Proxemic Transitions: Designing Shape-Changing Furniture for Informal Meetings
summary
Proposes the notion of proxemic transitions and three concrete design aspects—stepwise reconfiguration, transition speed, and radical shifts—derived from 20 hours of snapshot-based observation in an open office and iterative design work. Builds a large-scale prototype that morphs between wall-display and tabletop configurations to test how quick (≈30s), ephemeral (minutes) and sustained (>5min) meetings reorganize space; prototype functions as a provocation for social effects rather than a polished product and exposes engineering time and modularity challenges.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:32Highlights
- 2:01Shape-changing furniture
- 2:57Research approach
- 4:29Theory - Interaction Proxemics
- 6:15Empirical - Study of transitions
- 7:46Design - Prototype exploration
- 9:19Stepwise recontiguration
- 12:06Transition speed
- 14:12Radical shifts
- 17:10Takeaway
- 17:29Flexible office spaces in the future?
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