The Coffee Pot of Knowledge

The Coffee Bar is a vibrant place for Herman Miller employees to work, relax, socialize.

Have you made a great work connection by bumping into a co-worker at the coffee pot? Or at the proverbial water cooler? Or the copy machine? Increasingly these spaces are being recognized as vital places where information is exchanged and things get done.

In education we call them “hubs,” but in the office you can think of them as community areas: places where people gather to work, relax, and socialize. They’re often close by and comfortable, natural places for people to interact.

Ours is the Coffee Bar, a centrally located casual space for us to grab a cup o’ joe, and expresses the warmth, creativity, and whimsy inherent in our organization. It’s a place to share a highlight from the previous day’s game, and a chat about a current assignment before we go on our individual ways.

When we don’t need the formality of a conference room, the Coffee Bar is a place to have a meeting. There are booths, high tables, or–Michigan weather permitting–an outdoor courtyard. Because people are always passing through, a two person meeting might morph into a three or four person meeting when we wave someone over–or they invite themselves to join.

Community areas like the Coffee Bar interest us, and Herman Miller researchers are currently studying these spaces. Share your office’s community area with us and you could win a Herman Miller work chair of your choice. Send us a photo of your company’s community area along with your name, geographic location, and thoughts on what makes it a great place to work – and we’ll register you to win.

Send submissions to: applications@hermanmiller.com

Terms and Conditions

The Science of Sitting

Recently, the Associated Press distributed an article about how “sitting too much could be deadly.” A number of regional newspapers, including my hometown Chicago Tribune picked it up. As a furniture industry veteran and seating researcher for the better part of two decades, it was too broad—and dire—a statement for my personal comfort.

In helping designers like Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber to develop Herman Miller products—from stacking chairs, such as Caper, to high-performance work chairs, such as Embody—I’ve learned that sitting, comfort, and health are not so cut-and-dried.

In the 1990s I began using pressure map technology, which visualizes what the seat and sitter interface looks like—and how it changes depending on seat construction and the posture of the sitter. These changes translate to comfort or discomfort for the user.

More recently, in the course of our Embody chair development, I commissioned researchers at both the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Milwaukee’s Marquette University, who measured the amount of oxygen in the blood flowing to and from subjects’ lower extremities and heart rate–key health measures. It turns out, both improved when users sat in the Embody chair, versus other chairs, doing the same seated tasks in both.

So, it’s not a simple question of sitting down or standing up—but where and how you’re sitting.