Workspaces Design -
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Summary.
Managers once discouraged casual interaction among employees, viewing it as a distraction from “real work.” Today we know that chance encounters on the job promote cooperation and innovation, and companies craft their floor plans and cultures with this in mind. So why do their careful, well-intentioned efforts often go awry?
Common sense, it turns out, is a poor guide when it comes to designing for interaction. Work spaces inspire informal encounters only if they properly balance three factors that have both physical and social aspects:
Proximity. Spaces should naturally bring people together.
Privacy. People must be able to control access to their conversations and themselves.
Permission. The social purpose of the space needs to be evident, and the organizational culture should signal that nonwork interactions are not just sanctioned but encouraged.
Creating the right conditions is challenging enough in the physical world; doing it in a virtual environment is even harder. But asking employees to set Skype, IM, and other applications to indicate their availability can replicate a sense of proximity online. Setting clear policies governing access to electronic communications helps convey reassurance that privacy is protected. And leaving video links and virtual offices open promotes the feeling that geographically disparate groups are welcome to engage with one another casually, just as they might in a real-world common space.
There’s no simple formula for balancing proximity, privacy, and permission in either the physical or virtual spheres. Managers who grasp the fundamentals and design spaces with balance in mind, however, will be better equipped to understand and predict the effects of different spaces on interactions, and to learn from their successes and inevitable mistakes.
Managers once discouraged, even forbade, casual interactions among employees. To many bosses, chitchat at the watercooler was just a noisy distraction from work. Today we know that chance encounters and conversations on the job promote cooperation and innovation, and companies craft their floor plans and cultures with this in mind. The results have been surprising—and often disappointing.
Consider
the experience of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). In 1987 the company
redesigned its headquarters around a central “street” that linked a
café, shopping, and medical, sports, and other facilities, including
several “multirooms” containing comfortable furniture, coffeemakers, fax
and photocopying machines, and office supplies. The new design was
explicitly intended to promote informal interactions, and management
broadcast the message that employees should find opportunities in the
new space for “impromptu meetings” and “creative encounters.”
What
happened as a result? Very little. A study of employee interactions
revealed that just 9% were occurring in the street and the café, and
just 27% in all the other public spaces combined. In spite of the
thoughtfulness and good intentions informing the new design, two-thirds
of interactions were still confined to private offices. What went wrong?
Common
sense, it turns out, is a poor guide when it comes to designing for
interaction. Take the growing enthusiasm for replacing private offices
with open floor plans in order to encourage community and collaboration.
More than a dozen studies have examined the behavioral effects of such
redesigns. There’s some evidence that removing physical barriers and
bringing people closer to one another does promote casual interactions.
But there’s a roughly equal amount of evidence that because open spaces
reduce privacy, they don’t
foster informal exchanges and may actually inhibit them. Some studies
show that employees in open-plan spaces, knowing that they may be
overheard or interrupted, have shorter and more-superficial discussions
than they otherwise would.
Some
studies show that employees in open-plan spaces, aware that they may be
overheard, have more-superficial discussions than they otherwise would.
Both
sets of findings are correct. Open floor plans, or indeed any type of
design, can either encourage or discourage informal interactions,
depending on a complex interplay of physical and social cues. Over the
past 12 years we have conducted nine studies of the effects of design on
interaction, looking at organizations in the United States, Europe, and
Asia. We surveyed the extensive literature on the subject and
interviewed dozens of managers about their office redesigns. The sum of
our research reveals that a space may or may not encourage interaction
depending on how it balances three dimensions, or “affordances,” that
have both physical and social aspects: proximity, privacy, and
permission. (For more on affordances, see the sidebar “The Signals
Design Can Send.”)
The Signals Design Can Send
Read more
The
most effective spaces bring people together and remove barriers while
also providing sufficient privacy that people don’t fear being overheard
or interrupted. In addition, they reinforce permission to convene and
speak freely. These requirements, we’ve found, apply just as readily to
virtual spaces as to physical ones, although their virtual
manifestations may be quite different. In either setting, getting the
balance wrong can turn a well-meant effort to foster creative
collaboration into a frustrating lesson in unintended consequences.
