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Office Design Interventions and Behavioral Implications (08-09-10)
August 2010

In this open source article, Sailer and her colleagues introduce readers to important tenets of space syntax by investigating the influence of several office design interventions on organizational behavior.  Space syntax principles are migrating from academic labs to real world implementations, and this readable introduction to the field is useful to people who want to begin to integrate space syntax into their design process. 

 

Space syntax is a highly ordered system for assessing or predicting the behavioral implications of the design of a space. Its tenets can be directly applied or used to inspire easier to implement research programs. 

 

Several case studies are presented. They show space syntax methods in use in combination with more well established research tools, such as observation and written surveying.  One case study discusses a large media corporation in London that decided to co-locate employees who had previously been distributed in several buildings.  This change was made not only to use space more efficiently, but also to encourage interactions among specific groups of workers.  The new workspace utilized three floors of a large office building, with offices spread across all three floors.  An open reception area was built on the ground floor, as well as neighboring meeting rooms. A café was placed one floor above that reception area.  Central facilities, described as “printing points, meeting rooms, and soft seating areas,” are present on all floors.  An open staircase connects the ground floor with the café floor.  The central portion of each floor is an open atrium. 

 

This configuration increased movement within the office space, which was annoying to some employees.  As the authors state, “movement was first and foremost perceived as a factor causing noise disturbance . . . rather than creating opportunities to meet and encounter people for recruitment and further processes of interaction.”  Even though people were moving more, they were interacting less around their desks and the researchers have concluded after comparing results from several projects that “Interactivity at workstations generally decreases as movement density increases, specifically as movement density becomes very high.”  Reports of intensive face-to-face contact increased after the work groups were co-located which means that personal interactions moved from individuals’ desks to other places and “these results point towards organisational behaviours that were more planned and less spontaneous.”

 

Designers who have been frustrated by the complexity of other discussions of space syntax, but want to learn more about the field, will benefit from reading this article.

 

Kerstin Sailer, Andrew Budgen, Nathan Lonsdale, Alasdair Turner, and Alan Penn.  2010.  “Pre and Post Occupancy Evaluations in Workplace Environments:  Theoretical Reflections and Practical Implications.”  Journal of Space Syntax, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 199-213, http://www.journalofspacesyntax.org

Individual Workplaces as Preferred Places (08-06-10)
August 2010

Hua and her colleagues assessed worker satisfaction with various sorts of collaborative spaces and some of their findings have been discussed in other Research Design Connections blog posts.  This article focuses on their results related to individual workstations.

 

Data were collected at public workplaces in eleven office buildings in eight American cities:  “The sites were selected with help from the General Service Administration, on the basis of building accessibility and similar level of need for collaboration in the work activities which these buildings accommodate.  The vintage and spatial layout of the buildings studied were representative of the profile of workplaces in the public sector.”

 

This research by Hua and her team has shown that individual workspaces are key for interpersonal activity:  82.3% of those completing their study survey used individual workstations for casual conversation, 32.8% indicated that they utilized kitchens and coffee areas for the same purpose, while meeting rooms were preferred by 31.8%.  Open meeting areas, shared printer areas, and circulation spaces were chosen by from 23.7% to 24.7% of participant for conversations.  For collaborative work, meeting rooms were preferred by 88.6% of workers as compared to 52.8% who selected individual workstations with open meeting areas trailing at 24.7%. 

 

Even when there are shared spaces in the workplace, “there is a clear preference for individual workstations as places for collaborative work and casual interaction.”

 

The researchers conclude that “Workstations are still critical elements in workplaces, and they need to be carefully designed and tailored to the nature of work in a particular organization in a way that considers their relationship with shared spaces in the workplace.”

 

Ying Hua, Vivian Loftness, Robert Kraut, and Kevin Powell.  2010.  “Workplace Collaborative Space Layout Typology and Occupant Perception of Collaboration Environment.”  Environment and Planning B:  Planning and Design, vol. 37, pp. 429-448.

Sounds of Sleep (08-05-10)
August 2010

Solet and her team have investigated the noise levels that can be experienced by hospital patients during the night.  Their “results provide evidence that repeated arousals occur from common hospital noises at typical decibel levels even in healthy young adults.  The reported responses varied with the sound stimulus characteristics and across different sleep stages.”  Although their data were collected in a sleep laboratory, the researchers were careful to recreate the sound levels and types experienced by hospital patients by using recordings of noises made in hospitals.  This project is noteworthy because it carefully quantifies the sleep disrupting capabilities of nighttime hospital noises. 

