There’s a new coworking space near Fenway Park, and its ballpark-themed office keeps showing up all over my social media feed. Every time I see it, I get irrationally annoyed. I understand the idea. It’s fun. It photographs well. It was practically designed to show up on social media.
But I also think it represents something the coworking industry needs to be careful about: confusing a cool place to visit with a great place to work. For years, we tried to make offices more appealing by making them more fun, with ping-pong tables, beer taps, game rooms, nap pods, slides, etc. Spaces designed as much for Instagram as for actual work.
I know I’ve told this story before, but when I was interviewing for a new job in 2017, I met with a New York startup at a coworking space across from South Station. There I was, waiting for my interview in the reception area, sitting on what can only be described as an adult swing set, because apparently someone had decided swings were appropriate office furniture.
Whoever chose it never had to remove themself from the swing to shake the hand of the person interviewing them. Then came the pandemic. People proved they could work from almost anywhere. More importantly, they became much more intentional about when and why they were willing to leave home and come together.
And yet, sometimes it feels like our industry’s answer is still: Maybe the office just needs to be more fun. It doesn’t.
Are Offices Designed for the People, or Designed for the Designer?
Years ago, I took our marketing team to a coworking conference. One night, there was a cocktail party at another coworking space. We walked in and my team immediately started oohing and aahing. The space was beautiful. They were pointing out the furniture, the finishes, the lighting fixtures — all the things you notice when you first walk into a space.
Then someone asked me what I thought. I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s beautiful. But I couldn’t work here.” They looked at me like I was crazy. So I started pointing things out, and then I couldn’t stop.
The non-ergonomic wooden chairs no one could comfortably sit in for more than an hour. The abundance of soft seating that looked great but wasn’t actually useful for working. The marble countertops that would bounce every conversation across the room. There were no outlets. No place for calls. No acoustic privacy. No place to collaborate without disrupting everyone around you. I noticed glass office doors without door sweeps or gaskets.
It was a beautiful space; it just wasn’t a productive one.
My team had been so dazzled by what it looked like that they hadn’t stopped to think about what it would actually feel like to work there every day. That’s when I said something I still think about whenever we’re designing a workplace: “This space was designed for the designer. It wasn’t designed for the people working in it.”
There’s a big difference.
The Best Workplace Design Is Often Invisible
Of course aesthetics matter, but aesthetics are the surface. They’re the easy part. Some of the most important elements of workplace design are things people may never consciously notice.
The acoustics. Sound masking. Air quality. Lighting temperature. Connectivity. Natural light. The distance between desks. How sound travels from one part of the space to another. Whether walls extend all the way to the deck. Where additional acoustic insulation is needed. What happens to the noise level when a space is actually full — not when it’s empty and being photographed. None of those things are particularly Instagrammable.
Nobody takes a selfie with the acoustic insulation. But you absolutely notice when those things are missing. You hear someone else’s conversation while you’re trying to concentrate, yet you can’t find anywhere to take a call. The Wi-Fi drops during an important meeting. The room feels stuffy after an hour. You’re constantly so distracted by what’s happening around you that you leave at the end of the day exhausted without necessarily knowing why.
You can photograph design, but productivity is something you have to experience. And productivity also changes throughout the day.
Nobody works the same way for eight straight hours. You might start with an hour of heads-down work, then you have a Zoom call. Then you grab a colleague and work through something together. Followed by lunch and another call. Maybe a team meeting. After all that, you desperately need 45 uninterrupted minutes to finish something before you leave.
Those activities require different environments.
At Workbar, we call our different environments neighborhoods. The Study is designed for focused work. The Commons is designed for collaboration. The Café is social. The Switchboard gives people somewhere to have conversations — including with their AI agents.
It’s important to give members choices for how to be productive, not just different options for Instagram post backgrounds.
