you have any tricks for people who want to show up well?
HUDSON: Uh, yeah. Well, we definitely saw a lot of people buying the ring lights, you know, which is something—I literally just bought one recently. I’m like, “Okay, it’s time, right? I just really need to get one of these.” Um, a lot of people bought that or set up shop kind of in front of a window with natural light. Even for myself, I started it in our, um, our garage, which had this really terrible overhead light that made me look not good. I wasn’t showing up the way that I wanted to. And I think that went for a lot of people.
TEEVAN: Now that it’s getting sunny, I’m having all this trouble with backlight, too, just coming in. [LAUGHTER]
HUDSON: Oh, and glare, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, yeah, whole other conversation about people wanting to work outside and near sunlight and the, you know, glare situations or the overheating, et cetera, with that is also a thing. But definitely—you have to be in a more private space to avoid the distraction when you want to show up on a video call or a video meeting well. And then just, you know, visually, really, moving your desk in front of a place that has more natural light, or if you were able to purchase a ring light or something like that seemed to be the thing that people were doing. A lot of people, though, just didn’t do anything. They sort of just said, “You know, here I am.” We all kind of got used to seeing each other [LAUGHTER] without makeup and maybe not with the same kind of appearance that we would have had in an office situation. And so we definitely heard a lot of people who are like, “Yeah, they can just get over it. I’m being my authentic self.” [LAUGHTER]
TEEVAN: Although I’m going to miss my camera, like, making me look a little nicer. When it’s back in person, I’m kind of scared. People see you real again and—[LAUGHTER]
HUDSON: Oh! [LAUGHTER] We don’t have our filters anymore, right.
TEEVAN: Correct. I—I rely on the filters. Actually, kind of related to that, is it possible to show up too well? ‘Cause I really like it. Like, I like it if somebody has dirty laundry in the background or their kids say something obnoxious. Like, it feels intimate and—
HUDSON: Yeah. It kind of takes the pressure off, right? It kind of lets you know that we’re all human and all just trying to survive and make it work. Yeah, I definitely feel that sometimes. You know, you might join a call with, um, some of our executive team have these, like, amazing library-like offices, right? And I’m just like, “Oh, and here I am with, you know, my son’s LEGOs and dinosaur collection behind me,” right? So, you know, thank goodness, right, for the blurred-out background. And we can select the different backgrounds now to kind of show up more professionally if we need to. So, I think that’s a big thing, right, that a lot of people have definitely adopted.
[MUSIC BREAK]
TEEVAN: One of the things that I know you’ve thought about a lot is the role that hardware has in connecting us with others, and working from home is isolating. And probably the most significant change this past year is that people haven’t been able to spend time in person with other people. Can you speak a little bit to the challenges with this?
HUDSON: Yeah. I think it’s a really interesting tension point because, you know, as you probably talked about with some of the other researchers here at Microsoft, the fatigue of being onscreen all the time is a very real thing. And I don’t know that people have kind of gotten used to it over time. You still feel that, you know, that fatigue at the end of the day, that maybe you would have been energized had you been in the office and, you know, being able to play off the energy of others. But now we’re all seeing each other in these boxes all day. And so I think that it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the most authentic communication between people. So the tension that I guess I was referring to earlier is, there is this fatigue, but also, at the same time, this desire to connect. And so, like, it’s this push and pull, right, that people are experiencing. And I think even on our team, we’ve struggled with this, about what’s the best way that we can connect with each other, and maintain our friendship and our professional relationships, and just knowing each other?
TEEVAN: Yeah.
HUDSON: And we’ve struggled. We—I don’t—I definitely don’t have the answer. [LAUGHTER]
TEEVAN: Come back when you do. [LAUGHTER]
HUDSON: If you have any—yeah. If you have any tips for how we might do that, Jaime, that you’ve done with your team, I am all ears. [LAUGHTER]
TEEVAN: You know, another kind of interesting push-and-pull that comes to mind from what you’re saying is you talked about how people sometimes have to be mobile and, like—
HUDSON: Yeah.
TEEVAN: —move their setup because something happens and something changes. But in many ways, we’re a lot less mobile working from home. You know, rather than moving from home to work to conference rooms—like, I’m lucky if I walk 100 feet in a day. Are we using fewer mobile devices? How is that changing our use of mobile devices or these sort of peripheral devices?
