Recently, I’ve seen another slew of articles about how beneficial walking is for our health and they’ve reminded me how good walking is for our brains.
While we’re walking (inside or outdoors) and after we finish up a walk our cognitive performance gets a boost. Our ability to remember things improves along with our creativity. We’re also apt to be more talkative while walking, so taking someone on a walk may get a needed dialogue started.
We tend to think about taking walks outside and in the perfect world for many, walks are not only outside but through lovely gardens, lush countryside, or something similar. In our pandemic wary era, many of us have been doing more of our socializing on outdoor walks.
But walking outdoors when at work has issues. Depending on the season and outdoor temperature the idea of venturing outside for a walk can be less than desirable. Also, nearly everywhere it rains from time to time and walking in the rain is not high on many to-do lists. And many offices are located in areas where going out for a walk can be a hazard for lungs and limbs.
So designing into workplaces opportunities to walk inside can be an effective use of floorspace; a loop that winds its way around the outer edge of a space, near the windows on each side of the structure (all on one floor, no stairs), can get people circulating and their minds percolating. Signage or other indications that the route has been developed for walking aren’t necessary. If it exists and corporate culture allows people to venture along it, people will spontaneously start to use it to walk.
It is desirable if places for focused work don’t border the route, as people will walk in groups and talk as they do so; hearing those conversations in the background would be distracting. A route can be demarcated by a change of flooring – say hardwood in a sea of carpeting, or by a swathe of floorspace without furniture, for example.
If the walking route is bathed in sunlight that’s great, and having views outside to nature or placing potted plants along the route indoors can be a plus—but it seems that our brains benefit from walking even if we’re just staring ahead into whatever happens to be in front of us as we amble along.
If a walkway has the potential to become a gallery, materials on walls can remind walkers of organizational culture, values, community, clients, etc., or promote mental refreshment.
Trip hazards along walkways can bring many pleasant and productive ruminations to an undesirable conclusion. Also, some people can’t ramble much either temporarily (sprained ankle, for example) or longer term, so it’s nice if people can travel to desired destinations via direct routes, when they need to—so, if a long circuitous walking route to the company cafeteria is available, a shorter one should be provided as well.
We can walk our way to health and also to good ideas, so adding indoor “trails” to workplaces, when possible, can be good for an organization’s bottom line.
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.