For a long time, we were focused on space division and how carving up a room could provide privacy. And while products like Framewall, Weave, and Chisel are still incredibly popular with our customers, we’ve recently decided to focus on another privacy problem in the office. To do so, we decided to get micro with our thinking. With mandates to fit more and more employees into smaller spaces, solutions like benching have become prevalent in the commercial furniture world. But as we cram our employees into these rows, we’re depriving them of the opportunity to do focused work.
We’re obsessed with focused work – hell, we wrote an entire CEU course about it. More than half of the average person’s workday is spent on focused work, but we give them less and less tools to be focused at their desks. So we partnered with the award winning industrial design team at KEM STUDIO and spent the last year studying how people work and how we can help them get more work done. The result of that research and obsession with focus is a product we call Parallel.
Designed to work alongside the way you actually want to work, Parallel is an intuitive and simple way to carve up more focus space for you and your teams. These aren’t just standard table screens that clip onto your desk, this is everything traditional desk dividers are not.
Side-to-Side
You shouldn’t have to be rubbing elbows with your neighbor, and your headphones shouldn’t be your only sanctuary at work. Parallel’s “Side-to-Side” option gives you desktop level privacy with a few unique features. First, the mounting bracket doubles (or triples) as a dry erase board and device organizer. Keep track of tasks, tell your coworkers you’re out to lunch, or just make your space uniquely yours. Perfect for the orderly worker, but perhaps even better for the guy in your office with the ridiculous piles on his desk to get his act together. One simple concealed toggle screw firmly holds the mounting bracket to any worksurface, and then the magic happens… Parallel’s felt-wrapped acoustic screens magnetically attach to the mounting bracket. No unseemly hardware and the freedom to rearrange and position your screen. We think this is a game changer for the privacy panel game.
A low height Marble Side-to-Side
A full height Charcoal Side-to-Side
Modesty
We wanted to take the Parallel family one step further and allow you to wrap the back side of your work surface. We call this the Parallel “Modesty” option. The same intuitive magnetic system is employed here, so you won’t see any garrish hardware. The product just seems to float as it magically delivers more privacy than you thought possible. We also know that cable and wire management can be a nightmare if you’re adding a screen to another manufacturer’s desks or tables. And who likes those ugly holes they drill in desks to run cables through? Not us. So we included subtle notches in our hardware to allow the perfect amount of space for your cables and wires to travel to their intended destinations. Again, just the little details that make Parallel unlike the competition.
Full height Charcoal Side-to-Side and Modesty panels with a Spruce Blue exterior felt
A full height Charcoal Modesty and a low height Side-to-Side with a Tomato Red exterior felt
So there you have it. The last year of our lives we spent honing these products to make your work space a place where you can focus. Nothing big happened in the world in the last year… did it?! Could we have binge-watched a few dozen shows in that year? Probably. But we’re proud of Parallel and think our customers are going to love what it can change about the places they work.