Design that does not begin with place
Posted on by Brady Mick
In the middle of 2010, Keith Perske posted a compelling blog challenging the design field to think about work without our typical reliance on thinking about place. I say, “AMEN”.
As an architect deeply concerned about the nature of work, I see places continually being created that are disconnected from the reality of what it now means to be “people” at work. We have limited our thinking of “place” to the physical, and have not touched on the emotional, psychological, and inter-relationship that drive people to produce results in the context of their work. Place is a subset of work, along with the parameters of technology, process, brand, economics, etc. In combination, these parameters create demands of place that are simultaneously physical and virtual, but equal in social dynamics.
Keith’s call for broader AND deeper pursuits to understand the “whole answer” is directly on the mark. Arriving at a whole answer requires a cognitive shift from our traditional reductive approach to design, to an adherence to a deeper connection to the emergent, dynamic complexity of people at work. The traditional reductive approach to design has a concentration on the hard measures of programming; number of people, type of team, standards of space, number of leaders in offices, and the infamous square footage per person allowable. These are all good measures alone for the success of designing for work, but measured alone miss the broader and wider reality of work from people.
Dynamic complexity is an emergent approach. Carl Jung discovered that we each share a common sub conscious cognitive existence. We each think with our brains. We each sense with our 5 senses. We each feel with our hearts. We each have intuition in our guts. As individuals we develop preferences for how we lead our lives under these cognitions and we socialize and adapt our cognitions in conjunction with the skills we develop, the talents we were born with, and the passions that drive us. We dynamically reconfigure our cognitions constantly as we encounter both internal and external changes as we move through our lives, particularly as we encounter people throughout our work. BHDP has engaged in the practical study of culture and social dynamics in order to better understand the impact of design on people at work, whether this design has an outcome in place or not.
Keith recommends including many other arenas of thought in the future of work discussion. Amen again. Broadening the work discussion makes me think about the pursuit of defining work productivity today. There is a reason that work strategists, work leaders, and theorists have been calling the search for measuring work productivity a search for “the holy grail”. Today there is more myth than fact available to measure productivity due to work transforming from transactional interaction to creative problem understanding.
Work is very good at measuring hard data: time, money and widgets. Hard data alliance relies heavily on the human cognitions of thinking and sensing. If work productivity can be rationalized through cognitive thought, or better, held in your hand, it is of direct value. Work has barely begun to become proficient at measuring soft data: people, quality and process. Knowing how people tick, how to recognize and appreciate quality, and how process is dynamically complex is a difficult encounter for the reductionist. Dynamic complexity requires a paradigm shift toward the inclusion of the human cognitions of emotion and intuition into the business process. In our work at BHDP with our customers, I see emotion and intuition consistently enter into the business process, yet the value is grossly underplayed.
If our design profession were to truly remove space from the equation of what is vital about understanding work, then we may impact the creation of wholly relevant value for people and the organizations for which they work. Why? Because thinking about space IS holding us back. Keith is right to introduce anthropologists and behaviorists; futurists and story tellers; technologists and humorists; urban planners and inventors. And I would respectfully expand the list to psychologists and statisticians; economists and poets; academics and engineers; politicians and vanguards. For that matter, I recommend we engage with the worker foremost. Leading the worker through the design thinking process has the hope of arriving at the future of work where the people benefit more from their place.
I am proud to report to Keith that BHDP and others have entered these different arenas for expanding work. Yes, we remain a design firm and are thus fully committed to our customers’ successful realization of place, but our focus is directly embedded in the deeper nature of people, requiring us to expand our thinking and sensing abilities to include a broader knowledge of the feelings and intuitions of people at work. Human conscientiousness is changing dramatically from the forces that Keith rightly recognizes, and as we live this change the design world is responsible for the physical outcome like no other time in the history of modern work. The requirements of people at work to deliver creative and collaborative solutions to business has tipped beyond the production systems of the past, creating new levels of complexity throughout the business world. Complexity is having the biggest impact on the pressures on people at work, so gaining knowledge of the nature of these complexities supersedes the design rules of the past.
I say we follow Keith’s challenge and help people at work through the changes in the rules of how business success is measured. Let’s first help them understand that workplace does not equal status, and workplace does not dictate hard results alone, and that workplace may be the most important domain of a profound purpose and relationship along with family and faith.
I respectfully wish to reemphasize Keith’s conclusion: “Yes, place and good design still matter. But meeting the needs of future workers will require a lot of discussion beginning with gaining a full cognition of people before we consider the places and ways they will work. Let’s get started.”