HUDSON: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, I’d say mobility patterns have changed. We’re kind of talking about it in the research as just new mobility, right? Whereas before, as you mentioned, we might have been going from conference room to conference room, and to the cafeteria, and having these spontaneous interactions with people—and that’s all great. In our work-from-home environment, people may have to move to a different room to address the demands or the needs of some other person or a pet or something like that. They may walk outside or take a walking meeting. So, to answer your question about peripherals and mobile devices, we’ve actually seen an uptick in mobile device usage. When you think about the office environment and how we were working there, or at least most of us, you kind of take that laptop or two-in-one from meeting to meeting, and then you often have a large screen to look at with your co-workers to see a presentation or brainstorm on something or what have you. And then you have your personal screen. Well, that big screen that we all used to look at is gone. So, often people are tacking on a mobile device on top of another screen. Like, you’ll have your laptop open, running Teams or Zoom or whatever you use, and then you’ll tack on a mobile device, which gives you the little bit more flexibility to either listen to the audio there while you’re typing away over here. Or if you need to go downstairs and grab yourself a cup of coffee in your house, you have the freedom to do that while still remaining present on the call. So, yeah, I’d say definitely mobile devices and peripherals. We’ve seen an uptick in headphones, as well, and earbuds. The sales are through the roof on products like that right now. I’d say just the mobility patterns have changed but haven’t really reduced. But I’m like you. Some days I look at my step count, and I’m like, “Okay.”
TEEVAN: [LAUGHTER] And it’s kind of ironic. You know, like, you’ve mentioned going outside a couple times, and I do think it’s nice that we all get to go outside a lot. And I’ve certainly spent more time outside this past year than I had, like, the past five years combined. What are we thinking about, about working outside or taking walking meetings? There’s sort of these fun opportunities in addition to a lot of the challenges.
HUDSON: Yeah. The literature right now and even things that we’re hearing from some of our customers is that companies and individuals definitely crave that, “Hey, let’s get outside and meet,” right, instead of remaining indoors all the time. Um, but companies have started to embrace this idea, too, and really planning on more outdoor meeting spaces, encouraging the walking meeting, as you mentioned, right, or maybe meeting in some kind of an outdoor touchdown space, so to speak. We’re looking at some of the research from architecture firms and such that a lot of companies are kind of reimagining outdoor spaces that they had. So if you’re on a campus, like we are at Microsoft, there’s lots of space that we could take advantage of to really utilize for outdoor meeting, right? Of course, with that, you have to think about power and glare. You mentioned the glare and the—some of the display challenges that you have when you’re trying to work outdoors and then also your internet connection. So there’s all these considerations that kind of could form barriers for working outside, but I think those are definitely things that we can prepare for and even look to some of the higher-ed and other, you know, entities that have been experimenting with this over COVID to see kind of what best practices they’ve put in place to solve for those things. But, yeah, some interesting stuff that we’ve seen, just kind of reimagining, uh, even in urban environments, rooftops or balconies or things like that, and really, you know, revamping that to make it more, um, available to outdoor meetings. And I’m excited personally to kind of see some of that and how it’ll play out, you know? And then how will that work? When we think about others joining us remotely when we’re working there—either in the office in a shared space or co-located in an outdoor environment—how do we bring those individuals in who are working from home that day? You know, it’s going to be interesting.
TEEVAN: Yeah. Well, and looking forward, as information workers start to return to the workplace, like, you’re working from the office sometimes, right? You have—in many ways—you have physical needs to be in there because of the devices and the things that are being done. So, you—like, maybe you have some insight into the future for the rest of us. What can you tell us about hybrid work?
