I’ve been struggling with my workspace lately. In fact, I’ve been struggling with it since I left the corporate world in ’04 and began working from home more, but lately, it’s been getting on my nerves.
I’m a little out of the ordinary, because I do a myriad of things, and I need a workspace that is flexible and can conform to the different kinds of tasks I have to work on.
- For my photography, I need to be able to darken the room so that my perception of color isn’t deceived by stray light sources. Digital darkrooms don’t have to be as dark as film darkrooms, but you do have to calibrate your eyes and your equipment properly. For this reason, my monitor has to be positioned to minimize glare, which it should be anyway for ergonomic reasons.
- For my Internet and Web related work, I need desk space and several monitors. Right now, I have two, but it would be nice to have three, and a desk that accomodates them ergonomically, while still giving me enough actual desk space to work with besides.
- When I’m dealing with gear, photographic, computer or otherwise, I need a ton of table space, separate from my desk (or main computer) space, preferably wired conveniently for power and ethernet. I’m the kind of guy who likes to spread out when I’m sorting, organizing, doing research, assembling my underwater camera housings or disassembling gear. There never seems to be enough table space. There’s always the dining table, when my wife isn’t using it, or when we’re not expecting guests, but it’s not the sort of thing I can safely leave neat piles of things on and expect them to be where I left them, especially with two cats in the family.
- Then there’s storage. Every square inch of floor space, closet space and shelf space is packed with something, and I have a bunch of plastic organizer drawers stacked all over the place. Different vocations and hobbies require different kinds of stuff.
I’ve talked to a few designers, and they’re happy to tell me about the stuff they can get off the shelf at Home Depot that will make life easier, and they might be right, but I imagine a setup like a kitchen with cabinets next to each other on a wall, and I wonder how I’d get behind them to move wires or power bricks around. I need storage, yes, but I also need ready access to my tech, and there aren’t may tech-savvy designers who speak my language out there. (If you know of one, please share!)
Then there’s the question of ergonomics. When I worked at Netscape, we had a choice of having our desks at the normal height or set higher, so we could work standing up if we wanted. Many people with bad backs swore by the latter, though I never tried it myself. I don’t know if that would work for me at all, but the idea of being able to work standing up sounds like it might have its conveniences, depending on the project or the state of my back (which isn’t great).
This isn’t something I’m willing to do a quick fix on, and I don’t have the design sense or knowledge of what’s available on the market to be able to figure it out myself, and I don’t know any designers who really understand what I’m getting at, or how picky I really am.
I was inspired by an article I saw about creative workspaces and it got me thinking that it might be time I dug in and tried to learn a little about what I might be able to do to get closer to a workspace I can live with.
Anyone out there have a workspace story to tell?
