Responses by Schema and Sedus.

Background: Sedus, a leading European office solutions manufacturer, partnered with Schema to create an intuitive, efficient digital knowledge–sharing platform. This platform is designed to leverage the contents from Sedus INSIGHTS publications, which are crafted by experts such as designers, architects and professors from design studio Pierandrei Associati in Milan. These publications offer valuable research findings, exploring developments and trends within today’s evolving workscape and its future trajectory. The overarching goal of Sedus, through its trend publications and this platform, is to empower professionals with valuable knowledge to shape the future of work environments: the “Workscape of Tomorrow.”

In collaboration with Sedus, Schema meticulously distilled the INSIGHTS content, strategically identifying interconnections and recurring concepts within the materials. Schema devised a sophisticated machine learning script to scour the raw text, adeptly extracting analogous terms and skillfully amalgamating them into overarching themes present in the content. Subsequently, these themes were harmoniously integrated into a cohesive framework, employing keywords as attributes that facilitate filtering and forge meaningful associations. The outcome materialized as a dynamic knowledge graph, vividly portraying ideas and themes that orbit the future of work. This knowledge graph, in conjunction with the feed view, collectively constitutes the captivating narrative of the Workscape of Tomorrow.

Larger picture: Sedus’s INSIGHTS publications, spanning as far back as 2016, remain profoundly influential in shaping the modern work environment. Previously confined to separate online and print magazines, the Workscape of Tomorrow online experience seamlessly extends beyond the confines of traditional media, encompassing the substantial content from more than seventeen comprehensive publications. This enhanced platform not only facilitates intuitive navigation but also offers the added advantage of targeted exploration through specific topics and their related contents.

Schema utilized the rich content from Sedus’s INSIGHTS magazines as the foundation for crafting the visionary Workscape of Tomorrow. This innovative platform empowers the public to seamlessly delve into pivotal trends and essential keywords within their contextual milieu, while also providing versatile filters based on topic, media type and presentation format.

Design core: The Trendmap is one of the signature features of the Workscape of Tomorrow. It’s a 3-D knowledge graph that can be rotated and examined from various angles, making it easy for users to explore and see multiple connections between themes. The feed view offers a more linear approach. Between the Trendmap and the feed view, users can interact with the content in multiple ways.

Navigation structure: To truly unlock the potential of this content, we eschewed the traditional top-down classification systems used in print—like chapters, sections and pages—for a bottom-up solution that classifies content by the ideas and information.

The Trendmap, a 3-D network graph, defines the landscape and the key concepts driving the conversation, opening the door for users to find content and connections in places they may have never thought to look. Using content from the INSIGHTS publications, passages once confined to a single page in a single volume can now be linked (and accessed from) related content from any chapter or any volume.

Technology: The front end of the site is built using Vue.js, and the universe was created the three.js. The back end uses the Sanity CMS.

Special technical features: The challenge here was to seamlessly integrate a more traditional web presentation using Vue.js with a more dynamic knowledge graph built using three.js. By carefully planning the architecture, we seamlessly moved between these two rendering contexts.