I worked at ShopWell in Palo
Alto, CA, in 2009 and most of 2010.
ShopWell's office was one large open space. The desks were grouped
into pods of four. The walls were covered in cork boards, and we
had many, many foam core boards covered in Post-It notes of all
colors as our design tools. These were great for posting designs to
review or to track tasks in the current sprint. With all the wall
space taken by information radiators, that left no room for windows.
Lucky for us there were many skylights to provide us with natural
lighting.
We did all our development on MacBook Pro laptops. After my
previous stint at Google, I was not gonna settle for some tiny
monitor. I bought my own 24" cinema display and used it in the
office every day. It was really nice, with built-in camera,
microphone, speakers, and USB hub. Combined with the laptop's 15"
screen, it was almost as good as a two-headed monster.
We had a pulley system at the back of the office to park one bicycle
on the rafters. It was first come, first served, and it almost
worked as an incentive to get me into the office early. After a few
days, though, the overhead of dealing with the pulleys when cutting
it close to catch a train meant that I left my bike on the ground
instead.
Still, you have to admit that's pretty cool.
There was a lengthy, three-part
article about ShopWell in Xconomy
in November 2010.