Research Design Connection: Supporting Team Work

 

Confirming previous research, Greenway, Thai, Haslam and Murphy report that a group’s performance is tied to the “decoration” of the spaces where they work. The research team told participants in a study they conducted that they were members of a red team and then had them personalize their work area with a poster they developed and red decorations. A rival group was identified as a blue team. Then, the test groups were moved to another space with red decorations, with blue decorations, or with none at all. Greenway and her group determined that “Work teams performed better [on a cognitive task] in both ingroup [red] spaces and outgroup [blue] spaces than in undecorated spaces.” Team room design and policies can support customization by group members.

Katharine Greenway, Hannibal Thai, S Haslam, and Sean Murphy. 2016. “Spaces That Signal Identity Improve Workplace Productivity.” Journal of Personnel Psychology, vol. 15, pp. 3-43.

Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.