Should workplace designers be paying attention to current retail practices? Are store designers and office designers facing the same challenges?
Maybe.
While reading a November 17 article in the New York Times (Tiffany Hsu, November 17, “Retailers Experiment With a New Philosophy: Smaller is Better,” (http://nyti.ms/2EixHqa), I was intrigued to hear retail strategists raising some of the same issues that people developing offices do.
This is the quote that drew my attention: “’People don’t have to go to stores anymore; they have to want to go,’ said Lee Peterson, an executive vice president at WD Partners, a strategy, design and architecture firm. ‘And that goes a long way when thinking about what retail has to become.’”
One of the retail options highlighted by Hsu was a showroom–type space located in an upscale area of Los Angeles called Nordstrom Local. It is described as a “3,000-square-foot space…employs a handful of specialists…[it] was designed as a kind of neighborhood hub, where customers can get manicures, have a shirt altered, pick up parcels purchased online or sip rosé from the well-stocked bar. They do not come to shop – at least not in the traditional sense. The store has no inventory for sale…Customers work with personal stylists to put together ensembles.”
Offices are linked to work, which provides people with the income they need to eat, as well as to shop at Nordstrom, so there are clearly different reasons people visit each sort of place, and good design acknowledges those varying motivations.
The idea of establishing time-worthy destinations seems to be a common goal of workplace and retail designers, however. The sort of “make your life easier” and “relax” services available at Nordstrom Local are reminiscent of those offered at many coworking sites. After all of the attention-gathering amenities are provided, however, stores are still trying to sell merchandise and offices to get people to work to their full potential (or, more euphemistically, add value to the organization).
Both retail and office designers are trying to signal the same demographic that they’re desirable places to be –those desirable demographics would be working age people with the money for discretionary purchases, or skills that justify payments that support discretionary purchases – so forms and formats that encourage desired actions are transferable, one context to another.
Subscriptions to retail design periodicals may be in order for office designers.
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.