Research recently published indicates the value of providing opportunities in workplaces for people to spend time apart. Bernstein, Shore and Lazer report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of Americaon their study of the performance of three-person groups doing a complex problem-solving assignment in three different situations. In some of the groups, members never interacted with each other, in another set of groups members interacted constantly, and in the final set of groups, members interacted intermittently with each other.
The investigators found that “the groups in which members never interacted [were] the most creative, coming up with the largest number of unique solutions – including some of the best and some of the worst…the groups that constantly interacted…produce[d] a higher average quality of solution, but that they…fail[ed] to find the very best solutions as often…Groups that interacted only intermittently preserved the best of both worlds…they had an average quality of solution that was nearly identical to those groups that interacted constantly…these groups also preserved enough variation to find some of the best solutions, too.” The researchers note that “open offices…often have some group spaces (booths, meeting rooms) and individual spaces (phone booths, pods) in which interaction can be paused for a period of time…these design-based tools for achieving intermittent rather than constant interaction may be even more important for organizational productivity and performance than previously thought.”
“Collaborate, But Only Intermittently, According to New Study by Harvard Business School Professor and Colleagues.” 2018. Press release, Harvard Business School, https://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/Pages/ethan-bernstein-collaborate-only-intermittently.aspx
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.