Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Working in the Den

Article.Concurrents.InteriorDesignBySJBInteriorsPseudo-dens (or pseudo-living rooms, depending on how your family lives) were initially spotted in workplaces several years ago. Sofas and somehow coordinated one person seats first appeared in clusters at NeoCon and from there it was simply a matter of time before they made their way into the wide, wide world.

In dens (and even in some living rooms), people can stretch out on sofas and maybe even put their feet up. Depending on corporate and national culture, it’s possible to sit casually in workplace pseudo-dens and sometimes shift the furniture around a little bit – environmental psychology has shown these actions can have desirable performance effects.

Some people, because of their personalities, like to sit slightly closer to each other (extraverts) or further away (introverts). The same goes for cultures, some favor smaller personal spaces than others. Research has even shown that extraverts are more likely to furnish their homes with sofas than one-person chairs while introverts do the reverse. Having options means people probably can sit in psychological comfort; psychological discomfort is stressful and distracts from the task at hand. The best “ office den” chairs can be gently shifted to desirable distances, if at first they’re not optimally placed.

Shifting and choosing also provide people with a feeling of control over their environment, which has been tied by cognitive science research to better performance by individuals and by groups.

Seating arrangements where all are facing toward each other generally spur participation in a discussion; cultures have different rules for how much eye contact is desirable, however. For frank discussions, where talk may range into more sensitive topics, such as job performance, cross-corner seats are best, and many den-type sofa and chair arrangements allow just that. In cross-corner arrangements, the fronts of seats are at 90 degrees to each other. When people sit in this way they can easily make eye contact with each other when desired but also gracefully look away from their conversation partner when discussion gets so intense that an “eye-break” is warranted.

Sofas have the added advantage of accommodating the posteriors of all, and the number of overweight people in the population, unfortunately, makes this useful.

Sitting with our feet up makes us feel just a little more powerful, and we act accordingly, so it’s desirable that if one person can recline or put their feet up, all present can – at least if free wheeling participation in a conversation is desired.

If long in-den sessions are expected, seats and surfaces for laptops should be carefully planned. Working on a laptop that’s actually in our lap for an extended period of time can be tough on joints and muscles.

Workplace pseudo-dens can be just the tonic that a “discussion-doctor” would order.

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.