Watched intently by social scientists with video cameras. What are they looking for? Habits and patterns that mark your work life. You may not even be aware of them, but they’ll provide Steelcase designers and engineers springboards to innovations that add to your comfort and effectiveness.

We call this observational approach to product development “user-centered design.” Start by watching people at work. Follow quickly with prototypes they can test and react to. Then continue the process until you’re sure you have something that makes a significant contribution. . . or not.

Why observation? Because it gets us past one of the limits of interview-based research: the fact that most of us have a hard time describing our unmet wants and needs. How many of us knew we wanted a CD player until we heard one?

We study and learn in other ways, too. We never stop gathering information about how people work—their procedures and processes, how they interact with technology, their environment and one another. We are students of the workplace.

We take advantage of the fact that we work closely with some of the world’s most sophisticated organizations. We’re in their working environments every day, so we can watch and listen and learn, and we do.

As important, we work with universities and think tanks to anticipate what’s likely to happen in these working environments. We experiment with our colleagues at IDEO, who are widely regarded as the world’s pre-eminent product design specialists, and with the women and men who work in our corporate working environments.

For example, the women and men who work in our Grand Rapids, Michigan, Corporate Development Center are often asked to test our designers’ brainstorms and prototypes. Before you ever get your hands on a Steelcase product, a great many Steelcase people have put it through its paces. The goal? Innovations that please your eye and your soul, support your work patterns, add to your comfort and help you be more effective at what you do.