To the Future and Back

Today, we’re introducing OpenWorkspace®, and releasing it for general availability.

I started developing OpenWorkspace® at the onset of the pandemic, drawing inspiration from my background as a proprietary trader in financial markets, where technology has far surpassed that of traditional industries.

When I left the financial markets, I realized just how much the traditional desktop experience lagged behind what I was used to in markets, where high-frequency trading systems work on behalf of the user by processing information algorithmically and reacting automatically based on pre-set instructions.

The experience is a nearly frictionless one, where information management is a mindless task that happens in parallel with real work. And desktop management—in terms of surfacing and arranging windows and tabs—happens automatically.  In contrast, the general desktop experience is manually-intensive and rife with friction, requiring users manage information mentally then continuously surface and rearrange it by hand on the desktop, impeding real work.

Since day one, the goal with OpenWorkspace® has been to productize this frictionless, automated desktop experience I came to know and love from my time in markets.  OpenWorkspace’s purpose is to popularize this experience, making it accessible to the hundreds of millions of knowledge workers, creative pros, and students that are equally as invested in the desktop as those in financial markets, but are without access to the type of automation and tooling that is characteristic of proprietary trading technology.

OpenWorkspace® is named after the feature I felt was most missing from the traditional desktop experience, in the ability to render an entire layout of windows across the desktop with no more than a single click or command.  I came to realize that being able to bring up a multitude of windows at once was even more critical in general industries, where information was far more fragmented and difficult to locate than in financial markets. This capability encompasses ‘Workspaces’ : one of two new technical concepts OpenWorkspace® adds to your existing operating system to advance it.

The other is a completely new ‘focal/contextual’ graphical user interface (GUI) I conceived when I replaced my multiple-monitor setup with a curved TV and discovered the traditional desktop GUI was not compatible with its expansive canvas of screen real-estate, or that of the latest desktop monitors that are continuously increasing in size.

But OpenWorkspace® is about something much bigger than performing window magic on the desktop. It’s about the opportunity to go forward and backward at once. Forward, by giving the desktop all-new capabilities that will advance productivity for work and enable a more immersive, intentional web experience for play. Forward, in the sense of modernizing the desktop for today, where it is a bigger part of our day-to-day than ever before, more critical to our work and professional development than ever before, and more in need of an upgrade than ever before.  And backward, with intent to bring back the age-old desktop in full force, reimagined for today’s world of work, and complete with the magic, excitement, and work/life balance that surrounded it as it rose to prominence in the 90s.  It’s about celebrating 50 years at the desktop, by reinvigorating this experience that we already know so well and once loved, for this very moment, as we pause and reevaluate our relationship with our devices, as we reflect on what’s worked well and what hasn’t, and as we decide what role we want technology to play in our lives going forward.

And it’s about presenting none other than the desktop as the most unexpected-but-practical candidate to become personal computing’s next big thing, once again.

Here’s to a revival,

David Adler

Creator – OpenWorkspace® | WorkDisplay®