Although no formal studies of the reasons for the design failure at SAS
were done, it has all the earmarks of such an imbalance—and should serve
as a cautionary tale for any company contemplating a redesign.
The Properties of Proximity
People
often assume that proximity is purely a function of physical factors:
how far employees are from one another or how close they are to a break
room. And distance is important. The MIT organizational psychology
professor Thomas Allen famously discovered that the frequency of
workers’ interactions in an R&D complex he studied declined
exponentially with the distance between their offices—an effect
popularly known as the Allen curve. Even when they were in the same
building, researchers on different floors almost never interacted
informally, he found.
But
it’s not just the physical attributes of a space that influence
informal interactions; “proximity,” as we use the term, depends on
traffic patterns that are shaped just as much by social and
psychological aspects. In fact, physical centrality is often less
important than “functional centrality”—proximity to such things as
entrances, restrooms, stairwells, elevators, photocopiers, coffee
machines, and, of course, the watercooler. Allen argued that to improve
the dissemination and sharing of ideas, lab directors should create
spaces containing several shared resources. The social geography of a
space is a crucial component of its physical layout.
The Importance of Privacy
One
of our studies involved a media agency whose central shared space,
which held coffee and vending machines, a printer, and a copier, sat
between the company’s entrance and private offices. Everyone had to pass
through it—but nobody lingered there. The reason, many employees
confided, was that there was so much traffic that private conversations
were impossible. In particular, the agency’s director came in frequently
for coffee, and people didn’t want her to overhear them.
The
physical requirements of privacy are the most obvious ones. At a
minimum, people need to be confident that they can converse without
being overheard. To ensure such confidence, spaces must be designed with
visibility and acoustics in mind; privacy is enhanced when others can’t
see whom you are talking to and when you can see others approaching or
within earshot. There’s a subtle implication here: True privacy allows
you to control others’ access to you so that you can choose whether or
not to interact. Though it may seem counterintuitive, research shows
that informal interactions won’t flourish if people can’t avoid
interacting when they wish to.
The
architect Christopher Alexander, who has written extensively about
patterns of use in buildings and cities, describes the alcove as the
ideal space for informal interactions: It’s sufficiently public for
casual encounters but provides enough privacy for confidential
conversations. Alcoves also make it easy for people to move a
conversation that began in the open (for instance, in the hallway) to a
more private space without having to seek out a room with a door—a
disruption that can end the conversation.
Let’s
look at how a lack of privacy undermined interactions at Xerox’s Wilson
Center for Research and Technology. Managers created the “LX Common” to
encourage informal encounters among employees in separate groups. The
Common afforded great proximity: It was centrally located and was
traversed by people walking from the main entrance to their labs, from
one lab to another, and to the conference room. It contained the
kitchen, the photocopier and printers, and key reference materials, and
this functional centrality also drove traffic. But as teams started
having conversations and meetings there, people began taking long
detours around it. The problem? The Common created so much proximity and
so little privacy that engineers couldn’t pass through without risking
being sucked into a meeting, informal or otherwise. So they avoided the
space altogether.
The
lab manager found a solution by setting three rules that gave employees
control over when and with whom they would interact in the new space:
Traffic through the Common was acceptable at any time; anyone was free
to join any conversation there; and anyone was free to leave any
conversation at any time. Once the rules were in place, informal
interactions flourished.
The Power of Permission
The
social dimension of permission is more obvious than the physical one,
but both are critical. Culture and convention shape our view of what
constitutes appropriate behavior in a particular environment. In an
office, people generally deem a space to be a comfortable, natural place
to interact only if company culture, reinforced by management,
designates it as such. This was evident in a consulting firm we studied,
where “real work” was done only at one’s desk or in meeting rooms. The
luxurious coffee lounge was usually empty: Employees would come in, grab
a cup of coffee, and leave. Company culture did not give them
permission to stay and talk. In contrast, at a creative collaborative we
observed, where designers, advertising people, and architects shared an
office space, sitting on sofas and chatting in the centrally located
café was seen as part and parcel of the creative process.
