The cubicle deconstructed: Simple visual enclosure improves perseverance

Roberts, Adam Charles; Yap, Hui Shan; Kwok, Kian Woon; Car, Josip; Soh, Chee Kiong; Christopoulos, George I.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.04.002

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…The design was once the most common type of office design, but has become less popular in recent years [29]. Some benefits of this type of office design, such as reduced visual distraction leading to increased perseverance [30] have been identified, but these are now seen as being offset by negative cultural effects and reduced collaboration [31,32]. Most work on this design has focussed on individual cubicles, with no known work on designs with a team of employees in a single large cubicle.…”

Section: Office Design Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company

Pitchforth¹,

Nelson²,

Helder³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Over the past few decades many corporate organisations have moved to open-plan office designs, mostly due to financial and logistical benefits. However, recent studies have found significant drawbacks to open plan offices and it is unclear how office designs can facilitate the best work output and company culture. Current design practice aims to optimise efficiency of space, but no previous research has tested the effect of office design experimentally in a working office. This paper describes an experiment comparing four different office designs (Open-plan, Zoned open-plan, Activity based, and Team offices) against a suite of wellbeing and productivity metrics in a real world technology company. Results suggest that two very different designs (Zoned open-plan and Team offices) perform well compared to Open-plan office designs. Zoned open-plan and Team office designs improved employee satisfaction, enjoyment, flow, and productivity, while Activity based and Open-plan designs performed poorly by comparison. The Open-plan office design was rated more poorly by employees, had higher levels of unsafe noise, and once employees no longer had to be in the Open-plan office design of the experiment, they spent more time at their desks.

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Section: Office Design Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company

Pitchforth¹,

Nelson²,

Helder³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Their claimed cost efficiency may be applicable in the short run, but could eventually escalate in a chaotic chain of costly consequences. Indeed, open office layouts and visually unbounded areas have been linked to increased sickness absence (Bodin Danielsson et al , 2014; Pejtersen et al , 2011), decreased ease of communication with colleagues (Bernstein and Turban, 2018; Otterbring et al , 2018a) and cognitive impairments on work tasks requiring a higher need for concentration (Roberts et al , 2019; Seddigh et al , 2014). However, despite such findings and the results obtained in this study, it is important to note that open office types are not always aversive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The literature delineated above suggests that open office spaces may not only exert a negative impact on employees' cognitive evaluations, hereafter viewed as employees' beliefs and perceptions regarding the functional aspects of their work environment. Rather, these office spaces may also create a negative spillover effect in which employees' affective evaluations, defined as their feelings toward and attachment to the work environment, become less favorable (Ashkanasy et al , 2014; Evans and Johnson, 2000; Jahncke et al , 2011; Roberts et al , 2019; Seddigh et al , 2014). Thus, different office types may be associated with changes in employees' responses in two different evaluations domains (i.e.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Office types and workers' cognitive vs affective evaluations from a noise perspective

Otterbring

Danielsson

Pareigis

2020

JMP

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PurposeThis study aims to examine the links between office types (cellular, shared-room, small and medium-sized open-plan) and employees' subjective well-being regarding cognitive and affective evaluations and the role perceived noise levels at work has on the aforementioned associations.Design/methodology/approachA survey with measures of office types, perceived noise levels at work and the investigated facets of subjective well-being (cognitive vs affective) was distributed to employees working as real estate agents in Sweden. In total, 271 useable surveys were returned and were analyzed using analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and a regression-based model mirroring a test of moderated mediation.FindingsA significant difference was found between office types on the well-being dimension related to cognitive, but not affective, evaluations. Employees working in cellular and shared-room offices reported significantly higher ratings on this dimension than employees working in open-plan offices, and employees in medium-sized open-plan offices reported significantly lower cognitive evaluation scores than employees working in all other office types. This pattern of results was mediated by perceived noise levels at work, with employees in open-plan (vs cellular and shared-room) offices reporting less satisfactory noise perceptions and, in turn, lower well-being scores, especially regarding the cognitive (vs affective) dimension.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to compare the relative impact of office types on both cognitive and affective well-being dimensions while simultaneously testing and providing empirical support for the presumed process explaining the link between such aspects.

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“…The extended model postulates that not only “task” and “learner” fundamentally determine the cognitive load that emerges in a learning situation but also “environment”. In line with this argument, several studies have shown that basic architectural characteristics of working spaces such as ceiling height 6 , round versus angular form 7 , 8 or room doors 9 and size 10 influence specific kinds of cognitive processes such as relational vs. item-specific processing, convergent vs. divergent thinking, accessibility of information in situation models, or effort allocation on the task at hand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Room corners and how they influence the memory of visual information arranged on walls

Garsoffky,

Schwan

2024

Sci Rep

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In formal and informal learning settings corresponding information units are often arranged in the space around the viewer. For example, teachers pin task relevant information on classroom walls, or museum curators arrange exhibits in museum halls. Often learners and visitors are expected to see meaningful relationships between these information units. Theoretically, Gestalt Psychology has been examining the effects of connecting and separating elements in visual information displays, leading to the question of whether these findings also hold in three-dimensional environments. Does the mostly rectangular form of our rooms also either highlight or downplay relations between information dispersed across a room? Three experiments using virtual rooms showed that the matching pairs of pictures were memorized better if both pictures were arranged on the same wall instead of across two adjacent walls: that is, the presence of a room corner between matching pairs decreased memory (Experiments 1–3). Additionally, the findings showed that the participants’ orientation of their central field of view during learning influenced the effect of corners on memory. When initially looking around in rooms, participants most often oriented the center of their field of view toward the middle of a wall (Experiments 1 and 2); however, if they were restricted to orienting their field of view toward corners, the corner effect on memory vanished (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that room characteristics influence the exploratory behavior of viewers, thereby also affecting their memories of the presented information.

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The cubicle deconstructed: Simple visual enclosure improves perseverance

Cited by 10 publications

References 70 publications

The work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company

The work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company

Office types and workers' cognitive vs affective evaluations from a noise perspective

Room corners and how they influence the memory of visual information arranged on walls

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