>It’s designed expressly to make workers get and feel lost, because, as neuroscience shows, disorientation keeps people alert and expecting the unexpected.
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.
People have forgotten that attention is transitive: you pay attention to something. If you're paying attention to the environment, what is your attention being diverted from?
I think the point is more to train employees to be effective operating in a more "unexpected" or "uncomfortable" environment similar to the way boot camp is supposed to train recruits to be more effective operating in a stressful environment. Performing skilled labor in close proximity to heavy machinery or some other dangerous environment is another example. People in those environments don't do the greatest work on day 1, but after they've become accustomed to performing their trade in a loud/busy/distracting environment that ability to focus on a detail intensive task while not tuning out the background (e.g. that skid steer driving behind you with a poorly loaded pallet balancing on the bucket forks).
I believe the often used idiom is "eyes in the back of one's head."
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.
I wonder if it would remain distracting for long - as someone who has worked in some very large buildings that would seem more confusing than what's shown in the pictures here, after a week I tend to have memorised most of the layout I need and it becomes more or less second-nature. If they were moving the walls regularly, that would be a different matter...
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:
When I travel somewhere for say a week, I notice the place usually seems a lot bigger the first day or two when I don't know my way around. After a week you realize it isn't often so big.
I think some wild animals on variable length leashes and random screaming sounds pumped through the PA might have similar effect. That's way cheaper than moving to a fancy office space.
Time to start up MY startup, Rent-A-Tiger. We prey on bad productivity.
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.
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
Don't forget the movable walls. Finding your desk should be the first adventure of the day. Include randomly missing floor tiles behind some doors if your wallets are deep.
I love this idea -- as an experiment. The trick, I think, would be the difference between "how it affects employees the first week or two" and "how it affects employees over several months or years" Of course, as a marketing move, it's brilliant. Here we all are talking about it.
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.
What's troubling to me is that the objections being raised here are all about how they went about it, not that the whole idea of social engineering is somewhat problematic in the first place, condescendingly paternalistic and robbing ourselves of moral independence and autonomy, etc.
I'd love to work in a place like that - I feel very uncomfortable in an ordered environment where row upon row of offices is filled with a placid set of cubicles, all the same shape, color, and design. Visual noise definitely helps me focus - some of my best work has been done in a coffeeshop environment during prime time, headphones on, in the zone, lots of chaos and motion going on around me - and some of my worst work experiences have been while sitting in a row, upon rows, of static desks all looking the same. Conformity may be good for the bean counters, but a lot of us can't get ourselves seeded and primed without a sip from /dev/random first, it seems.
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’s designed expressly to make workers get and feel lost, because, as neuroscience shows, disorientation keeps people alert and expecting the unexpected.
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 did my studies in a university that was sharing some offices with the French office of statistics - called INSEE. The building was shaped as a combination of triangle (the INSEE, not my university, which was in a separate but nearby building), and I remember that whenever I had to go there - the administration had its office there - it felt so disorientating and I would get lost.
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.
An even greatest example of such architecture are the older buildings (also called the brown buildings) of the Technical University of Crete (Greece).
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.
>> “The way we live life is very diverse … I have some of my best ideas in random places—the car, the shower—so we developed a space that is highly diverse,” Corbett says.
The communications department in my old college campus was in a building designed to be deliberately confusing -- you had to go upstairs to get into the basement, hallways changed direction unexpectedly, etc -- with the idea that that'd get the students to communicate with each other because get it we're lost and have to ask each other directions and it's the communications dept see we're communicating get it get it huh do you get the joke hilarious
yeah they tore that sucker down a couple years ago apparently
In other words, they put themselves in a boring industrial terrain in a boring suburb, just like any other boring company, and then try to recreate the creative impulses you get if you would live and work in a lively city.
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.
> 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.
I didn't read the article, but the text for image 5/8 said this.
I tore an entire doorframe out and rehung it once because the slight but obvious angle between it and the low ceiling in the room made me crazy. I obsessed about it even when I wasn't in the house!
This might not be the best place for me to work....
[+] [-] omginternets|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strangetimes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] userbinator|10 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] collyw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackMorgan|10 years ago|reply
Time to start up MY startup, Rent-A-Tiger. We prey on bad productivity.
[+] [-] mtviewdave|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joshuapants|10 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] Mithaldu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsingleton|10 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] Jare|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nbevans|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benoliver999|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forexio|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pathy|10 years ago|reply
Surely that is not really a startup?
[+] [-] lamby|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ObviousScience|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Mimu|10 years ago|reply
It looks good though.
[+] [-] personjerry|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] S4M|10 years ago|reply
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:
http://www.pss-archi.eu/photos/photo-14209.html
[+] [-] andmarios|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jister|10 years ago|reply
People justifying their stupidity...
[+] [-] outsidetheparty|10 years ago|reply
yeah they tore that sucker down a couple years ago apparently
[+] [-] makeitsuckless|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jeremysmyth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BillinghamJ|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wingerlang|10 years ago|reply
I didn't read the article, but the text for image 5/8 said this.
[+] [-] noonespecial|10 years ago|reply
This might not be the best place for me to work....