Sometimes
the artifacts in a space powerfully affect its social designation. In a
study of interactions in photocopier rooms at three French companies,
we found that the mindless, stationary task of making copies, combined
with the need for others to stand around while waiting their turn,
created permission for informal interactions. The sense of permission
was strengthened by the fact that copying is perceived as work.
Management might frown on employees’ “gossiping” over coffee but have no
problem with the same sorts of conversations around the photocopier.
How Photocopiers Promote Interaction
Read more
Permission,
then, reflects the interplay of physical space, artifacts, and company
culture. We saw some best practices for combining these elements at IDEO
and Zappos. In IDEO’s open-plan office, portable furniture lets
employees move around to work near whomever they’re collaborating with.
At Zappos, managers are encouraged to spend as much as 20% of their time
socializing and team building. The CEO, Tony Hsieh, has a small cubicle
in the middle of the company’s Las Vegas cube farm, signaling his
availability and broadcasting permission to interact.
Putting Principles into Practice
Understanding
the three P’s required for informal interaction is just the beginning.
How do you actually design for them? Start by being attuned to the
balance between them; having only one or two usually isn’t enough, and
over- or under-emphasizing any of the three can backfire. Build
flexibility into your design so that you can test permutations, and
measure the design’s effects. In our experience, companies rarely do
either. Be aware that seemingly small changes can have an outsize effect
and that unintended consequences are common.
Be aware that seemingly small changes to a space can have an outsize effect and that unintended consequences are common.
Along
with Bojan Angelov, a research fellow at New York University’s
Polytechnic Institute, we provided consulting services to a company that
sells coffee equipment and supplies to offices. During our work there,
we found that coffee rooms were more often conversation-triggering
spaces than true interaction spaces. Proximity wasn’t the issue; the
rooms we observed were well located. They weren’t set up to afford
privacy, though, nor did people feel they had permission to linger.
Employees would often start conversations in coffee rooms but then move
to a more private space to continue talking. However, many conversations
were interrupted, and ended, before they got to this next stage. The
moment of transition—the perceived need to find a more private
place—made the interactions fragile.
Another
of our studies highlighted the unpredictable impact of design changes
and the importance of monitoring their effects. Researchers in a
university psychology lab had a communal coffeepot and took turns making
coffee each afternoon. As the person so tasked passed by colleagues’
offices on the way to the kitchen, he or she would tell the others that
the coffee would be ready soon. Everyone would convene in the kitchen 10
minutes later and discuss both personal events and research projects
while they sipped their coffee.
The
head of the lab realized how important these coffee breaks were to
collaboration. He wanted to encourage and reward them, so he replaced
the old coffeepot with a new single-serve machine that made a variety of
high-quality hot drinks. This would give people all the more reason to
visit the kitchen, he thought. But because coffee was now freely
available and was dispensed by the cup, people came by for it at
different times and left once it was ready. The informal afternoon
meetings disappeared. The lab director had provided plenty of permission
and privacy (employees could retreat to an office if they chose), and
he was correct in assuming that increasing proximity would stimulate
communication. Unfortunately, he inadvertently decreased proximity, throwing the three P’s out of balance and causing casual interactions to plummet.
Although
few managers would want their employees to loiter all afternoon in the
coffee room, neither should they want them to cut casual conversations
short. People need time to engage if a light conversation is to evolve
into something more substantial. We often observed that conversations
started next to the coffee machine continued in front of a cubicle or in
an office doorway—“accidental alcoves” of the modern workplace. Too
often proximity is the only design consideration for coffee rooms and
other informal spaces. If you don’t also build in privacy (for example,
by creating real alcoves) and convey adequate permission, you will
probably end up with a space that triggers ephemeral interactions
bearing little fruit.
Finally,
it’s important to remember that permission can take many forms.
Managers’ reactions to employee behavior, along with their own role
modeling, can have a bigger impact than mere expressions of permission.
We’ve found that many managers say they value informal interactions but
in fact crush them by making negative comments when they witness them—in
some cases conveying powerful disapproval through body language alone.