HUDSON: Um, well it’s great that you mentioned that. We’re actually in the process of documenting kind of the anatomy of the hybrid meeting and, um, also realizing that because we do deal with physical assets, you know, we’re making physical products. So, even with the user research that we do, it requires people to actually touch and feel the keyboard and to touch the displays and feel the heat when they put it on their lap and things like that. Those are all things that are required as we’re making our products—that we get that customer experiential feedback. But I’d say when we think about the actual hybrid meetings, even working with, um, some people here in the lab kind of huddled around a table with physical product and others calling in from home, it’s been really challenging, right? I’m excited about the opportunity for us to improve these things. But, you know, there may be a large screen kind of at the foot of a table with people huddled around. And when you’re on the remote side, you can see most of the setup. But if somebody kind of peels off to the side and holds something up, you’re not always within the right camera view. There are side conversations that happen, as they do, right, in meetings. There might be a couple of people on the side, like, that get excited about something, and they’re talking. Well, the mics are picking that up, and then I’m not hearing the presenter. And so there’s all these challenges that are taking place. And I think also, um, which may come up in some of your other conversations, is just our ability to really brainstorm and innovate with each other in a hybrid way. You know, if you want to whiteboard, you want to look at any kind of physical asset, like, how are you rigging up the environment to really make it equitable for everybody who’s participating from home and in that common space? I certainly don’t think that we’ve nailed it. I think there’s, like I said, lots of improvements that we can make. But I think even just identifying what those pain points look like right now will make it really clear about the areas where we can really address those and innovate.
TEEVAN: Something that you just touched on relates to something that shows up in all of the research we’re doing related to COVID’s impact on work practices, and that’s that it has very different impacts on different people. And I was wondering if you could speak to the ways that it’s showing up in the context of our physical workspaces.
HUDSON: Uh, yeah. I think a lot of that is to be determined as we really think about how this plays out in the hybrid environment. I have my own private office, but the rest of our team sits in an open workspace. I think a lot of thought is going into that right now, about how do you make that environment safe? How do you make people feel like they can remain safe in that environment and distanced appropriately? Right? And then, you know, how do you structure a common space where you may want to get together and meet around a central device, like we always did? I feel like we haven’t really figured that out. I think a lot of it’s going to be kind of in practice once we get in there and to understand what everybody’s comfortable with. And then, kind of like going back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, how are we bringing in the people who are working from home in an equitable way so that they feel like equal citizens in the conversation? And—yeah. I just feel like so much of it is unknown [LAUGHTER] at—at this point that I—I would love to give you a more intelligent answer about that. And, uh, I don’t think we have it yet.
TEEVAN: In some ways, all of these virtual meetings that we’ve attended are us just dabbling in virtual or augmented reality. So, like, I can see your name as we’re speaking, and I can see my notes right here. Um, are there ways that we’re going to see augmented or virtual reality start to seep into our experiences more deeply moving forward?
HUDSON: Ooh, that is such a good question. You know, I worked on HoloLens for many years, and it’s been kind of a big open question in my mind, like, why we haven’t seen more mixed- and virtual-reality scenarios play out during the pandemic situation because it feels like a very ripe opportunity to bring some of that stuff to life. This was eight years ago, when we were testing some of the initial concepts with that product. The multi-mon productivity scenario was always the scenario that tested highest among our consumer respondents. And so there’s a real, I think, energy and passion and craving for that experience, just seeing the possibilities of what it could deliver. And then also being able to see objects, right, in a virtual space, I think, would be amazing because, you know, perhaps that could address some of the challenges that I just spoke about, right? If I could see something in my environment on my desk in a virtual way, right, in a 3D kind of way, that the other team members are looking at—the physical product in the room—I can appreciate the nuances and details of that image and that product the same way they can, but I’m at my desk at home. I think there’s huge possibilities there. And I’m really excited to see what happens. And maybe I haven’t been listening hard enough about some of the new ways that we could use that technology, but I think it has a lot of promise.
TEEVAN: Great. And as we wrap up, is there anything that I didn’t ask but should have?
HUDSON: Hmm. I think the only thing I would add, or something that I feel like has real potential that we’re already working on, but I think could get so much better. We talked a lot about the way people have new mobility patterns and the way we’ve been using phones more and maybe smaller devices. Maybe we start our work in one place and we pick it up in some other place, right, whether that’s editing a document or continuing a Teams call or something like that. I think there’s so much opportunity to improve experiences on the small screen when it comes to documents or, you know, any application that we’re using for productivity. I feel like there’s this huge opportunity to improve the experience there, just to maintain that continuity of work. I mean, we’re all working in this way now.
[MUSIC FADES IN UNDER DIALOGUE]
And there’s still tension, and disruption, and interoperability problems, and things like that that we’re all experiencing.
TEEVAN: Well, great. Thank you, Ginger, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We hope you’ll continue to join us as we explore the new future of work. You can learn a lot more about the research that we discussed today at aka.ms/newfutureofwork (opens in new tab). Also, be sure to subscribe for new episodes wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Artificial intelligence 
Human-computer interaction 
Social sciences