A Startup That Designed Its Office to Confuse Workers
wired.com
wired.com
Oh my. Good luck with that, gentlemen.
>According to research in neuroscience, this kind of visual chaos can help workers stay more alert, by asking them to constantly reengage with their environment.
Alert != attentive.
Basically, when I'm at risk to lose focus from task at hand, this steals it, and it's rather boring compared to what would most likely be highly abstract contemplations, totally new ideas and so on, so your focus returns to original task since immediate alternative provided is dull affair.
It somehow "eats up" part of my nature that nudges me to lose focus. It's maybe analogous to how rain noise gobbles up various distracting sounds.
For those unaware, I recommend reading up on "inattentional blindness". Attention is a very valuable resource.
The example he used was the sort of problem where there's a obvious, but wrong, answer to a problem (e.g. "If a bat and ball cost £1.10, and the bat is £1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost", to which a lot of people instinctively answer 10p - using what he refers to as "System 1 thinking"). These sorts of question were presented to two groups of people, one with the questions clearly printed and one with the questions badly printed in very light colours, requiring the readers to concentrate to be able to even read the questions.
The surprising result was that people in the latter group did significantly better on average than those in the former, suggesting that because they are forced to start using the more conscious, and more conscientious, "System 2 thinking" to be able to read the questions, they are primed to use that sort of thinking on actually answering the question.
This isn't always true though - if you're already concentrating heavily on something, then introducing another problem that requires a lot of concentration, you will stop concentrating on the first issue.
So, introducing something that forces your brain into a low-level System 2 mindset (such as slightly wonky offices) might be a good way of reducing the number of "obvious but wrong" decisions being made, but wouldn't be a good way of improving problem solving for tasks where people are already concentrating on the problem.
Future iterations will involve individual angry badgers in climbing harnesses located above each developer's desk. `git blame' will identify the build-breaking commit and react accordingly.
Back in the white collar world, if there's a business problem that makes the "uncomfortableness" or increases the number of moving parts in the environment increase by 10 the people who operate daily at 5 are better prepared than those that operate at 2 (200% increase vs 500% increase).
I think it would be interesting to apply a practice like this to IT (and other support service) operations. If day to day operations can be made to have a similar work flow as a crisis, people will be better prepared to deal with a crisis when things like remembering that "X casually mentioned configuring something oddly in Y manner because of Z at lunch" and deciding "we need to ask X about Y before we do something to Z" while trying to resolve the crisis because those little domino can have a huge effect if you don't prevent them from cascading.
I'll venture a guess that the odd floor plan keeps people on their toes, increasing alertness and the overall overlaps with what would result from increased attentiveness. The question is whether or not the overhead and inefficiency will pay off and how it affects people in the long run. I suspect this model doesn't scale well.
If anything I'd say the odd-angled rooms and visually "rich" environment give more navigational affordances than relatively featureless, repetitive structures like straight hallways and rows of doors: "Go straight until the ceiling turns blue, bear left and turn right at the yellow wall." I think I'd be far more likely to get lost in a place like this:
http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building3277/media/5...
Time to start up MY startup, Rent-A-Tiger. We prey on bad productivity.
This reminds me of something said in the introduction to the Head First book series. The human brain hasn't really caught up with technological developments; it has a hard time looking at "boring" things like text/data and paying attention and retaining information, but it is really good at identifying threats (like, say, a tiger).
If you could find a way to trigger tiger cues whenever something important has to be remembered maybe you could actually boost productivity with Rent-A-Tiger :p
At my first job 20 years ago this would actually happen: occasionally the PA would emit loud shrieking sounds for 15-20 seconds. It turns out that the PA could be accessed by dialing a specific two-digit code from any internal phone. Occasionally when someone would attempt to send a fax they would forget to add a "9" for an external line; if the first two digits of the telephone number were the same as the two-digit PA access code, the fax machine's handshake sound would be broadcast over the PA.
Steve Jobs designed Pixar's office with only one set of toilets so people would collaborate more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-off...
Good teams are both able to spin off into fun and distraction mode -- and dive deep into concentration mode. There's an edge of chaos thing going on. If the place sounds as quiet as a library all day, we mix it up. If the nerf gun battles go on all afternoon, we tone it down. There is an ebb and flow to these things. Things tend towards a line, with variations from time to time. Groups of humans working socially remind me a lot of chaotic systems.
When the disruptions are constant, like working next to a large industrial plant that makes noises, it doesn't all come together. When the disruptions are responsive, like working in one room with 6 or 7 other guys, it's much more unpredictable.
Since this sounds predictable over time, I'd suspect that the affect wears off rather quickly.
But all of that is just unsupported speculation. I've found with things like this, it's much more important to let folks try things and then observe how it turns out. Interesting stuff.
Surely that is not really a startup?
But my company has literally paid me over $1,000 in the past year to look up, awkwardly make eye contact, look around a moment, blink a few times, and look back at my screen because it draws my attention when people cross in front of my desk, and we have an open office design. (That cost is literally just the 15 seconds of looking around, the number of times I did so today, and my pay rate.)
I hope they're getting their money's worth for my time, but I'm not sure they are -- or that they're not taking it out on me through externals, such as expecting me to make up that lost time in "crunch time" or extra hours or something.
I feel like a lot of these plans are feel good pop science that just externalize the costs of what the executive wanted to do for pet reasons.
It looks good though.
This is an example of taking the science out of context. I think it's pretty obvious that this type of disorientation applies in a new environment. The employees who work there every day? Pretty quickly you'll learn the in and outs of your own workplace.
Without this premise as the reasoning for the architecture, to me it just seems like another tech firm eager to spend its money.
I believe it was a modern architecture, and the feeling of confusion was not on purpose. The first picture reminded me that building. I would hate to work in such a maze. Wasting time getting lost going to a meeting room, or looking for the desk of someone not in my closed quarters, would be very annoying.
Below a link to a picture of the building:
They are full of various shaped classes, most are in a free polygon form. It is not unusual for a large cylindrical pillar to be in the middle of a small-ish class, obscuring view to the blackboard, or for a seat to be one meter to the front, 3-5 meters to the side of the board.
The shape and placement of buildings confuses the first year students, many of whom don't feel at ease until the second or third year. We used to joke that they would make a great Doom level.
Despite the university being in a remote area with great weather, windows frequently are absent, or small and placed high.
People justifying their stupidity...
yeah they tore that sucker down a couple years ago apparently
What they cite is their motivation is exactly why I live and work in an urban environment, but the office is supposed to be the place where I can focus in turning that input into productive results.
I didn't read the article, but the text for image 5/8 said this.
This might not be the best place for me to work....
Attention and focus is important. Sounds like start-up kool-aid to me.