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The Future of Workplace Design: Voice, Wellness, and Cobot Collaboration

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • Apr 24
  • 25 min read

Woman in VR headset interacts with controller, designing shoe on laptop screen. Open office setting, plants on desk, coworker nearby.
Source: ThisIsEngineering via pexels.com

In this episode of Signal Shift, we explore the future of workplace design with guest Kaelynn Reid, a design futurist at Kimball International. From AI voice booths to cobot hubs to smart, hyper-personalized offices, we unpack three powerful signals redefining how and where we work. What happens when desks disappear, walls become interactive, and sound transforms the experience of space? Join us as we imagine workplaces built for creativity, wellbeing, and human flourishing.





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Episode Transcript:

Lana: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.

Lana: Hello everyone and welcome to Signal Shift. I'm Lana and I'm here with Raakhee and we're thrilled to be joined by a very special guest for today's episode. So we're continuing our future work series and today we're diving into the future of the workplace, specifically the built environment at work.


How is the physical space around us evolving as the way that we work continues to shift? So we are so lucky to have Kaelynn Reid here to explore this with us. Kaelynn is a design futurist at Kimball International, a family of well-known furniture brands serving the workplace, healthcare, and hospitality industries. She's also the host of Alternative Design, which is Kimball's podcast that explores how changes in our world can inspire designers to build better futures.


So the three of us, Kaelynn, Raakhee, and I, we're actually in the same cohort where we became certified in strategic foresight. So it's especially meaningful to reconnect here today. So before we get into where the work happens, Kaelynn has such a unique role and such a cool job. So we’d love it if you can tell us what it means to be a design futurist. What does that entail?


Kaelynn: Yeah. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on. It's so great to see both of you. It's been, gosh, a few years. Like, the world has completely changed, and now all of a sudden it's upside down, you know, once again. 


So yeah, I really, I have an extremely exciting and unique job as a design futurist. So working at a furniture company, my job and my real opportunity is looking at the future of the built environment, specifically in workplace and in health and in education.


Because if we can identify different ways that users are going to interact with or engage with space, then that's where you can obviously start to make connections between the furniture that people need that's going to support those new experiences. And so as a futurist, I definitely spend a lot of my time doing a lot of the same horizon scanning. So I spend most of the year really diving into each of those three verticals to really understand what's happening at a macro level.


And then really drilling that down into, okay, so what's the so-what for space? And I do that through a lot of different customer-facing interactions. The podcast is sort of one of them. I'm actually lucky enough to be able to facilitate foresight workshops with architects and interior designers across the industry, leverage their brain power because they are smart cookies and they know what's going on. And then I also am able to build trend reports for the organization and then also hopefully be able to actually build out our product roadmap, leveraging these trend reports and workshops that I'm able to do. 


So I've been more recently tying myself a little closer to our product team. And just so that way those innovations can be really tied to the heart of foresight and the heart of being able to identify what's next. So it's an exciting, really unique and fun job.


Lana: Love it so much. And, know, as we're discussing the future of work, it's really exciting to see, you know, this is a job that maybe wasn't on anyone's radar, right, like five, 10 years ago. So you have one of these new jobs that we're talking and thinking about. So that's very, very cool.


Kaelynn: Yeah, no, it's super fun. I feel like, yeah, very lucky to have it. I definitely think that it's a unique niche between, like, I graduated with an interior design degree, right? So it feels like so many, you know, what I want to say, like circles outside of the core circle of like interior design. But I think that it really starts to make sense when you can kind of make that intersection of, you know, design and research and foresight and kind of what's at that center is really exciting and fun to be a part of.


Lana: Amazing. We're thrilled to have you because today we're really talking about the topic that's in your wheelhouse, you know, the future of the workplace and the built environment. so, Kaelynn, would you want to kick us off with your signal?


