Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Active Design Leadership

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | January 25th, 2016

Designers, because of the knowledge they have and can acquire about human experience and performance in workplace environments, can and should actively lead the development of these spaces. Active design leadership regularly entails explaining to clients why workplaces they desire are not the ones where they should work – because of mismatches between the form of a place and the tasks to be accomplished there, the organizational and national culture of the people that will use it, etc. These difficult conversations are tough to initiate, and talks with clients are generally more acquiescent than frank. It’s challenging to convince a CEO who has seen the Googleplex on television or in a movie that maybe something else is a better investment for his/her organization. Designers have the ability to develop workplace options that clients and users can’t even imagine; introducing those options is a crucial component of active leadership. Because designers …