At Worktech17 in London there was a lot of talk about the future: future workplaces, future technology, future organizational structures, and so on, and on.
All the discussion of what is to come wasn’t really surprising. We have an inherent curiosity about what’s next for us. What was intriguing was the way that material presented from the podium, whether it was shared in support of new products or was “product-independent,” recognized and respected the fundamental forces that have been driving humans for many an eon.
As humans, our wellbeing and cognitive performance are best when we feel we have a reasonable level of control over our physical environment. That means we do well when we can modify our ambient conditions, such as the intensity of the lights and the ventilation in a space, for example. We can be overwhelmed when we need to make decisions about too many parameters, however. Generally people do best when they can determine about four.
Products discussed at Worktech allowed people not only to control their ambient conditions, but also to select workspaces based on the location of teammates or from an available in-building portfolio of the sorts of environments that they themselves favor. Being lost in a space or unable to find someone/something is among the most psychologically negative conditions we can encounter, and multiple products discussed help with wayfinding as well as locating teammates.
We also have a fundamental need for cognitive refreshment after we’ve exhausted ourselves by doing work that requires focus, and offerings at Worktech also supported human efforts to restock mental energy.
Presentations acknowledged how important it is for organizations to signal to workers that they are valued via workplace design. Making an effort to really understand what workers do and to align their physical environments with those activities goes a long way toward accomplishing that. Taking the time to understand national and organizational cultures was discussed; “culture knowledge” is important, not only for understanding workers’ motivations, but also for determining how their workplaces should be designed –and Worktech speakers reviewed culture in some detail.
An important takeaway from Worktech 17 in London was an apparent acknowledgement that even as technology advances, human brains, and the forces that motivate and reward people, haven’t changed, and will not change, for some time to come. The “super worker” who could do anything anywhere anytime seems to be fading from collective memory. Humans are again humans.
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.