Kaelynn: So the signal that I found, the title is called AI Voice Agent Embedded Within Moss-Covered Phone Booth at Milan Design Week. So this is a super recent signal. Legitimately, I think I found it. It became published at 6.30 AM this morning. So super hot off the press, this signal. But I found it extremely interesting. And really, the visual, I think, it does so much justice. So if you get the chance to go out to, I found it on DesignBoom. And again, you see this really beautiful image of this sort of relic of a phone booth, right? This very analog sort of technology. But during this Milan Design Week, QS Ventures, they repurposed this old phone booth from the 90s as an interactive installation. And they titled it 2147.


And basically it's a multilingual voice-based AI agent that's designed for unscripted, very real-time organic conversation when you step inside of it. So the installation had no screens, no visual interfaces on the inside. The whole point of it was that it was emphasizing voice as the primary medium for interaction. And it almost, it what it hints at, in my opinion, is almost the ability of using voice as a design agent, as a design material, as a way that we could augment the built environment to change workplace experience. 


And I, I thought this was interesting for a couple of reasons, because I think within workplace, we're seeing a really new paradigm shift in workplace behaviors. Obviously, many of us are seeing the really large shift with AI, and how that's augmenting work behaviors on the daily and using your AI intern to finish your emails and stuff, so kind of that becoming more ubiquitous. 


But I think what maybe isn't being talked about very often is this concept of voice. The new different technologies that are coming out that allow you to do voice to text, that are allowing you to be able to speak certain commands, to speak how you can finish your emails and texting and other forms of communication. I think that we're very quickly emerging into a world where technology increasingly will become voice-based and that therefore work will become more voice-based. 


And so that leaves a really big question mark for us as product manufacturers and designers and really thinkers of what does the future office look like when you really have to design for those crazy acoustical elements because if everyone is incorporating voice and we're detaching away from the traditional monitor and the traditional screen, and we're having this more immersive experience, whether it be through voice or whether it be through projections. 


So we're just increasingly expanding beyond the bounds of the traditional workplace screen and a mouse and a keyboard. And so as we see those work behaviors evolve and change, it really asks us to look at the future of the office and the future of the workplace and say, is this acoustically ready for this kind of a future? How are we going to support that? And what I love, again, is that they used voice as a design element.


I mean, the architecture and design world is very fascinated with visual and image, which is wonderful. And there is absolute relevance and excellence that can be attributed to having this beautiful visual medium. But at the same time, I think that as we explore more multi-sensory opportunities, what does it look like to have voice as an embedded layer into the built environment?


How could you use that to change someone's experience or to change someone's mood? You know, there's Hertz music that we have that is able to sort of augment people's emotional state. There are binaural beats that are able to change someone's, you know, again, physiological well-being in that moment. So I just thought it was a really cool opportunity to use audio and voice, again, as this design element and really asks us to question -- how are we designing for both audio and voice as these work behaviors are changing to perhaps encompass more voice, more immersive, you know, projection-like work behaviors?


Raakhee: I love it. Yeah. So many, so many thoughts coming up here of Kaelynn. That was a great one. I love it being hot off the press as well. 


And I think about how everybody loves getting into those phone booths, especially when you're in London, like you'd have to get a shot of that, right? And so I'm just imagining this really cool booth, but as you were talking, I think the stuff that was coming up for me was, I remember seeing a signal a while back about, I believe, but it was a church where they had implemented an AI confession booth. Like, wow, right. So I don't know if it was long running, but they were testing the sort of AI confessional booth. So you're really speaking to somebody who is truly non-judgmental, who is truly not going to, you know, it's just the human element is out of that, which is really interesting.


And I was thinking about these phone booths that we have in the offices where you go to make a call. And I was like, oh, how cool that I could finish the call, but I could maybe say to the phone booth, OK, analyze, like, what do you think of that call? Like, you know, what was that? Did I derive the right thing from what that person said? Do you have any ideas on how I can take this forward? 


And I think exactly like you were saying, Kaelynn, like, how do we interact so differently with audio and also just artificial intelligence, right? Which audio is going to be one whole type of form of it. 


