Why Does a Desk Look Like a Desk?

Many years ago (well, 10 actually) I worked for a Design Consultancy in Scotland. One of the projects we had on the go was the potential market realisation of a R&D project from British Telecom's Research Labs. The project was called "Smartspace" and was a sort of workstation come desk come installation which was, initially, to be aimed at specific users such as Stock Exchange Traders, Police and Power Station Control Room Operators etc. The sort of users who required large, multiple screens and powerful computers.

BT themselves envisioned Smartspace as "... a personal working environment for the on-line multimedia age." *Please remember this was 1997 and the Tech boom was just getting up a head of steam and 64K ISDN was the cutting edge*

Sadly, details of this long dead project are very hard to come by with little remaining online about Smartspace and a search through my personal archives turning up nothing much of use. Three images of BT's Smartspace can be seen below. Although details are hard to make out the main features of Smartspace were a large curved screen, surround sound, touch screen interface and a comfy chair all packaged together to immerse the user in the working environment


BT Labs based in Martlesham Heath, England developed the prototype and following favourable public reaction at a few showings decided to license the technology to interested companies willing to take the project to market.

The company I was working for were interested in the project and to this end we made a mock-up of how we thought the concept should look and operate. Using vast amounts of 2x4, foam core board, a car seat from a scrapyard, my old Pentium 150 computer ('cause it had an original 3DFX graphics card add-on for stunning visuals, a game called Forsaken was used to show it off), a borrowed projector (from Dundee Uni, valued at £8000 if memory serves) and a video recorder (running a TV copy of Star Wars or some-such)... it was actually pretty smart. No, seriously, sitting back in the comfy car seat, with a large curved screen (made from foam board) for the visual display and a tilted surface for the keyboard and mouse you really felt immersed in what was going on. Yes the projector was hot and noisy (located above and behind your head), the sound was crap through 2 small computer speakers but the gist of the concept was there, and I really liked it.

Eventually another Design Consultancy from Scotland (ITL, owned by a former lecturer of mine from Glasgow Uni) licensed the "technology" from BT and started to create their product. Here the story goes cold, ITL changed names a few times and I've lost track of whether they still exist, but obviously Smartspace never took off (or got to the runway even).

With today's powerful computers, cheap flat screens, fast broadband, DVD and surround sound a similar beast could be created for a fraction of the cost (ITL touted a figure around £42,500), stop laughing, anything was possible in the '90s... maybe the time is right for a comeback.

Anyhoo, what's the point of all this? Well, I've become increasingly frustrated with my work and home office desks. Their design hasn't really changed since the year dot and when you think about it they're totally unsuitable for modern day computer usage. As a result I want to focus my immense design genius and create the ultimate office desk. Stay tuned for more on this subject soon... er soonish (I hate the pressure of deadlines :)

Category:

• Technology
• Smartspace
• Dolphin