Humans like to experience the passage of time, to have an idea what time and what day it is, and when we don’t we get tense. Time during the COVID-era seems, often, to not make sense—it seems to be measured in Zoom calls and time between Zoom calls.
You can add clocks and calendars, on walls, in electronics, wherever, to help mark the time and date and that helps some, but there are other steps you can take that put workplace users at ease, time-wise.
Humans are very attuned to the time messages that we get from the sun. If a space is naturally lit, we have a good idea what time of day it is and also some idea of the season—just as we need to know what time it is on any particular day, we like to keep of track of the flow of time at a more macro level, by weeks, months, and time-of-the-year.
If a place is “challenged” from a natural light perspective, artificial circadian lighting is especially important. If an “official” circadian system is unavailable, using light from bulbs that are a little warmer and dimmer closer to dawn and sunset and brighter cooler light during the mid-part of the day can help stress-wise. Fixtures can be fitted with different sorts of bulbs and turned on and off as appropriate.
Changing the look of a workplace slightly every month or so also makes it clear that time has passed. Here we’re talking about rotating a few paintings to different places in the office or changing the sort of candy in the receptionist’s candy dish, not dramatic overhauls of interiors; we find familiarity comforting, particularly if that familiarity is part of a positive experience.
Also, make sure there are workplace rituals. This may mean reinstating some old ones and adding new. The sorts of regular activities that become more organized rituals can take a variety of forms—from celebrating work anniversaries or a monthly set of birthdays, to noting other personal or organizational achievements to something else entirely, like everyone taking off the first day of April to go on a Spring hike.
Helping people keep track of the time, at more micro and macro levels, is helping people feel comfortable during uncertain times. And that is time well spent.
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.