To encourage the encounters that fuel collaboration, align what you say
and do. (For guidance on how to balance the three P’s, see the sidebar
“Designs That Inspire Interaction.”)
Designs That Inspire Interaction
Read more
Casual Encounters in Virtual Spaces
Promoting
informal interactions in the physical world is challenging enough;
nurturing them in virtual settings is harder still. We have decades of
research on physical workspaces to draw on, but we’re just starting to
understand the nature of informal interactions in virtual workspaces and
how to design for them. Our research suggests that the three
affordances are just as relevant online as off, but their virtual
permutations are distinct from their real-world ones and can be more
difficult to define and control. What does proximity mean in a virtual
environment? How do you provide privacy in a teleconference? What
constitutes permission on a company blog?
Even
as the volume of virtual work explodes, companies have been slow to
recognize the value of casual back-and-forth in virtual settings. Many
still prohibit the use of social networking tools such as Facebook and
Twitter, seeing them only as distractions. Yet numerous studies show
that these tools can help create common ground and build trust—crucial
ingredients of successful virtual teams.
Managers
shouldn’t set out to create electronic watercoolers or virtual hallways
and photocopier rooms, however; we’ve found that such analogues don’t
work. Employees see them for what they are: phony and stupid. Instead,
managers need to think creatively about the reasons for proximity,
privacy, and permission, and how each might be translated into virtual
settings.
Promoting Virtual Proximity
In
virtual environments, nonwork activities such as walking to the
restroom or getting coffee separate people rather than bring them
together. How can we replicate online the random encounters that are so
vital to communication in the physical world? Our research suggests that
two and sometimes three conditions are needed: high awareness of others
in the virtual space; compelling reasons to voluntarily engage; and, on
occasion, rules for participation.
In
physical workspaces that stimulate interaction, employees have a
peripheral awareness of one another, a sense that colleagues are present
and available. Virtual spaces need to convey a similar sense.
Applications such as instant messaging, Skype, and Twitter can do this,
but only if they’re always open, whether on desktops or on smartphones
and other mobile devices. Frictionless accessibility is key. Our studies
show that if connecting with a team member online requires more than
one click, informal encounters won’t happen. It’s not unlike how people
behave in the real world: You’re not going to casually drop in on a
colleague who’s on another floor. Some team leaders ask their members to
customize their IM status or Skype mood message to invite or discourage
informal interactions at any given time. It’s the virtual approximation
of pausing at the coffee station or closing your office door.
Anyone
who has tried to promote a knowledge management system knows that
traffic trails off unless the system contains useful information and is
frequented by interesting, helpful people. The same holds true for
virtual team environments and discussion forums. In our studies of
public online forums, we’ve found that successful communities have a
core group of active participants who provide resources and reasons for
others to join in. You don’t need a core group of copy makers to fuel
informal interactions in the physical world, but you do need their
equivalents—facilitators, champions, and other lively regular
visitors—to keep interactions going in virtual environments.
This
creates a chicken-and-egg problem: It’s hard to promote an engaging
online social environment without a core group, but a core group is
unlikely to form without an engaging environment. It may be necessary to
mandate participation until routines and a critical mass of activity
develop. During our teaching about distributed work, we created a course
blog and invited students to discuss the class on a voluntary basis.
The blog languished. We then required participation, making sure that
our own posts modeled the behaviors and communication styles we wanted
to see. At first students engaged at the minimal level and stayed
strictly on topic. Soon, however, they began to participate more
spontaneously, responding to one another’s posts and venturing into
more-casual terrain—suggesting a movie related to the course work, for
instance, or asking about a bag left behind in class.
Creating
a sense of proximity is especially challenging when virtual-team
members are widely dispersed. We taught a course at Insead in which two
classrooms a world apart—one in Fontainebleau, the other in
Singapore—shared a media space. Video links, interactive whiteboards,
and other technologies let students on the two campuses see, hear, and
write to one another in real time. We found that it takes a lot of
planning and experimentation to foster an informal virtual work
environment. One key, we discovered, was to open the video connection
before class and leave it on during breaks and afterward. Inspired by
the sense of proximity this created, students soon began to engage in
casual interactions during nonclass time, even inviting others to stop
by and say hi to friends on the other campus.
