Neuroscience & Workspace Design

Recently I was reading an article about office design. Companies like Amazon, Google and Samsung are pulling out all the stops when it comes to creating spaces with all five senses in mind – employing everything from diet to colour theory to increase productivity. Amazon has even installed a rushing brook and waterfall in their head office to “permeate the workspace with continuous, calming white noise”. All well and good, but what about the rest of us? We can’t all be technological giants. How do we design for the senses? As it turns out, Ergostyle is running ahead of the curve there…

Sight

Most offices have got the idea by now that greenery, and lots of it, is the way to foster happiness and calm among their employees. Even pictures of plants and open vistas help! But then they fill the rest of the space with cold grey computers and cold grey desks…
Bright colours are uplifting and raise mood – you might have noticed the myriad of brightly coloured planters, giraffes, murals and yes, even containers, that popped up around our earthquake-ravaged city. It was no accident! Did you know colours inspire positive work-behaviours? A few examples include blue for stimulation, green for focus, and orange for decision-making.

Speaking of positive work-behaviours… open spaces foster creative thinking. Close confines increase focus. But you don’t have to choose between the two.

You know me, I’m big on coworking spaces. I love the versatility, the flexibility and the positivity that comes from Activity Based Working.Ergostyle like to refer to it as having “A Pallet of Places”. At Evil Genius Coworking Lair, we use multipurpose modular furniture to create a range of workspaces from open and high-traffic to quiet and private, and all the spaces in between. Good to know we’ve been running ahead of the crowd all this time!
We encourage offices to use “A Pallet of Places” where staff can choose their work environment from a selection of task related spaces. Pictured: Keystone multipurpose modular furniture system.

Sound

People are weird and wonderful and all different. Some like silence, some enjoy the quiet babble of many voices, some like music and some like whale song…Remember Amazon and the waterfall? According to neuroscience, the sound of a loud phone call can cause measurable stress in working human beings. Overheard “halfversations,” are even more distracting because our brains automatically try to guess the other half.
We can’t all install a private fountain in the foyer, but Ergostyle offers private phone booths and acoustically buffered spaces for activities like brainstorming and team-building exercises. These ‘pods’ have a dual-function as they provide sound-dampening to the rest of the office as well!

Touch

Touch is often overlooked because, really, what do you touch in an office besides your keyboard and assorted bit of paper?  That’s the problem.Workplaces with a lot of natural elements worked into their design universally report higher productivity than workplaces without. Natural textures do the same thing… stuff like wood instead of plastic, wool instead of nylon, all the way up to artwork featuring tree bark, sand, pebbles and so on.
Interested brains are engaged brains. Different textures and materials create interest while natural elements promote productivity.

Taste

This one’s easy for us – we have the Evil Genius café and bar right next door to our showroom!

Smell

The article I was reading extolled the virtues of creating spaces with all five senses in mind… yet they only discussed the ‘easy’ senses – sight, sound, and taste! Now there’s no accounting for taste, but I think we can do better.
Smell is the strongest sense and has most influence on your brain, particularly through scents like lemon(concentration and clarity), lavender and jasmine (calm, confidence and optimism), rosemary and cinnamon (reduce mental fatigue) or peppermint (concentration and clear thinking). Looks like the 90s potpourri enthusiasts were onto something after all… but in our showroom at Evil Genius we prefer to inhale the mouth-watering aromas emanating from the café next door. Incidentally, the menu generally features 3 of the 6 scents I’ve listed anyway, plus the exciting smells of coffee and bacon first thing in the morning.
Remember the bit about looking at plants being calming? Smelling them is calming too. Good thing we have plenty.
Which brings me to the most important senses…

Relief

Furniture can be tailored for support – stress is the enemy of productivity, and aches and pains are stressful… not to mention distracting. Poor workstations create pains – but good workstations make little difference if their users have fallen into bad habits! Often, staff don’t think about this because they’re focusing on performing their job… right up until they develop pain! It’s a point of pride for me that Ergostyle don’t just set-up workstations correctly, they provide staff training to make best use of them.

Occasion

Speaking of stress, the number one way to reduce stress in the workplace is by forming positive relationships with your co-workers – handy, because Evil Genius is built for that very thing. We meet twice monthly in the bar for drinks and regular interaction with other members of the Evil Genius community. It’s a great opportunity for feedback from our user-testers, who work from our showroom using Ergostyle furniture.

Humour

We’re part of the Evil Genius community – need I say more?