2/9/23, 12:06 AM Herman Miller's new Passport Work Table is furniture designed for remo

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This small Herman Miller table is designed to ease the uncomfortable reality
of hybrid work
Hybrid work often involves finding a quiet place to work in the midst of a busy office or a noisy home. This desk makes that easier.

[Photo: Herman Miller]

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BY E L I Z A B E T H S EG R A N
3 MINUTE READ

In concept, hybrid work seems like the best of both worlds, allowing you to seamlessly pick either the comfort of your living room couch or your
desk at the office, depending on your mood.

The reality has been somewhat less pleasant, as the designers at Herman Miller can attest from their market research. At home, you’re often
trying to squeeze in work while tending to a sick kid or making dinner. At the office, you might found that there are no longer assigned desks and
you’re left to your own devices to find a workspace between meetings.

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[Photos: Herman Miller]

In response to the vicissitudes of this new era of work, Herman Miller has created a new piece of furniture, the Passport Work Table. It’s a height
adjustable table (it goes up to 45 inches high) that can be used for sitting or standing, is easy to move around thanks to gliding wheels, and at 27
by 20 inches, is just large enough to fit your laptop, a notebook, and a beverage. The goal is to allow you to create a comfortable, adaptable
workspace just about anywhere. It is designed to be used both in offices as well as at home.

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[Photo: Herman Miller]

Hybrid work is still a relative new phenomenon, and many organizations are still trying to figure out what works best. Many workplaces are now
trying to make their offices more flexible and adaptable to different uses. For instance, a room may be the location for a lecture one day and the
spot for a training session the next. “These tables can be easily wheeled in for different uses,” says Kendall Kautz, director of global product
marketing at MillerKnoll, Herman Miller’s parent company. “They can be tall enough to be used as a lectern for a speaker, but you can also bring
in many of them for employees to use in a group discussion.”

MillerKnoll’s largest business is in supplying offices with furniture, but it also sells products to individual consumers, who buy products for their
home. The Passport desk has many interesting use cases for people working remotely. Even though many of us have been working from home
for years now, it can still be difficult to find a comfortable place to work in the midst of the chaos of family life. MillerKnoll’s research finds that
people are often working from odd places, like the couch, a rocking chair in their baby’s room, or a corner of their kitchen while making dinner. If
it’s too inconvenient to work from a laptop, some people will switch to working from a phone, which is less than ideal.

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[Photo: Herman Miller]

This table is meant to facilitate working from just about anywhere at home, but with a more comfortable work station. MillerKnoll’s testers used it
while working from a sick child’s beside or while waiting for a pot of water to boil in the kitchen. When one person at home was monopolizing the
home office, the other could wheel the Passport desk to the couch and adjust it to the right level, so they could work productively without
crouching over. “You can just wheel the table from room to room, and adjust to height to use it while standing or sitting,” says Kautz.

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[Photo: Herman Miller]

The Passport table’s color and finishes can be customized, and you can also purchase additional accessories like a bag hook and a privacy
screen. But it doesn’t come cheap. Starting at $495, it is on par with other office furniture, but it is on the higher end of desks of this size in the
home furniture market. But the functionality and adaptability of the desk is an encouraging sign that designers are working hard to make hybrid
work less uncomfortable and more productive.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Segran, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer at Fast Company. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts More

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