It seems wherever I head in the popular media, I’m finding notices about new luxury spaces. Sometimes they’re homes, but regularly they’re other locations, such as zones on cruise ships.
Something that sets this newer set of luxurious offerings apart from others I’ve seen in the past is how much control they provide over user experience. Sure, finishes are sumptuous and views awe-inspiring, but a lot of what people seem to be paying for is the ability to determine who time is spent with – which on occasion may be nobody at all. People booking luxurious quarters on newer cruise ships, for example, know that they will have access to more square feet of space, as well as more streamlined opportunities to pack “extras” into their onboard time, than travelers who don’t pay the higher fees. They will be sharing their zone’s pool with a few other sunbathers, or maybe no one, depending on time of day. Sure, there have always been spaces to which some have access and others do not, but the vigorous marketing of the control provided by particular spaces now seems different from how luxurious spaces were often sold in the past.
I juxtapose this attention to luxury and control over experience with the increasing numbers of people who are working, on laptops, etc., while hidden away in bathroom stalls. The “stall workers” have not relocated from other work areas because of some sort of gastrointestinal crisis in the world of work. They seem to be relocating to do exactly what they’re doing, which is get some work done.
When I think of the current attention to control-based luxury and the increasing amount of work being done in bathrooms, I’m reminded how important it is for all of us to feel that we have some control over our experiences, at work and elsewhere. Control increases comfort, and comfortable levels of control have been linked to enhanced performance by individuals and groups. Comfortable control is just what it sounds like; people like to have the opportunity to modify some of the conditions in a space but don’t want to be overwhelmed by the number of options and choices they need to make – a couple of easy and quick to make decisions are best. So, it’s great to be able to rearrange furniture in a conference room and open and close drapes and turn on and off lights, but before meetings people don’t want to select the furniture that will be present in the meeting room at the time they’ll be there. Too much choice is too much, and stress distracts us from the task at hand.
The rise of the bathroom workers indicates that people don’t have real power to isolate themselves from others when they need or want to be free of distractions; these employees don’t have access to the captain’s cabin, continuing the cruise ship analogy, where they can retreat and toil undisturbed.
In workplaces, control is too often seen as an indulgence, particularly when it involves real influence over audio and visual experiences. Organizational culture can prevent workers from using shielded spaces that are available to them, and sometimes these areas aren’t designed in ways that really allow people to separate themselves from the world around them. Many involve transparent glass walls, for example, that encumber movement more than they support concentration, although clear walls can increase awareness of what teammates are up to, which has benefits in some situations. People can concentrate in academic libraries, which are pretty much completely open spaces, because our culture has traditionally restricted talking in them; open plan workplaces operate in a very different social and cultural context than libraries.
We need to stop thinking of comfortable and meaningful workplace control as an option and recognize that it supports the mindsets linked to peak professional performance.
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.