Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Standing Sight Lines

Study after recent study has shown that people toiling away in offices sit too much and that standing up for a while from time to time while working can be good for our mental and physical wellbeing.

If some people in a space are standing while working and others are sitting, interesting and undesirable psychological effects can, however, ensue.

Human beings have a primordial aversion to being loomed over. That’s what happens when someone is standing beside us and we’re seated, no matter why we’re standing or sitting. Looming makes us tense; when we’re tense, we don’t focus well on whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

In many workspaces today, visual dividers between workers don’t do much to block views of co-workers, even when all are sitting down. Someone standing in the midst of all of these short panels has a clear and completely unobstructed view into neighboring work areas. This makes a circle of workspaces around a standing one pretty undesirable places to work. Co-workers will avoid seats near standing desks, which can harm productivity. As boundaries between work and non-work lives evaporate, even the most conscientious of workers sometimes needs to take care of a little personal business at their desk, or work a little piece of lunchtime spinach out from between two teeth – who wants to take care of this “business” next to a standing colleague?

Confidential information on the computer screens of standing workers can also be more easily viewed by passers-by, potentially, depending on workplace layout, which complicates office design decisions.

A person is distracted by whatever is happening in his/her visual and acoustic range while standing just as they are while sitting. Standing workers are exposed to many more distracting sights and sounds than seated ones. They also are audible and visible to more people, so whatever they’re doing is diverting attention from the task at hand for a greater distance from them than usual. The same goes for comments made by people who visit them while they work.

A standing person can become the location guru for an area in general, asked by visitors where particular people might be, when they left their desk, etc. – which is not good for the quality and quantity of work produced by that standing person.

Static standing height opaque panels (e.g., heavily frosted or solid) around standing workers correct this problem. Those standing height panels can influence flow of daylight through a space, however, which is not terribly desirable, particularly if sit-to-stand desks are placed near windows. Systems where panels get higher as desks grow taller are a better option.

Sit-to-stand desk options give people a feeling of control in their physical environment, which has been directly linked to improved performance. This advantage complements the physiology-based benefits of standing on thinking and health. Acknowledging concerns for workers’ physical and psychological wellbeing by providing sit-stand desks also sends desirable nonverbal messages about management’s concerns for employee welfare – so standing while working is definitely something workplaces should support. Visually screening for standing workers enhances the positive repercussions of working while standing, raising them to new heights. (Sorry, this pun was irresistible.)

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.