The story of the Steelcase Node: Sean Corcorran Interview (Part 1)

I’ve had the opportunity to work with both Steelcase and Herman Miller. Both are icons in the furniture industry. What I really like is their competition for the learning spaces marketplace. It drives innovation. It propels new concepts forward. This is good because we get to witness the advancement right before our eyes.

 

This competition results in research—research into unmet needs. Here is a little history on one such project. I’ve been a fan of Node since March and I am grateful that Steelcase gave me an interview with Sean Corcorran, Director, Product Development & Marketing, for their educational division. On the same week that he’s talking with business week  and Metropolis he found some time to fit me in.

 

Here is some of what he shared with me:

 

• Before the Node, Sean was a product developer for 20 years. 17 years at IDEO. He was there when it all began in the 1980’s when it was David Kelley Design.

 

• Steelcase has been involved with Higher Ed for over 75 years, however, it has mostly office settings for faculty and admin.

 

• Seven years ago Steelcase started doing research on classrooms. This lead to learn lab in 2006. Check out this promo video. This was their foray into designing furniture for learning spaces.

 

• They have more than 50 installations of learn labs around the country in high schools and colleges. But they wanted to focus more on a classroom setting. They wanted to offer a more active learning environment that could support a multitude of pedagogy, not just lectures but project based learning and student sharing. Basically a more collaborative learning space.

 

• To address area this they conducted research in classrooms, libraries, and adjacencies (in-between spaces) – this led to a year of observations and studies toward how they could go deeper into the learning environment. What was needed?

 

• This led them to develop a point of view: they saw a huge gap between the aspirations of the 21^st century learning environment vs. what was actually out there. Traditional classroom furniture was a barrier to the way people wanted to teach/learn.

 

• They wanted to come up with a solution that would address the need for collaborative learning, but also deal with the practical issues of getting more students into a room, as well as issues that students and faculty have while teaching/learning--- and make it cost effective. This would be a good thing!

 

• What was shocking to them was that there was nothing new in the past 50 years in terms of classroom chairs. When they visited rooms around the country they saw a lot of 50-year-old tablet-arm chairs or tablet desks--- or they saw 5-year-old ones that looked just like the older ones, but with newer colors.

 

• The classroom chair market was only made small evolutionary steps, but failed to provide what was necessary for modern instruction. They wanted to address the unmet needs of colleges and high schools.

 

• They began with a blank sheet of paper. They didn’t start out with the notion of designing a new tablet-arm chair, they build around a broader idea of “a student learning pod.”

 

• The official project name was SLP1. 

The concept:
(S) Students would be first and foremost.
(L) The emphasis would be on learning, not just teaching.
(P) It would be a pod, a cocoon, a student’s home base in the classroom.
(1) It would be first and one of a kind.

 

Conceptual Drawings

    

 
 
  
  

That’s it for now. I’ll continue with more of the interview tomorrow or perhaps later tonight. 

Comments

[Dottie Hunt]

Here are some pictures from NeoCon 2010.
http://www.contemporist.com/2010/06/15/node-chair-by-steelcase-at-neocon-2010/#more-14972

[Michael Golrick]

The designs look great. I have concerns about two issues: people who have different abilities and mobility issues; people who are short; and people who are oversized. The latter is of particular concern with this design in that it is a molded seat with arms built in. I know folks who are large tend to avoid chairs with arms -- and I have worked with several in different settings. The concern about those with different abilities is will the chair slide as they try to maneuver into the chair? For those who are short, there is no height adjustment, so their feet will dangle, and they will not be able to maneuver the chair without getting up (and they have some of the same issues about the chair moving as those with different abilities).

Have the designers considered these issues? What is their answer? (The Americans with Disabilities Act is twenty [20] years old this year.)