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What’s your Work Space Like?

What’s your Work Space Like?

A new book from environmental psychologist Dr Sally Augustin PhD (Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture) explains how to create spaces that enrich human experience through person-centred design. The book offers insights into how elements of the physical environment influence human attitudes and behaviours. She introduces the general principles of place science and shows how factors such as colours, scents, textures, and the spatial composition of a room, as well as personality and culture, impact the experience of a place. These principles are applied to multiple building types, including workplaces, healthcare facilities, residences, schools, and retail spaces.
 
Here are a few of Dr Agustin’s ideas for designing an engaging workplace:
  1. Don’t underestimate the power of colour: We’re relaxed in the presence of colours that aren’t very saturated but are relatively bright and that aren’t cluttered. Moderate visual complexity is best. That means the space should include only a few colours and patterns, and that decorative objects be carefully curated, for example.
  2. Get outsiders to get feedback: Workers interpret their environments based on their national culture, organisational culture, professional culture and personal experiences. If you want to know what your employees think about where you’re asking them to work, get someone from outside the company to ask them. This will ensures that all responses are anonymous and kept confidential, and listen to that feedback.
  3. Let your workers have some control: Workplaces that support engagement communicate that employees are valued and also give workers some control over the physical experiences they have at the office.
  4. The chipmunk test: When you’re thinking about furnishings and features in workplaces and engagement, keep the chipmunk in mind. Humans are comfortable in the sorts of protected seats with a view over the surrounding area that give us the same secure feeling we’d have in a comfy space nestled in the trees. Similar spaces are easy to introduce into modern workplaces. Tuck small meeting spaces into alcoves off hallways or floors of workspaces. Give yourself bonus points if these spaces are raised a step and a tiny bit darker than the surrounding area.
 
Workplace design can make higher levels of employee engagement more likely. Honest design, spaces that reflect employees’ needs and concerns, is something that employees notice, interpret and value. It can boost engagement, when given a chance.
 
Information about how people are influenced by the places around them has been locked in scientific journals, unavailable to non-scientists.  Place Advantage liberates it and delivers it to people who can use it in an easy-to-read, liberally illustrated text.  After reading Place Advantage, you will understand why people respond to particular spaces in certain ways and how to create places that serve real human needs.
 
© Harvard Business Review 2014. Sally Augustin is a practising design/environmental psychologist and a principal at Design with Science in the USA.

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