How Sensory Design Can Create Efficient Workplaces

• Returning to the office and working in-person means employees lose control over their environment and must adapt to new situations.
• Workplace leaders should support this transition by creating environments that promote wellbeing, concentration, and creativity.
• Interface’s Chip DeGrace shares why considering a holistic approach to sensory design is necessary to help employees focus and limit distraction.

This article was written by Chip DeGrace and was originally published on Work Design Magazine.

At the start of the pandemic, remote work was an adjustment for many employees. However, after forming new habits and routines, people began to embrace the flexibility that working from home can offer.

The Office and Its Distractions

As workplace leaders ask employees to return to the office, they may receive push back due to concerns about feeling more distracted or less productive in-person compared to at-home. Maintaining focus is a skill and concentrating for long periods of time is not easy. In fact, research shows employees often feel this – 70% admit feeling distracted at work, and only 57% agree that their workplace enables them to work productively.

What does this mean for business? A research study on productivity found that U.S. workers were losing 2.1 hours every day due to distraction, which translates to 28 billion hours and $588 billion lost annually. The study also revealed that noisy workplaces and mobile phones are to blame for most of the distractions. Additional external distractions might include the smell of someone’s lunch, or the conversation colleagues are having a few desks over, while internal sources could range from not getting enough sleep to over-analyzing an earlier exchange.

Although workplace distractions can come in many forms, science shows there are steps architects and designers can take to create a work environment optimized for each employee to stay focused and feel comfortable. They can do this by considering the full spectrum of human senses – sight, hearing, feel, smell, taste, balance and body awareness.

The Power of a Human-Centered Design

Best-in-class organizations will need to balance the needs of the individual employee with the overall business objectives for a built space. Although it may seem obvious as we sit here in 2022, it’s important to look back at workplaces from the past to determine what we can learn from these eras of office planning.

In the 90s and early 2000s, workplaces shifted away from “cube farms” toward the more collaborative layout of open-plan desking, with limited collaborative spaces. But, it is apparent that neither of these extreme solutions provides the ideal work environment for everyone. There is no absolute in the effective planning and design of the modern workplace. In fact, leading up to the pandemic, many offices began to retire the noisy, space-saving open-plan design and employed a mix of agile working spaces that accommodate the varying needs of employees.

A human-centered approach – being empathetic to people’s sensory uniqueness – reflects the philosophy that effective design should be informed by the occupants of a space. For example, the acoustic, textural and visual qualities of materials, furniture and lighting selections in support of specific typologies, influence how people experience a space. While highly textured and colorful spaces can help spur creativity, the use of soft surfaces and natural colors can contribute to a sense of calm. Specific behavior can be directed and supported by the appropriate combinations of design elements.

Integrating Sensory Design Elements into the Workplace

Designing for the individual means creating a range of sensory environments to address distraction issues and a lack of control on our surroundings in the office – this ultimately supports the cognitive wellbeing of employees. To do this, architects and designers must consider two main factors that influence an individual’s response to sensory stimulation – personality type and sensory profile.

Many modern psychologists work off the idea that there are five basic dimensions of personality, known as the “Big Five Personality Traits” or OCEAN model. These five personality types are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Each personality type includes different traits and thresholds that shape how someone identifies with and responds to both their environment and colleagues.

Everyone has a unique and innate neuropsychological response to processing sensory information. The individual’s sensory profile influences their productivity and performance based on their current environment. All in all, this results in a neurodiverse group of employees.

Neurodiversity is a term widely used to recognize and promote inclusivity of those diagnosed with neurological differences. Around 17% of the U.S. population have been diagnosed with a neurodivergent condition, not accounting for the many conditions that go undiagnosed.

With such a diverse workforce, it is critical that work environments offer a variety of different spaces that cater to differing sensitivities and distraction levels (e.g. to different personality types and sensory profiles). Each employee can then transition through the different workspaces based on their preferences and changing sensory needs as the day progresses.  For example, people with different sensory thresholds may want to work in surroundings that include spatial considerations like acoustic privacy, adjustable lighting or temperature control. It is important to note that choice alone is not enough – there must be cultural permission to work on an exterior roof deck or sit in a wing back chair with your feet up.