Humans, individually and in groups, need access to private spaces from time to time – and that includes when they’re at work. Our fundamental need for privacy is not the same as the one we have to be distraction free when we need to concentrate on a particular task.
In truly private situations, we know no one can see or hear us, and we also can’t see or hear others. This control over our existence and ability to think without interruption gives our minds the freedom to wander a bit and to make sense of what’s happening in our lives. Without these self-scheduled “sense-making” sessions we get tense, our mental performance starts to degrade and we become grumpy and unpleasant to be around. We determine when we, or a group we’re part of, need privacy or use of private spaces that can’t be scheduled in advance. Our need for privacy is related to whatever is happening around us.
In many workplaces currently in use, it’s hard for people to have privacy; with the open expanse of work areas everyone is always on view and each of their utterances can be heard. This vast openness drives some to retreat to their cars in the company parking lot and others, as Leonard has observed, to seek refuge in bathroom stalls where, at minimum, they can’t be seen by co-workers.
Workplaces need spaces where people can have solo privacy and also ones where employees can be alone with teammates or other colleagues. These spaces should, ideally, be both acoustically and visually shielded from others, and the organizational culture must permit their use. Doors and walls to the true ceiling and floor of a space, made out of a material at least as opaque as heavily frosted glass, are, with the technology currently available, the best readily accessible ways to make a space private. In the future, as true “cones of silence” reach the market, audio and visual privacy will be possible without those full height walls and doors.
A quiet zone or an area with restaurant style booths, for example, can minimize audio and visual distractions and support focused work, but neither is private because anyone can wander through them at any time. In genuinely private spaces, users have control over whom they see and hear and who sees and hears them.
The people who work in buildings you design and manage will search out private spaces in the course of their workdays. If you provide private areas in their workplaces, they will have the opportunity to slip away for a few moments and quickly reintegrate themselves into their work areas when their need for privacy has passed. If you don’t design in opportunities for privacy, you’ll find you have a shortage of bathroom stalls and lots of employees who leave the premises, on quests for privacy that take them away from their desks for substantial periods of time.
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.