 

Specifically, researchers found “Phone and intravenous infusion pump alarms, which are intentionally designed to be alerting, were effective in evoking the highest arousal probabilities. “  Conversations among staff members were also found to impede sleep. 

 

The research team make the common sense suggestion to reduce background noise levels in hospitals, from HVAC systems, for example, and then lower the volume of pump alarms, lower the ring volumes on patient room phones and reduce the number of rings sounded for any one telephone call.  Surface materials and other tools to limit sound transmission from nurses’ stations are also suggested.  In addition “Special consulting spaces should be allocated for nurses in which voice-based information can be transferred away from open hall areas, yet not far from nursing stations. Protocols such as dimming hall lights at night as a “quiet cue” should be incorporated as part of behavioral protocols to limit sleep disruption by staff voices.”  Finally, “Proper door hardware will limit latch noises; door gasket selection will better protect patients from hall and nurses’ station noise, as well as blocking transfer out of noise generated within that patient room.  Policy regarding keeping patient doors open should be re examined. Other options should be considered, including systems-level solutions such as telemetry to a common station and assignment of staff to specific patients, allowing them to be individually alerted to patient needs.” 

 

Solet and her colleagues report “A quieter environment is also more protective of staff, reducing stress and burnout, enhancing communication, and reducing medical errors—all of which contribute to higher quality healthcare. “

 

Specific details regarding the sounds types and levels tested are available in the complimentary report at the website noted below.

 

Jo Solet, Orfeu Buxton, Jeffrey Ellenbogen, Wei Wang, and Andrew Carballeira.  2010.  “Evidence-Based Design Meets Evidence-Based Medicine:  The Sound Sleep Study.”  Center for Health Design, http://www.healthdesign.org

Relaxing Roads Not Safe Roads (08-04-10)
August 2010

Americans feel more relaxed and safer on rural highways according to a study recently conducted at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Excellence in Rural Safety.  That relaxed feeling is consistent with the tension reducing effects of looking at and being in nature found by other researchers.  Rural highways are generally less crowded than urban ones, which also reduces experienced stress levels.  The Minnesota lead research team also determined that relaxed country drivers are more likely to take risks on rural highways and to die on those roads.  Perhaps in this instance, nature puts people in too peaceful a mood for their own safety.

 

“Americans Take More Risks When They Drive the Nation’s Rural Highways.”  2010.  Press release, University of Minnesota, http://www1.umn.edu.

Color Illusions (08-03-10)
August 2010

Kitaoka comprehensive reviews color illusions of interest to designers.  His findings are reported – and illustrated - in an open source article available at http://www.colour-journal.org/2010/5/3/.  Color constancy, color illusion s related to assimilation and contrast, visual completion, figure-ground segregation, and color induction by motion are addressed.

 

Akiyoshi Kitaoka.  2010.  “A Brief Classification of Colour Illusions.”  Colour:  Design and Creativity, vol. 5, pp. 1-9.

Mood and Perception (08-02-10)
August 2010

As reported in earlier blog posts, design has a significant influence on experienced mood.  Recent research by Avramova and her colleagues indicates that while being in a negative mood “promotes attention to a salient target,” being in a positive mood “enhances attention to both target and context.” This means that when people are in a negative mood they are more likely to focus directly on an item being evaluated, but when in a positive mood they will compare the item being judged to others being simultaneously experienced. As the researchers state “Although everything is relative, it is more so when one is happy.”  In addition, people in a positive mood “have a better memory for specific context features than did those in a negative mood.”

 

The findings presented indicate that people can be expected to be in a positive mood, designers must be careful to insure that the context is consistent with the focal element and design intention, while this consistency is not so important when people can be expected to be in a negative mood (e.g., a wedding chapel vs. the department of motor vehicles).

 

This research is compliments previous research indicating that “happy people typically have a broader visual scope, focus on more global features of stimuli, and boast a more open and generative mindset, whereas sad people typically have a more narrow visible scope, focus on local features of stimuli and have a more detail-oriented analytic mindset.”  Although these findings are consistent with that material “That you can blame your mood for buying a couch that would not fit your living room or for lifting a weight that could cause you back pain is both interesting and new.”

 

Yana Avramova, Diederik Stapel, and Davy Lerouge.  2010.  “Mood and Context-Dependence:  Positive Mood Increases and Negative Mood Decreases the Effects of Context on Perception.”  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 99, no. 2, pp. 203-214.