Protecting Virtual Privacy
When
employees know that the company may be monitoring their electronic
exchanges and that their conversations might never be deleted, they are
reluctant to use virtual channels casually. Managers and IT directors
need to balance their desire to screen communications with the need for
the privacy essential to trust building and collaboration. Organizations
can’t promise complete privacy. But clearly communicated policies
governing who has access to electronic communications and under what
circumstances can convey important reassurance.
Xerox
creatively tackled the challenge of providing both proximity and
privacy in a virtual work environment. It installed a number of video
links connecting EuroPARC (its R&D center in Cambridge, England)
with the original Palo Alto Research Center. At first the links were
always on, but the system’s designers quickly realized that if they
wanted the scientists to use the technology, they would have to provide
virtual doors that people could close at will. They ultimately afforded
three levels of privacy: A video link could be on, off, or set at an
intermediate status—like a half-open door that allows people in an
office to glance out and those outside to look in for permission to
visit. The links gave close collaborators a peripheral awareness of one
another and increased the opportunities for chance conversations. For
example, each day at about 4:00, employees in the UK office would use
the links to see who was in the café having tea so that they could
decide whether to join the group there.
Providing Virtual Permission
When
you run into someone at the coffee machine, it’s natural to comment on
the weather. This strengthens social bonds by affirming shared suffering
or good fortune and often leads to a more substantial conversation. But
in a virtual work environment it would be odd to contact someone out of
the blue just to talk about the weather. Opportunities for random
encounters are fewer. How, then, can we create permission for such
interactions, making them feel natural and comfortable?
One
company we studied did this by capitalizing on a mistake. A
London-based manager used the wrong e-mail distribution list to invite
people to her farewell party at a nearby pub. She had meant to ask her
local colleagues but instead invited everyone in more than 25 offices
all over the world. This led to rounds of humorous e-mails from
far-flung colleagues about flying to London for the event. The next day
the firm’s leaders published some of the e-mail exchange in the company
newsletter, praising it as an example of the informal, connected culture
they desired. Their note signaled that such online exchanges weren’t
just permitted—they were encouraged.
Keeping
virtual “offices” open 24/7 conveys permission to use them informally.
Leaving a video feed on during breaks and after a meeting sends a
similar message.
When
virtual-team members come to know one another beyond the confines of
their job, the team is strengthened. Understanding this, Nokia—an
effective company in terms of virtual teaming—provided social networking
tools and other online resources specifically to encourage employees to
share photos and personal information, and created virtual “offices”
that were open 24/7. Keeping such offices open around the clock conveys
permission to use them for nonwork exchanges. Turning a video feed on
well before a virtual meeting and leaving it on during breaks and
afterward can send a similar message, as we saw in our linked
Fontainebleau and Singapore classrooms. Open connections help foster the
sense that geographically disparate groups share an informal space and
that the casual interactions that might occur in a real-world common
space are sanctioned there.
Addicted
to their smartphones and planted in front of computers for much of the
day, knowledge workers increasingly straddle physical and virtual space.
At first blush, you’d think this hyperconnectivity could only enhance
the informal interactions that fuel creative collaboration. Our research
shows, however, that what matters isn’t how much proximity, privacy,
and permission real or virtual spaces afford, but how the affordances
are balanced. A lopsided distribution is more likely to inhibit than
promote beneficial interactions. Technology can help employees feel
closer to colleagues around the world, but relentless connection can
erode their privacy and overwhelm. Networking applications such as
LinkedIn, Lotus Notes, IdeaJam, and Twitter can tear down walls, but
they can also create them: We’ve seen virtual-team members get so
involved in their digital world that they become disengaged from the
people right next to them.
There’s
no simple formula for balancing the three P’s, particularly as the
boundary between physical and virtual worlds increasingly blurs. But
managers who grasp the fundamentals and design with balance in mind will
be better equipped to understand and predict the effects of spaces on
interactions and to learn from successes—and inevitable mistakes.
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