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home / programmes / research associates / 2001 / working lives / head space
Tim Parsons / Design Products
head space:
privacy in open plan offices
A design study looking at ways to create greater psychological privacy for people working in large open plan offices, using objects on and around the desk to encourage new social rituals at work.
Despite attempts to humanise large open plan office environments, these spaces are often tiring and unproductive for those who inhabit them on a daily basis. This study set out to explore ways of providing open plan office workers with increased levels of privacy through the design of objects used on and around the desk. An investigation into past, present and predicted office layouts and workstyles was followed by observations of offices in the media sector - considered among the most frantic and psychologically oppressive.
From these experiences a rationale was developed that directed the project towards the provision of greater psychological privacy (termed 'head space') over the erecting of purely physical boundaries. A series of objects were designed to test methods of enhancing psychological privacy under the following criteria: signalling thresholds, controlling physical distraction, alleviating mental distraction and providing an 'intuitive' workspace. Positive feedback from the project by users suggests there is growing scope for office furniture and products to have their traditional roles augmented to become more responsive to the psychological as well as the ergonomic needs of open-plan office workers.