Spaces Featured at the National Design Triennial (07-30-10)
July 2010

The National Design Triennial exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City features several intriguing spaces that support its “community” theme.  For example, the vertical village developed by Maas, van Rijs, and de Vries of MVRDV  as a temporary installation in Taipei “uses existing buildings as ‘hosts’ for extensions of different typologies, materials, and forms. The architects observed and used as their model the informal structures built on rooftops in crowded Chinese cities such as Taipei and Beijing.  They expand the living space of the occupant in a highly personalized way and provide dense, socially connected communities with an overall diversity of structure and design.”  Another featured space is the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet:  “an edifice that is as publicly interactive as it is monumental. Its most distinctive feature is a white marble roofscape, which appears like two intersecting ski jumps culminating in the water to the west, yet is really a buzzing public plaza on which one can climb and experience the building without going inside.”  A third structure profiled is the Carver Apartments in Los Angeles, which provide homes for homeless elderly and disabled people:  “The architect, Michael Maltzan, has carefully anchored the design to incorporate the outside world while offering a sanctuary for the tenants. For instance, the laundry and community room on the third floor are at the exact level of the freeway so tenants can watch the passing cars. Other common areas have sweeping views of the skyline and street, emphasizing the strong connection between exterior and interior.”

 

http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org

 

 

Background Music and Performance (07-29-10)
July 2010

Millions of people listen to background music every day in open or cubicle style work environments to avoid being distracted from professional tasks.  New research indicates that listening to background music, whether it is liked or not, can impair performance.  These findings support the development of quiet areas for cognitive work.

 

Nick Perham and Joanne Vizard.  “Can Preference for Background Music Mediate the Irrelevant Sound Effect?  Applied Cognitive Psychology, in press.

Varying Daydreaming Cues (07-28-10)
July 2010

What people are daydreaming about influences how quickly they forget recently learned material, so different daydream cues are useful in particular situations.  Delaney and his colleagues learned that “Daydreams that are more different from the current moment (e.g., in distance, time, or circumstance) will result in more forgetting than daydreams that are less different from the current moment, because they result in a greater contextual shift.”  Artwork of scenes from a distant continent thus has a more useful, amnesic effect in a space in which people will rest after an unpleasant medical procedure than artwork depicting local landmarks.

 

Peter Delaney, Lili Sahakyan, Colleen Kelley, and Carissa Zimmerman.  2010.  “Remembering to Forget:  The Amnesic Effect of Daydreaming.”  Psychological Science, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 1036—1042.

Threatening Information and Open Spaces (07-27-10)
July 2010

Cesario and his colleagues have investigated how place design influences responses to threatening stimuli.  When exposed to images of potentially dangerous items in an enclosed space from which flight was impossible, participants in their study responded to the visuals with aggression.  When the same items were experienced in an open area, from which escape was possible, the responses were thoughts of “flight” instead of “fight.”  This finding suggests that threatening or stressful information should be presented in more open environments.

 

Joseph Cesario, Jason Plaks, Nao Hagiwara, Carlos Navarrete, and E. Higgins.  “The Ecology of Automaticity:  How Situational Contingencies Shape Action Semantics and Social Behavior.”  Psychological Science, in press.

 

Maturing Buildings (07-26-10)
July 2010

Hollis, an architect and designer who teaches at the Edinburgh College of Art, traces the life courses of classic examples of Western architecture.  He focuses on specific structures (the Parthenon, Notre Dame de Paris, the Alhambra, for example), unlike Stewart Brand who tool a more general approach in How Buildings Learn.  As Hollis describes, “This is a book of tales about the lives that buildings lead, in the course of which they all change into ‘something rich and strange’ . . . Buildings long outlive the purposes for which they were built, the technologies by which they were constructed, and the aesthetics that determined their form;  they suffer numberless subtractions, additions, divisions, and multiplications; and soon enough their form and their function have little to do with one another. . . The fact that all great buildings mutate over time is often treated as something of a dirty secret, or at best a source of melancholic reflection.  This book argues not only that buildings will change, but also that they should. . . The buildings described in this book shapeshift from century to century, so the traditional chronologies of style that order architectural history are useless here.  Instead, if there is an overarching structure to the sequence of stories, it derives from the ways in which attitudes toward architectural alteration have changed over time.. . Not one of the buildings whose secret lives are recounted here has lost anything by having been transformed.  Instead, they have endured in a way that they would never have done if no one had ever altered them.”.

 

Edward Hollis.  2009.  The Secret Lives of Buildings.  New York:  Metropolitan Books.