And then I think the other thing that was coming up for me was just the uses of this around healing. We know sound is becoming so important from a healing perspective, right, in medicine. And just thinking about when you do have a really rough meeting, and is there a space where you can now go in the office, where I can go and recalibrate my nervous system with really good sound, right, designed to hit me a certain way and feel a certain way. So I think sound being such an important part of an experience you have in an environment. 


And you're so right, Kaelynn, is that we, you know, and it's not just the interior designers, I think we as a society, you know, have maybe not given that enough attention or focus or pull out. And I think maybe that, you know, now is the era for that. So I think it's exciting.


Lana: Completely agree. Yeah, that's what I was thinking is that we really have not paid much attention to sound as a design element. Like I'm thinking about, we joke about elevator music. It seems, it just seems like so thoughtless that we would play this very generic style of music every time you get in an elevator and then you associate those two spaces together. 


And so what if you were just so much more intentional about, you know, that if the culture of an office was reflected in when you stepped into it, like, how did it sound? Like, OK, I know that I'm in this space versus this other space. Because this is like very clear to me, like even the brand, I guess, and the values come through sound.


Kaelynn:  Yep. Well, and I thought it was so interesting because, you know, part of the signal, what, you know, they were saying was that the project explored how unscripted dialogue could foster engagement while they tested kind of various parameters. And so they basically said that we didn't just design a user interface or a UI. We designed a voice, a character that had rhythm and silence and friction and memory. And so all these things that, you know, again, augmented the employee experience. 


And so to your point,you know, what would, what would the ability to, you know, get out of that meeting, you know, Raakhee and like, you're completely discombobulated, and it was just a really tough meeting, you know, and instead of going and talking to HR, you know, you could go and talk to this character or, you know, step into this phone booth and have this sort of conversation that is going to boost things like engagement. 


I know right now we have some of the lowest engagement scores globally. You know, in the workplace, I mean, we're, we're, you know, titling it the Great Disengagement. And so as we continue not to bring in a whole other source subject of RTO and the tensions between hybrid policies, you know, I continue to kind of get on a soapbox about this, that we really have to be thinking about how to engage employees, because you can force them back into the office, but you can't force them to be engaged with your company's mission, its purpose or its goal. 


And really, at the end of the day, we know and have, frankly, tons of studies that point to when employees are connected to that mission statement, to that purpose, they're more productive, they're more innovative, they're more creative, they're all the outputs and outcomes that corporate leaders are wanting from folks. So again, if we can think of it differently in how we're using design elements to support, whether it's designing characters as part of the workplace experience through AI, or if it's using Hertz music, or again, healing frequencies.


It's just, it's taking the opportunity, I think, to think of this medium differently and exploring what could be here that would support, again, the employee experience.


Lana: I really appreciate how you suggested, maybe screens would go away and keyboards, right? So like, instead of us like really intently absorbing material in this visual way, how can we, and you know, people learn differently, right? 


Some people are more auditory learners. And so for them, maybe it is a pair of headphones and a mic, and that's how they are communicating their thoughts and learning and interacting with people. I mean, think, of course we used to do a lot of things by phone, right? And that's very auditory. Maybe now we've moved to video. But, I think that idea of like a desk space not having a monitor on it or a keyboard, I really appreciate those kinds of things that make you question like, why is it always like this?


Kaelynn: Definitely. Well, it's a huge question. I mean, if you take that to the next level of what does that mean for desks? You know, and that's obviously something that I feel like I've been poking the bear, you know, for for a little bit of, OK, so if you know, does that mean that desks go away? 


And so, you know, what we've been talking about, you know, is really what does that mean and translate to if every surface was your desk? So instead of it being a dedicated 24 by 48, you know, surface like really, when we look at things like spatial computing, and we look at the ways that, you know, digital experiences are created, because you're basically, not to get super techie, but just overlaying the digital onto physical objects in the built environment, does that make all the walls and all the tables and all of the chairs like part of the screen, so to speak, part of the projection experience? And so how do you optimize furniture to do that? Question mark. 


