Don’t Fence Me In: A NeoCon Presentation by Gensler Houston

As our readers are well aware, we closely follow the workplace strategy efforts of Gensler Houston’s Sven Govaars and Dean Strombom, who have presented at what is now seven years of NeoCon. The pair presented their most current workplace strategy research in a NeoCon 2017 presentation titled “Don’t Fence Me In.” In case you missed it, we published a pre-NeoCon catch-up feature just before the show this year that included a brief summary of each of their presentations; check it out here.

In “Don’t Fence Me In,” Messrs. Govaars and Strombom explore the limitations we experience in the workplace, the nature of choice – how we make choices, and providing choices versus providing the right choices – and how we can use the Internet of Things to accomplish that. And the root that they kept coming back to was the experience a space provides.

“Engagement is what the organization is looking for, and the experience is what people are looking for. And it all comes down to the experience you (as designers) are creating.”

A good starting point from which to work is the idea of people, place and connectivity working in tandem.

“Where we used to talk about people, place and process, and then later, people, place and technology, we’re now thinking more holistically about people, place and connectivity,” said Mr. Govaars. “That connectivity includes things like technology and process, but it’s also about relationships. And even though we tend to dissect them when we discuss them, we have to think about all of these things – people, place and connectivity – together.”

People (the individuals) and place (the organization) blend together to create a co-created experience, and the connectivity piece is everything that enables those two to come together successfully if executed right.

“Place is critically important – the settings, zones and space types that people are working within,” said Mr. Govaars. “Place is about the mobility of where, when and how we work. If we don’t build signals into the workplace for how people can or should use them, they will go unused or misused. And so we need to begin to understand how we make choices – why we do what we do.”

But there are often significant barriers, or “fences,” blocking this free flowing relationship between people and place; Messrs. Govaars and Strombom outlined several, some of which are more tangible/easier to notice than others.

Fences Imposed By Organizations

VISIBLE FENCES:

>Focus on hierarchy

>Sign-in/sign-out

>Lunch hour

>Assigned space

>Set hours and time off

INVISIBLE FENCES:

>Golden handcuffs

>Incentives

 

FENCES WE IMPOSE ON OURSELVES

>Live for the weekend

>Low expectations

>Habit/repetition

>Business attire

>No days off

>Nights at the office

>Parent vs. worker

>Downtime guilt

Designers can help eliminate many of these fences by using a workplace strategy that thinks through the choices workers will have to make during the day at their place of work.

The past few years’ focus on providing people with choices in the workplace has come as direct reaction to the misuse of the open office. Now, Messrs. Govaars and Strombom are zeroing in on the nuances of choice, and how we can become better at designing choice.

“It’s not just providing choice; we have to help move, or nudge, people to make good choices,” said Mr. Strombom. “Right now there is a movement in bringing back some sense of self-awareness, not only to organizations and clients, but to ourselves as designers…it’s our job to think about every movement that they make that will affect their experience.”

To frame their thinking, Messrs. Govaars and Strombom turned to a book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.

Nudge is a book that came out during the Obama era, and it was all about, ‘how do you help people understand the choices you make?’” said Mr. Govaars. “It’s a sociological study that has a lot of great examples showing exactly why and how people make the decision they do. We started there to help frame our discussions about how we can apply this to what we’re all doing in workplace design.”

In order to do that, one must first get a good handle on the nature of how and why people make the choices they do, in a general sense.

Nudge’s chapter on “choice architecture” outlines a choice architect’s toolbox:

>INCENTIVES

>UNDERSTANDING MAPPINGS

>DEFAULTS

>GIVE FEEDBACK

>EXPECT ERROR

>STRUCTURE COMPLEX CHOICES

If you’re curious about the subject, check out the book here.

“‘People are being nudged all the time to make certain choices,” said Mr. Govaars. “Choice architecture’ addresses how you incentivize people, how you structure complex choices for people. If you design an elevator landing where people have to choose to go left or right to reach their destination – if they’re questioning, you haven’t created the right experience for people.”

Enter Gensler’s 10 Design Factors: air quality, acoustics, lighting, user controls, restorative, motivators, activity, nutrition, ergonomics and nature.

“The 10 Design Factors – and there can be many more than they ones we outline – are all tools we can use to shape the experience of a place,” said Mr. Govaars.

“People need to have the opportunity to move throughout a space in ways that make sense, and everything from tech mobility to simple things like color or a general vibe of formality or informality that a workspace indicate,” said Mr. Strombom. “For example, putting an interconnecting stair in just the right position to make it easy for people to use.”

Messrs. Govaars and Strombom highlighted real estate selection as an example of how designers can use the drill-down specifics of design factors to help their clients choose a space that will best serve their needs, their culture and ultimately their happiness in the workplace.

This brings us to, you guessed it – the Internet of Things, and “the understanding of everything.”

“The last piece of this is about asking, ‘Did we succeed?’” said Mr. Govaars. “Is the space working? Are people using the space as designed? Are there any unexpected things happening these spaces that we didn’t initially intend?”

Does your space successfully use design factors to balance individual, team and community settings/zones/space types? Some drill-down answers you should be looking for have to do with occupancy, movement, wellbeing, work modes and time.

In Gensler’s own Houston office, a workplace research study surveyed workers who could choose whether they were mobile/unassigned or had a permanent assigned space.

They found that the workers who had opted for a permanent assigned desk were more often bothered and distracted by noise, and felt they didn’t have the spaces they needed to do focus work. In contrast, the people who chose to be mobile/unassigned said they felt free to move around the workspace, traveling to and from versions of personal, collaborative, common and mobile space types as needed throughout their work day.”

“We realized we needed to help people understand and become more comfortable with their ability and willingness to move around, so that we would be able to move people, and not chairs,” said Mr. Govaars. “This goes back to the idea that a person’s experience within a space is the most important thing.”

“It’s not at all our intent to prescribe specific things, or specific company culture changes, to every client. It’s about giving back time to people, and thinking about the brand experience you’re creating.”

Designers can use the Internet of Things, noted Messrs. Govaars and Strombom, to gather solid feedback and create better experiences for people who now expect their world to cater to a “What’s in it for me” mindset. Their presentation quotes IT solutions company Avende in identifying what that best-case scenario looks like:

>”The places I like to work know me and anticipate/recommend ways to optimize my experience.”

>”I can work seamlessly and securely (on my own or with others) from any location.”

>”I can improve my work style and identify opportunities by drawing insight from my personal analytics.”

>”The nature of my work informs the automated personalization of my workspace.”

“Things like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home are good examples of the Internet of Things helping us build our own experiences,” said Mr. Strombom. “If we can make people more joyful and have more purpose through the use of the Internet of Things, then we want to do that.”

The presentation, available for viewing at freerangeworkspace.com, gave attendees a lot of food for thought, concluding with a fitting quote that we’ll close with as well:

“Some people building fences to keep people out – and other people build fences to keep people in. May all your fences have gates.” – August Wilson

Until next year!