 

Workers’ Perceptions of Collaborative Environments (07-23-10)
July 2010

Hua and her colleagues comprehensively analyzed workplaces, identifying physical factors perceived by workers to support collaborative work or linked by workers to distractions from other people’s interactions. 

Three sorts of collaborative spaces were found:  “Team-related collaborative spaces include conference rooms in formal settings, open meeting areas in less formal settings, and team rooms in which certain work groups have priority for their meetings and group work.  Shared service areas in which large-volume copiers, printers, and other shared office equipment are located.  . . amenity-related spaces . . . in which conversations and collaborative work may take place include kitchens, coffee areas, and lounges.” 

Distances were calculated by determining “the shortest distance between two points along an orthogonal path that passes inside the shape (floor plate)” because this method “reflects the circulation routes in workplaces.” 

The researchers determined that floor plates in which meeting rooms are distributed around the core of the structure or at the core and in the corners of the floor plan “often have a shorter average distance from workstations to meeting space” and are perceived to be most supportive of collaborative work and least distracting to other workers.  The other categories of meeting space layouts recognized by the researchers included: no dedicated meeting spaces, one large meeting room, group meeting rooms, meeting rooms distributed around the floor to reflect worker density (i.e., more workers, more rooms), and distributed meeting rooms not positioned relative to occupant density. The service-related space arrangement that best supported collaboration and was least distracting had copiers placed in dedicated hubs and embedded in workstation neighborhoods. This arrangement beat out the other configures found: copiers along travel routes, randomly positioned copiers, and copiers in centralized, dedicated spaces.  Findings for the amenity-related spaces were not clear.  

The final section of the paper includes the design recommendation that meeting rooms be located near workstation zones for perceived support collaboration since  “Nearby meeting rooms enable occupants to use those spaces to carryout their collaborative work and casual interactions as needed.  Importantly, these meeting spaces need to have good acoustic enclosure to avoid distracting occupants in nearby workstations. . . The value of shared service and amenity areas in workplace collaboration lies largely in their ability to accommodate impromptu encounters among co-workers, which can initiate interactions for socialization, information exchange, work coordination, and creative development.”  Since interactions in these spaces can be distracting to people working nearby “carefully designed dedicated spaces for shared functions are preferred over the solution in which printers, copiers, and coffee pots clutter circulation aisles or occupy vacant workstations . . .more floor space dedicated to service-related places for casual interaction is also preferred because it increases the possibility of moving noise-generating activities away from workstations.”

Hua and her co-researchers collected a great deal of information that supports these conclusions, so workplace designers can feel comfortable utilizing them.

Ying Hua, Vivian Loftness, Robert Kraut, and Kevin Powell.  2010.  “Workplace Collaborative Space Layout Typology and Occupant Perception of Collaboration Environment.”  Environment and Planning B:  Planning and Design, vol. 37, pp. 429-448.

Longevity => More Positive Evaluation (07-22-10)
July 2010

The longer something has been around, the more positive our evaluation of it.  Eidelman, Pattershall, and Crandall conducted a number of related experiments, some of which were related to aesthetic judgments of art and nature.  They found that “time in existence seems to operate as a heuristic: longer means better.”  Study participants were told the age of the material being assessed and that age was the only difference between items judged.  In the situations studied, age has no necessary relationship to quality (so wines were not evaluated, for instance).  This finding explains some of the more “interesting” assessments of objects and places designers encounter.

 

Scott Eidelman, Jennifer Pattershall, and Christian Crandall.  “Longer is Better.”  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, in press.

Psychological State Influences Color Perception (07-21-10)
July 2010

Everyday expressions link psychological depression with the color gray.  Recent research indicates there’s a reason for that and shows how much mental state influences perception of the world.  Depressed people, whether they are taking medication or not, see the world as grayed out; they are not as able to notice contrasts. The more depressed people are, the more grayed their vision is.  This makes color perception a potential diagnostic tool and also helps explain differing responses to colors presented in palettes, etc.

 

Emanuel Bubi, Elena Kern, Dieter Ebert, Michael Bach, and Ludger van Elst.  2010. “Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue?  Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased.”  Biological Psychiatry, vol. 68, no 2, pp. 205-208.