You know, something that I think that we're, you know, I mean, we're probably a ways off from that being some, you know, huge, huge shift in the industry, like in two years, you know, but I would definitely say that it's something in the next five to 10 that we need to be considering because something that you had mentioned about the way that different people have unique workflows, the more that we continue to design for neurodivergence, as we continue to see more and more studies that come out to prove that when you design workplaces and corporate environments for neurodivergence that, I mean, you have so much to gain. 


There's, there's not only just enough to gain from the ethical standpoint, but truly, there are absolutely business outcomes that are coming out of, you know, fostering this inclusive environment where everyone can actually thrive. And so I think to your point, really being able to design for new workflows is going to be critical moving forward.


Lana: Absolutely. Well, I think, I'm curious, how do you feel about your signal? You want to go next?


Raakhee: Yeah, I think it fits in with this conversation, right, what, yeah, you know, do we take away desks? Are we going to have talking phone booths? What else are we going to have? 


They actually launched the site last year. And what it is is, it's a Copenhagen headquartered architectural design firm. Kaelynn, you've probably heard of them, 3XN. And yeah, they've built a campus in a city called Odense. I think it's the third largest city in Denmark. And they've created kind of like state of the art tech campus like we have up here in San Fran, one of those beautiful ones with the green spaces, the light, all these communal spaces, really beautiful, amazing, perfect. 


But what makes this building really interesting, what I thought was really interesting is they calling it a cobot hub. And it is going to be really a tech campus, right? The first of it's kind of kind that they claim where you have these collaborative robots who are going to share workspaces with their human counterparts.


And so it's these two robotic companies coming together. One is Mobile Industrial Robots, MR, and the other is Universal Robots, UR. And so these two companies are going to share space. I think that in itself opens up an interesting question about two organizations coming together like this. And we've been talking about asset-sharing and similar in previous episodes. So I think that in itself is so dynamic. But then building the space so that robots can thrive and humans can thrive and they can thrive together. And I was like, wow, this is interesting. Yes, I wanted to put that, that was my signal. I wanted to put that out there and just share thoughts about that.


Kaelynn: So there's a couple. One, this is an incredible signal. So, Raakhee, I think that it hits right in the feels of everybody's small fear spot, I think.


You know because we, I think there's like the cool sci-fi part of it that there are you know 50% of us and, I'm just making a random statistic, but I'm sure there's like half of us. They're like, my gosh, that's so interesting I would love to have a cobot worker and then you know, there's obviously the other half that's like, my gosh. This is so terrifying and completely frightening and I want to go hide under a rock. So I think that it brings up a lot of fascinating, you know, societal shifts even just within that.


And I think right now everyone's got a pretty good comfortability level of AI being on their laptop and finishing their sentences for them. This invites a completely new level of comfortability and familiarity that's required of these technologies to be able to work alongside of them.


It's so fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, how do you design for humans and robots to thrive? You know, and I'm just thinking from a design perspective of like corridor widths and like, you know, code stuff and like, you know, so desks are no longer 30 inches high above the floor. They're like, you know, 24. I mean, so there's some obvious implications to that. But I think just even on a bigger scale of, you know, are people going to feel comfortable with that? Is there going to be mass acceptance? What kind of adoption rate are we going to see with this?


Lana, what do you think?


Lana:  Yeah, I agree. I guess I, you know, started, yeah, thinking about what are we designing for? So what does it look like when you have these teams that are mixed, you know, human and robot and like, do they, do they sit in a conference room? What does that team look like? What does work look like in that scenario? What is the job? What are you working on? And so how are we cooperating? 


