Creativity in Workspaces

I find it interesting that there seem to be pendulum swings in the philosophy behind the design of the workplace. Should everyone have their own office? Is an open office plan better? What about cubicles?

John Cleese once gave a presentation on creativity at Video Arts which was making the rounds in my corner of the internet a few years ago. I highly recommend you give it a watch (though it's not necessary for the appreciation of this post).

Cleese speaks of two 'modes' which must be cultivated in order to operate as a productive creative person. The first is the Open mode. In this state of mind you are open to all ideas. You generate as many ideas as you can, taking in a diverse set of influences, talking to others, trying to see things from a new perspective by whatever means necessary, and just messing around. In the Closed mode, your job is to cull the unworkable ideas, to bend the workable ones into shape, to roll up one's sleeves and get into the nitty-gritty.

Both of these are Work -- forcing us to bend our poorly-evolved minds into the shape of the problems we are facing. Both of these take time, especially in the transitions between them. Both of these are necessary if your job involves any kind of creativity, and most do if they take place in some kind of office space.

The trouble comes from three unavoidable facts:

1. The open and closed modes imply very different kinds of spaces. The Open mode suggests that you should be available to others, and they should be available to you. In the Open mode you want to be able to gaze out the window, to lie on the floor, to play pinball, to listen to the sounds of your environment. In the Open mode, for reasons I do not understand, you need high ceilings.

The Closed mode is a solitary affair. The room should be arranged to draw the eye back to the work, and the work should be the brightest point in the space. For this you need silence, or a sort of music or noise that settles the mind rather than engaging it. For reasons I don't understand, it helps to have low ceilings.

2. Different jobs require different proportions of Open time and Closed time. When I worked as an engineer, I preferred a ratio of around 20% Open, 80% Closed. As a game designer, I prefer a ratio closer to 50/50. An executive or project manager may find something like 70/30 more suitable, as staying connected with their team is their primary responsibility.

3. All of these kinds of workers need to occupy the same overall space.

You can see how existing office plans fall along this spectrum, with fully open office plans at one end and individual offices at the other. If you don't give it much thought you might think a cubicle is a decent, if not ideal, compromise. On reflection, you may realize that we have found ourselves in a Spork situation, where cubicles don't really facilitate the open or closed mode with any effectiveness.

Some offices attempt to solve the problem with a flexible office plan. This puts workstations on wheels, or allows them to swap desks at will. Unfortunately, this forces workers to "travel light." People like to customize their workspaces, surrounding them with things that make them happy and reminding them of the reasons why they do what they do. They also may have specialized equipment that helps them do their job effectively, like a second monitor, a drawing tablet, or a transcription pedal. Maybe they need a special mousepad to alleviate their wrist pain, or type faster on a keyboard that is mechanical, or ergonomic, or chorded. Don't even get me started about chairs.

This introduces another dimension: customizability. Flex desks represent the bottom of the customizability scale and private offices occupy the top, with open-plan and cubicles in-between.

So, what would be the ideal? Clearly, the more customizability the better, and we want people to be able to switch between the open and closed modes as needed.

You can imagine a situation where each employee has two spaces they can customize at will -- one more conducive to open mode, the other to closed. This seems wasteful and problematic. Wasteful because each person now takes up twice as much space, and office space is often the primary cost a business faces. Problematic because the work accomplished in one mode must be transferred to the other station. There are technical workarounds for this, but none that surmount the cognitive work required to transport an idea into a new context.

The solution I'm most interested in pursuing in a more involved design process would be workspaces with deployable walls, where people can raise and lower them at will in order to switch modes. This seems like a sound solution, if a bit technically complex. I'm interested in all kinds of experiments. What kinds of solutions does your office use for accommodating both the open and closed modes?

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