Travel & Home Office Editor
Diane Olawumi-Becker
BS
Writing about industrial design since 2019
About Diane Olawumi-Becker
Diane Olawumi-Becker spent eight years inside Herman Miller’s product design organization, designing the kind of furniture that arrives at the office and stays there for fifteen years. She left in 2019 to write about industrial design from the user’s side of the equation — partly because the writing about office and travel equipment that she could find at the time was, in her view, dominated by people who had never sat in the chair for an eight-hour workday or carried the bag through three connections.
She joined Top Picks Report in November 2025 to edit the travel and home-office vertical. The standard rule she runs, in keeping with the magazine’s editorial line: she does not pick equipment she has not used, and she does not pick a piece of equipment that fails the long-term-use test in her own daily routine.
Editorial focus
Diane writes the travel and home-office picks at Top Picks Report. Her usual beats are carry-on luggage, travel adapters, office chairs, standing-desk equipment, and the small set of travel objects (notebook, charger, neck pillow) that recur from issue to issue.
She tests every piece of travel gear on at least one multi-leg trip before writing about it. She tests every chair for a minimum of three weeks of full-time desk work before she will rank it. The tests are deliberately mundane: she is not interested in whether a bag survives a 20-foot drop, but in whether it opens cleanly on a hotel-room floor and whether the wheels still roll quietly after six trips.
Conflicts of interest
Diane accepts no compensation, sponsored placement, or affiliate commission from any travel, luggage, or office-furniture company. She pays for the equipment she writes about. The exception, as elsewhere on the magazine, is the occasional long-term loaner she is asked to evaluate, which is disclosed in the piece. She maintains no affiliate accounts. She has no equity in, and accepts no honoraria from, any company whose product appears in her rankings, including her former employer Herman Miller.
Issues by Diane Olawumi-Becker
Recent work
Top 5 Carry-On Luggage Picks for 2026
Five carry-on luggage picks for 2026, with the Away The Carry-On at the top. Tested across long-distance multi-leg travel, ranked on the durability and design that matter.
Top 5 Home Office Chairs
Five home office chairs for 2026, with the Herman Miller Aeron at the top. Tested across full working weeks, ranked on the long-term comfort and durability that matter.
Top 5 Travel Adapters
Five travel adapters worth carrying in 2026, with the OneAdaptr OneWorld65 at the top. Tested for actual hotel-room use across multiple continents.