And so that brings up a lot of questions that I think we'd have to understand in order to know what the workplace environment looks like in order to facilitate those functions. And so yeah, I feel like you would be a lot of discovery, right? So it's, we'd have to have a lot of flexibility and openness and curiosity because we're literally figuring out something that has never been done before. There is no guidebook if it's the first of its kind. So there's something about that that's like pretty exciting, even though it's definitely scary too.


Raakhee: Yeah, I will add, you know, looking at these images, it's all a lot of wood. It's very open. They have something called "creative playrooms." These are mostly for the robots. And so I think those are specifically designed where they can maybe test their functionality on things. I don't know. Yeah. Exactly like you said, I'm like, I'm trying to figure this out. I don't know. I assume they know what they're doing. But it's going to be a lot of discovery, I think, on how does this work?


Yeah, but Lana, what was your signal?


Lana: Yeah, I think mine is, kind of goes well with both of yours. And so this is also an example from Europe. And this is about hyper-personalized office spaces. 


So this is a building called The Edge and it's in Amsterdam and it's owned by Deloitte. And so this is known to be one of the smartest and most sustainable office buildings in the world. And so it's 15 stories and, Raakhee, you might like this, cause so there's nearly 30,000 sensors, right? The internet of things. So 30,000 sensors and they optimize everything. So it's the lighting, the temperature, it monitors the occupancy, even how the coffee machine is used, right? 


And so employees interact with the building via their phone app. And so that's how they know like their desk assignments or like where they're gonna park, but it's also how they can set some of their personal comfort settings. And so it's a very flexible workspace. So, you know, if they want to have a meeting with some colleagues, they sort of book that versus if they want to have a private phone call versus like if they need to sit on the couch and like read a document, for example. 


And so one of the things that they figured out by having all of this data is that, and this sort of speaks to what we talking about before, is that, you know, people don't need a desk the whole day, right? So they have 3,000 staff, but people are only using their desk for like a third of the day. So they actually have 1,100 desks. 


So it's this very flexible, but also a lot of different ways to customize it to the person's needs. And so I guess when I'm thinking about this layered on top with the co-robotic experience, maybe layered on top of an audio-focused workspace or, you know, some of these different interactions that we might have. You know, I think they could see like a lot of different possibilities.


Kaelynn: Yeah, absolutely. I know this topic gets me really excited because I think it's something that the design community has talked about for a long time. And frankly, that's the problem of having public space and creating personalized experiences within the public space. And so how are we able to truly optimize experiences? 


I'm thinking of even just the most simplest of decisions that a designer is faced with, right? When it comes to the paint on the walls, what colors are you picking. And I know from my experience a long time ago as a practicing designer, your palette was blue and green. Because those were generally the universally accepted colors that, you know, didn't seem to rock the boat too much. And you know, can't do red and like, you know, gosh, you know, stay away from yellow. And so I think it opens up an entirely new world of possibilities. 


And that signal is so fascinating and continues to be so fascinating to me because it It places a different demand on the built environment to be responsive and to be iterative. And it moves us away from this traditional notion of architecture and interior architecture and interior design that is meant to be static. And that really the goal is, does this look like the rendering that I popped out in conceptual phase? And does it look just like that? Great. Are the finishes great? Perfect. Did we get through the punch list? Okay. But I think that this asks for the built environment almost to be designed to change.


And so how are you building in that flexibility to change to the user experience? And so I find it so fascinating. And I think that in the world of hyper-personalization and when we are able to create experiences on our phone so quickly that are, of course, customized to us and personalized to us, we see this trending, of course, in retail and just many other industries that this idea of personalization is so key.


And so it continues to excite me to see signals just like this where we're leveraging technology to really, again, augment and change that built environment to create a more personalized experience for folks. Because I mean, how many people walk into their office and are like, I'm cold. Versus like, I mean, you could talk about gender differences. You could talk about like, mean, 19 different things of like the way people experience space differently.


We could get into a whole different tributary of trauma-informed design as well, where trying to understand how does the built environment potentially cause triggers and how do you move away from that. So again, just being able to create these personalized experiences is just such an exciting feat, I think, because I just think that it creates a better experience for everyone to thrive.


