The office is the laboratory and meeting your users is like going into the field. You can't just stay in the lab. And it's not just asking users what they want, it's about seeing what they're doing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. 'What's new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab?' I'm basically a professional pesterer.
I don't have an office. I sit in a cubicle with everybody else. That's partly so no one can ask for an office, which in a fast-growing company isn't practical. But it's also so I can keep my finger on the pulse of how people are feeling.
Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.
'The Office' is not one of those things you move away from. I don't want it to go away.
You come to work because the office is a resource: The office is a place where you can meet with other people, and the office has libraries of books and information on CD-ROM that might help you with your work.
The office during the day has become the last place people want to be when they really want to get work done. In fact, offices have become interruption factories.
Making more sense out of my data, my needs, my tasks - to me, that's the future of Office.
No one goes into the office for fun. You go, and even if you love it, you're there to work.
The problem is not in the office: the problem is out there. Every day I go to the people, go to the street. I can ask the people what they want, what they need.
When I go in, I find that it is not a lab but an office. There are a pile of letters to answer, phone numbers to call up, people waiting to have an interview, routine work that must be done.