Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Planning for Maintaining

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | October 2nd, 2017

In an individualistic culture such as the United States, users will fiddle with any space provided. The souls of people from individualistic cultures cannot rest without changing things – the inability to do so generates stress that diverts them from whatever work they’re being paid to do. Even a place that somehow manages to align with what workers need to do and how they can best do whatever that is will be modified. And, perhaps most horribly for the original designers, those modifications will come at the hands of people without any design training or related expertise. Building-in opportunities for users to make changes without uglying-up spaces is a good idea. Consider whether furniture can be shifted and visual barriers added or be height adjusted, for example. Building-in options for modifications helps keep a space looking and feeling good, and so does selecting materials that will wear well, under expected …