Lana: Yeah, completely agree. I mean, I can see, Raakhee, your example of, you know, after having that conversation, you go into the room with sound, and then also with color, right? That's like certain colors that are more soothing than others or some that give you more energy. So maybe we're in a brainstorm. So we need to like amp up the color. Let’s get our brains moving.


Kaelynn: Yes. Now we have a ton of research actually that I did on sensory design and how it unlocks creativity and how certain tastes and smell and scent and color can all unlock more divergent thinking. 


And so exactly to your point, Lana, like what if these spaces were customized to do that? What if they were a specific color? Because we understand that red actually creates more analytical thinking. I mean, we know that hard surfaces actually does that, interacting with hard surfaces is more supportive of critical and analytical thinking, whereas soft, cushy ottomans and pillows and warm, fluffy objects are very conducive to creative and divergent thinking. And so just the way that we can match the built environment to the way that our brains work is just, like the future is so interesting that we could just potentially be able to align all those stars.


Lana: Yeah, I can almost see it as like a ritual, you know, almost at work where you're like, you're going into these different spaces for these different purposes, but it's very like aligned with your intention. traveling through the office, depending on what you need. And I feel like that could work, right? If you're like, we need to all like come up with this pitch today. We're gonna go into this room. It's gonna help us.


Raakhee: Yeah, I love it. I was just, know, all the things we've said, I don't know why, but this idea of, again, our wellness keeps popping up for me on this, right? But thinking about desks as well, I mean, part of the fact that our health is in such bad shape is because we're sitting so long. So was like, I'm behind this no-desk policy, right? And part of that being that we normalize different kind of movement within the office space, right, for our health. I love that. 


And then, you know, something else that was sticking out to me that we discussed as well was just I use voice notes so much more now with my family and my friends, right? It's so much easier than a long text. I know, Lana, you kind of talked how we used to get on calls, but it's so hard to align, especially when it seems like everyone is all over in different time zones in the world, right? So, yeah, just this idea of voice notes even showing us this path of how voice is going to work and the no- desk and then using things like color, but to feel good and for wellness.


Lana: For sure. I feel like, Kaelynn, would love to hear your perspective on sitting and maybe the future of sitting in desks from what you've seen.


Kaelynn: Oh, sure. Like there's enough studies at this point that we know that that sitting, I mean, they coined it sitting as the new smoking, I think eight years ago, right? So mean, I think we've long known that there are detriments to sitting. This is not necessarily the way that, you know, our ancestors have have moved about and done life, you know. 


And so I think that-- yes, there is, of course, the validity to the sit-to-stand desk, certainly, and being able to stand. I actually appreciate that you were saying, just standing up isn't necessarily the amount of variety of movement that's required in the day, right? And so that's where I think that designers have intentionally been designing for experiences that you can truly go and visit to throughout the day. 


And that really you know, it's predicated on the power of choice and being able to have a workplace culture where you can choose where and how you work. But we consistently find that that element of choice for people to go choose to sit in a lounge chair for 30 minutes and then, know, know, Raakhee to your point, go and stand up in a standing room only, you know, touchdown space and then perhaps, you know, go on a walk, you know, right afterwards and take a phone call or you know, dictate something on their Apple Watch. 


I think that those are all opportunities that we can account for by thinking about how we're designing the workplace to be a series of choices and experiences, as opposed to assuming that, you know, we're not going to chain the employee to the desk from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Let's just get away from that. 


And I think that, you again, when we can really create opportunities for people to embed more choice. And I think that when I talk about choice, think that there's an interesting point that I think that we're approaching with choice and with AI and with large language models. And there have been some futurists that I've spoken to that are kind of predicting the next evolution of AI and large language models to be large action models. 


And so I add this layer on here of sort of the sound and the cobots and the responsive architecture or responsive design to what does it really look like to have choice in the future and particularly in the built environment and the office? 


