Designing Productivity

Every member of the workforce and college student can picture this scene: it’s late, the deadline demons are banging at the door, and depending on where you’ve chosen to begin your night at the grindstone, it is either going to be a long night or a really long night. The environments we work in massively affect our productivity, yet lots of spaces we encounter every day were not designed with these concepts in mind. We all know the struggles of taking a test in a crowded room with tiny, space-saving desks or trying to work in cramped cubicles that barely offer a sense of privacy. The engineering and design that go into making a workspace great is subtle, but invaluable.

In recent decades, we have learned a fair amount about how people work best. For students or stay at home workers, research tends to agree that working in bed is a bad idea. According to the American College of Healthcare Sciences, doing so not only distracts us from being productive, but can also make it more difficult to fall asleep later. Additionally, it has been shown that standing while working increases productivity. Being in a bed or chair for long periods of time can have negative effects on our overall ability to work. Ryde and her colleagues show in their study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that it can also negatively impact our health. On a more basic level, we know that we work best in a place where our personal needs are met. As is shown in the simplest forms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we cannot achieve our optimum state of work productivity if we are distracted by our essential needs, such as food, water, and electrical outlets.

For students, this ideal environment is often found in their university’s library spaces. While many older campus libraries still possess the grand furniture and rooms full of crowded stacks that are commonly associated with libraries, many libraries are improving their workspaces to emphasize human-focused design. Rather than pack rooms with as many desks as possible, newer spaces aim to create collaborative environments and give students a well-designed space to utilize for their benefit. Research from Westminster University conducted by Malenfant on their library’s new collaborative space shows that students respond positively to improved libraries which keep their needs in mind. 

My personal example would be the Penn State library’s new Collaboration Commons. The room is spacious, with a variety of seating choices and even includes private rooms with televisions in them for presentations. The tables have built-in chargers, whiteboards everywhere, and vending machines nearby so that when the rest of the library closes at 2 am, those still in the Collaboration Commons have everything they need. I say this not to toot the horn of my own institution, but simply to point out an example of how colleges can adapt their current spaces to the idea of quality experience over quantity of resources. Five minutes away from that wonderful space is the old building with the tiny desks and crowded seats I mentioned earlier. The important thing to remember is that design is moving forward with new goals.

This concept expands beyond just college libraries. All people can benefit from working spaces that take into account the needs of the users. Offices could turn their conference rooms into true collaborative spaces as opposed to just places with tables and a projector. Adding university-tested features like white board walls could enhance collaboration at all levels. Replacing regular desks with standing desks or convertible desks would improve individual productivity by allowing people to keep their mind more engaged through motion. As students who have experienced these environments graduate and move into the workforce, building spaces like these will help them integrate better. Collaborative spaces may also help bridge the generational gap in the workforce by encouraging communication.

Unlike some of my other design articles, the consequences to accepting lesser designs may not have catastrophic consequences. Late night projects will still be completed. Someone trying to share an idea in a meeting can still convey their ideas on paper. However, if we know how humans work best and we can see the effects of this in some of our universities and workplaces, then we really ought to consider it. Being an engineer can mean a lot of things. However, when it comes to completing a task, design is about more than just finishing the job and making things work efficiently. We always need to consider the user of our products and if the product is considered efficient for them. While people may like or tolerate old styles of design, it seems valuable to find a style of workplace that people are eager to utilize. Increased enthusiastic productivity is beneficial to everyone’s work in all kinds of fields. Designers have the power to create a more productive world and if the modern work spaces that have been designed recently are any indication, they are wielding that power with skill.   

Sources:

C. Malenfant, "The information commons as a collaborative workspace", Reference Services Review, vol. 34 no. 2, pp. 279-286. 1 April 2006. [Online]. Available: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/00907320610669506/full/html. [Accessed Nov. 8, 2019].

G. Ryde, et al., “Desk-Based Occupational Sitting Patterns: Weight-Related Health Outcomes,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 45, no. 4, October 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379713004042. [Accessed Nov. 8, 2019].