Busyness is Goodness (07-20-10)
July 2010

People dislike being unoccupied, and clever designers may be able to reduce idleness in spaces they develop.  They will need to be clever, however, because “People dread idleness, yet they need a reason to be busy.”  This reason has to be just good enough so that we can justify our actions to ourselves.  A direct relationship between busyness and happiness is found even when people are compelled to be busy.  As the researchers describe, some designers are already making people happy by eliminating idleness:  “Airports have tried to increase the happiness (or reduce the unhappiness) of passengers waiting at the baggage carousel by increasing the distance between the gate and the baggage claim area, forcing them to walk far rather than wait idly.”

 

C. Hsee, A. Yang, and L. Wang.  2010.  “Idleness Aversion and the Need for Justifiable Busyness.”  Psychological Science, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 926-930.

Where Lab Mice Live Matters (07-19-10)
July 2010

Space design matters to non-human species, too.  Researchers have determined that cage design influences the response of mice to experimental situations even when the environment is not specifically being studied:  “seemingly innocuous changes in cage environments can affect sensory input relevant to mice and elicit profound effects on neural output.”

 

Anthony Oliva, Ernesto Salcedo, Jennifer Hellier, Xuan Ly, Kanthaiah Koka, Daniel Tolin and Diego Restrepp.  2010.  “Toward a Mouse Neuroethology in the Laboratory Environment.”  PLoS ONE, vol. 5, no. 6, http://www.plosone.org.

How Little We Notice, In General (07-16-10)
July 2010

In a famous experiment about a decade ago, researchers found that half the people asked to pay attention to something that actors in a video were doing failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit who walked between those actors.  Now researchers have determined that even people who have been told that a specific sort of unusual event will be included in a viewed scene often fail to notice other unusual events in the same scene, just like people who haven’t been warned about the first unexpected inclusion.    Our blindness to the unexpected when focusing on a task argues for intuitive design, particularly in public spaces.  People often do not see what they do not expect to be present.

 

Daniel Simons.  2010.  “Monkeying Around with the Gorillas in Our Midst:  Familiarity with an Inattentional-Blindness Task Does Not Improve the Detection of Unexpected Events, i-Perception, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 3-6.

Language and Looking (07-15-10)
July 2010

Not all languages describe or discuss the physical environment in the same way. The language and words that you are hearing has an influence on what you see, according to recent research by Lupyan and Spivey. This finding is consistent with previous research indicating that sensory perception is influenced by the language being spoken.  For example, an earlier posting in this blog discussed a study of Russian speakers who were more attuned to differences in shades of blue, apparently because their language has distinct words for them, unlike English where modifiers are paced in front of a common base (the word “blue”).  Lupyan and Spivey’s work reinforces the importance of cultural sensitivity in design.

Gary Lupyan and Michael Spivey. 2010.  Making the Invisible Visible:  Verbal But Not Visual Cues Enhance Visual Detection.”  PLoS One, vol. 5, no. 7, http://www.plosone.org.

Real World Test of Inattention While Talking On a Mobil Phone (07-14-10)
July 2010

Although multiple studies have shown that people speaking on mobile phones are not very attentive to their physical environments, prior investigations have often been conducted in somewhat unrealistic circumstances.  Hyman and his colleagues have determined that the same lack of attention is found when real world situations are observed.  They assessed the behaviors of people walking while using a mobile phone or iPod, walking with another human, or traveling alone and not using a phone or iPod.  Only 25% of the people talking on the phone noticed a clown unicycling nearby, while 61% of iPod listeners did, 51% of people walking alone without a phone or iPod saw the clown, and 71% of those walking with someone else spotted the clown.  People designing circulation routes and wayfinding signage for the safe and efficient use of even walkers clearly face difficult challenges.

Ira Hyman, S. Boss, Breanne Wise, Kira McKenzie, and Jenna Caggiano, 2009.  “Did You See the Unicycling Clown?  Inattentional Blindness While Walking and Talking on a Cell Phone.”  Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 597-607.

Screening the Back Spaces (07-13-10)
July 2010

Porath and her colleagues have investigated situations in which customers see employees interact who are upset with each other, and the ramifications are dire.  They determined “Witnessing an incident of employee-employee incivility causes consumers to make negative generalizations about (a) others who work for the firm, (b) the firm as a whole, and (c) future encounters with the firm, inferences that go well beyond the incivility incident.”  Building in places throughout front spaces in places such as restaurants and service centers where negative back stage events between employees can be fully shielded from client view decreases the likelihood that these interactions will harm an employer’s competitive position.

Christine Porath, Debbie Macinnis, and Valerie Folkes. “Witnessing Incivility Among Employees:  Effects on Consumer Anger and Negative Inferences About Companies.”  Journal of Consumer Research, in press.