Office Stuff + Your Livingroom = Standfriend
Standfriend is the solution to a rapidly growing problem: what happens when your beloved home suddenly becomes your everyday workspace?
The proximity between our office desks and kitchen tables recently turned very slim. Sofa tables, bedroom drawers and kitchen furniture need to work as reasonable work stations a handful of days per week. Yellon met this challenge together with Mousetrapper - a company dedicated to producing ergonomic office solutions.
What sets this ergonomic product apart is its high respect for the user's home. These are highly personal spaces and have been carefully built over years and decades to reflect our personality and preference. This demands a lot from an office product, as it needs to live up to the high standards and match the materials of the home environment. Our goal was to create a solution which allows the owner to be perfectly fine with leaving it standing on the side table an evening or two, without it looking like that malplaced crosstrainer or exercise bike (which may or may not be more commonly used as a clothes rack).
To achieve this we steered away from mechanical aluminum rigs and clunky wood slabs. Instead we solved the functionality through an elegant steel wire frame, on which you can position the laminated wood shelves. Each modular shelf has a light and a dark side, to let the owner pick a look they feel suits their home best. The steel wire frame is offered in various colours and has enough height levels to suit both sitting and standing work positions.
Since the frame is hollow, the shelves may be placed within it and hung upon it. This makes the product easy to move and stow away as desired.
"We will definitely see more products moving from our office environment into our personal homes in the future. The pandemic and restrictions accelerated this change in how and where we work, but even without it this would have become a growing market. The increased accessibility of good internet connection and our environmental goal to reduce physical travel means more people will desire to work from their homes, either full-time or a couple of days every now and then. Standfriend enhances this experience and makes the shrinking proximity between home and office all the more enjoyable."
- Felix Meijer, Industrial Designer at Yellon