Like I could imagine, Lana, if we're kind of just creating these sort of mini scenarios and employees stepping in and getting a suggestion, hey, you have a 9 a.m. with your boss, perhaps you go in this room that doesn't freak you out. And I'm just saying, silly example, but truly things that are able to really optimize the workday. 


And so the question I have, and I think what I'm exploring is, you know, how do we continue to build agency, even in the midst of those suggestions, that yes, those suggestions could be optimal, but how are we going to make sure that we protect human agency and not just default to every suggestion that AI potentially gives us?


Lana: 100%. 100%. I think agency is one of our, you know, it's kind of like one of our underlying, like, big threads or values, really, because in all, like, this kind of constant change that's happening, you know, we want to recognize, like, there are risks, there are opportunities, right, and we have, as much as we can, have to figure out, like, where can we choose? And so… completely agree with that. 


Yeah, so guess to close, what is something that you're, you know, given everything that we talked about today, what's something that you're most excited about seeing in your future workplace environment? What would you, what's on your wish list?


Kaelynn:  Wow, what is on my wish list? I gotta go back to what Raakhee was saying. I'm excited about the wellness stuff. I'm excited of creating wellness-centric spaces, but not, you know, like Zen rooms are cool, you know what I mean? And like we've done this before where like you take an old copy room and you put a lounge chair in it and like some cool wallpaper and you're like, awesome, like great, go take a break. 


And so I think that we're clearly evolving into a more sophisticated understanding of - what do these wellness spaces actually require to unlock biological, physiological, social, behavioral change in really meaningful ways for human beings? And that's not even just within the workplace industry, that's in healthcare, that's in, you know, education. There are many different verticals that I think are becoming more hip to this opportunity of having true spaces in the built environment that are meant to you know, rejuvenate and that are truly optimized for wellbeing. 


And I continue to think it's critical. I mean, again, you look at this engagement scores of employees, you look at the burnout rate for healthcare workers, you look at, you know, students that are disconnecting. I think that all of it's there, where, you know, all of it's there that the critical need is here for that. So I'm most excited for that.


Lana: Awesome, yeah. Great, Raakhee, how about you?


Kaelynn: Sorry I took yours, Raakhee. I'm like great, now I took hers.


Raakhee: I am backing everything Kaelynn just said. Yes, yes, yes to everything Kaelynn just said. think that's it, right? Because I think ultimately all of this is meant to, even AI and even robots, ultimately, they have to really serve us having a better life, right? And for society to do better and to make space for us to be well and live well. So yeah, I'm with that as well.


Lana: Yeah, think it makes sense because I think we're seeing a lot of people are choosing, like you were saying, Kaelynn, by choice, not to return to the office. They said, this is not a pleasant place. I would strongly prefer to work from home or to work in a different place. 


And so I do think there's some things that making it a place where people can choose to go. And it's speaking to their like humanness is kind of what I'm hearing, you know, and like, what are our core needs beyond like our functional needs? 


And so I think even in my home space, where I work, it's making me think about like, how can I make this like, more harmonious and like balanced for me, right? I have full control over this space.


And so thinking beyond the functional to even like, what's my experience when I step into this room? And so I love the sound element and thinking more critically about that. And so that's one of the takeaways that I want to put into my own life, but also would love to see more broadly speaking. 


So yeah, this has been super fun, Kaelynn. Thank you so much for joining us today. What an awesome conversation.


Kaelynn: Thank you so much for having me. This has been so fun. It's great to catch up. Thank you so much for the opportunity.


Lana: Yeah, great. Thanks to everyone for following and for subscribing to our YouTube channel. So we're at Horizon Shift Lab. And it's a lot of fun for us to, you know, as we've been talking about, not just explore the medium of sound via the podcast, but also video on YouTube.


And we're continuing our Future of Work series, and then we'll be moving into social and relational capital. So thanks so much for joining us, and see you next week. Bye for now.


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