
A Startup That Designed Its Office to Confuse Workers - cpeterso
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/procore-office-disorienting-enriched-environment/
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omginternets
>It’s designed expressly to make workers get and feel lost, because, as
neuroscience shows, disorientation keeps people alert and expecting the
unexpected.

Oh my. Good luck with that, gentlemen.

>According to research in neuroscience, this kind of visual chaos can help
workers stay more alert, by asking them to constantly reengage with their
environment.

Alert != attentive.

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pjc50
People have forgotten that attention is transitive: you pay attention _to_
something. If you're paying attention to the environment, what is your
attention being diverted from?

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synthmeat
Anecdotally, I have found that my focus welcomes slight distraction, in
various forms - tv show I already know by heart, stupid silly shows,
instrumental repetitive music, music I'm extremely familiar already...

Basically, when I'm at risk to lose focus from task at hand, this steals it,
and it's rather boring compared to what would most likely be highly abstract
contemplations, totally new ideas and so on, so your focus returns to original
task since immediate alternative provided is dull affair.

It somehow "eats up" part of my nature that nudges me to lose focus. It's
maybe analogous to how rain noise gobbles up various distracting sounds.

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omginternets
Taking breaks is clearly a good thing, but being externally distracted is not.
If you're thinking about where you're going, you're not thinking about how
you're going to present your work at the meeting.

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userbinator
I wonder if it would remain distracting for long - as someone who has worked
in some _very_ large buildings that would seem more confusing than what's
shown in the pictures here, after a week I tend to have memorised most of the
layout I need and it becomes more or less second-nature. If they were moving
the walls regularly, that would be a different matter...

If anything I'd say the odd-angled rooms and visually "rich" environment give
more navigational affordances than relatively featureless, repetitive
structures like straight hallways and rows of doors: "Go straight until the
ceiling turns blue, bear left and turn right at the yellow wall." I think I'd
be far more likely to get lost in a place like this:

[http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building3277/media/5...](http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building3277/media/530%207189.JPG)

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collyw
When I travel somewhere for say a week, I notice the place usually seems a lot
bigger the first day or two when I don't know my way around. After a week you
realize it isn't often so big.

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JackMorgan
I think some wild animals on variable length leashes and random screaming
sounds pumped through the PA might have similar effect. That's way cheaper
than moving to a fancy office space.

Time to start up MY startup, Rent-A-Tiger. We prey on bad productivity.

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joezydeco
How about randomly switching the HVAC from 55 degrees to 90 degrees? Or maybe
cutting the power off for a few minutes each day?

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dagw
I think I've worked at that office.

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jsingleton
Sounds like IKEA or any department store. Designed to be a maze to trap you in
so you spend more.

Steve Jobs designed Pixar's office with only one set of toilets so people
would collaborate more: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-
pixar-off...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-
office-2015-3)

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Jare
Catmull shows in his book Creativity Inc, how happy he was to prevent that
idea from happening.

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DanielBMarkham
I love this idea -- as an experiment. The trick, I think, would be the
difference between "how it affects employees the first week or two" and "how
it affects employees over several months or years" Of course, as a marketing
move, it's brilliant. Here we all are talking about it.

Good teams are both able to spin off into fun and distraction mode -- and dive
deep into concentration mode. There's an edge of chaos thing going on. If the
place sounds as quiet as a library all day, we mix it up. If the nerf gun
battles go on all afternoon, we tone it down. There is an ebb and flow to
these things. Things tend towards a line, with variations from time to time.
Groups of humans working socially remind me a lot of chaotic systems.

When the disruptions are constant, like working next to a large industrial
plant that makes noises, it doesn't all come together. When the disruptions
are responsive, like working in one room with 6 or 7 other guys, it's much
more unpredictable.

Since this sounds predictable over time, I'd suspect that the affect wears off
rather quickly.

But all of that is just unsupported speculation. I've found with things like
this, it's much more important to let folks try things and then observe how it
turns out. Interesting stuff.

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nbevans
246 employees with a swanky office is not a startup.

~~~
benoliver999
If you are hiring a firm to design your office, you are no longer a startup.

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forexio
Image there is a fire and everyone is confused how to get out....

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pathy
>"The software firm opened shop in 2002 with six employees. It now has 246. "

Surely that is not really a startup?

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lamby
What's troubling to me is that the objections being raised here are all about
how they went about it, not that the whole idea of social engineering is
somewhat problematic in the first place, condescendingly paternalistic and
robbing ourselves of moral independence and autonomy, etc.

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fit2rule
I'd love to work in a place like that - I feel very uncomfortable in an
ordered environment where row upon row of offices is filled with a placid set
of cubicles, all the same shape, color, and design. Visual noise definitely
helps me focus - some of my best work has been done in a coffeeshop
environment during prime time, headphones on, in the zone, lots of chaos and
motion going on around me - and some of my worst work experiences have been
while sitting in a row, upon rows, of static desks all looking the same.
Conformity may be good for the bean counters, but a lot of us can't get
ourselves seeded and primed without a sip from /dev/random first, it seems.

~~~
ObviousScience
Sure.

But my company has literally paid me over $1,000 in the past year to look up,
awkwardly make eye contact, look around a moment, blink a few times, and look
back at my screen because it draws my attention when people cross in front of
my desk, and we have an open office design. (That cost is literally just the
15 seconds of looking around, the number of times I did so today, and my pay
rate.)

I hope they're getting their money's worth for my time, but I'm not sure they
are -- or that they're not taking it out on me through externals, such as
expecting me to make up that lost time in "crunch time" or extra hours or
something.

I feel like a lot of these plans are feel good pop science that just
externalize the costs of what the executive wanted to do for pet reasons.

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Mimu
I don't really see the point. Aren't everyone working there will know the
office by heart after 2 weeks?

It looks good though.

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personjerry
> It’s designed expressly to make workers get and feel lost, because, as
> neuroscience shows, disorientation keeps people alert and expecting the
> unexpected.

This is an example of taking the science out of context. I think it's pretty
obvious that this type of disorientation applies in a _new_ environment. The
employees who work there every day? Pretty quickly you'll learn the in and
outs of your own workplace.

Without this premise as the reasoning for the architecture, to me it just
seems like another tech firm eager to spend its money.

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S4M
I did my studies in a university that was sharing some offices with the French
office of statistics - called INSEE. The building was shaped as a combination
of triangle (the INSEE, not my university, which was in a separate but nearby
building), and I remember that whenever I had to go there - the administration
had its office there - it felt so disorientating and I would get lost.

I believe it was a modern architecture, and the feeling of confusion was not
on purpose. The first picture reminded me that building. I would hate to work
in such a maze. Wasting time getting lost going to a meeting room, or looking
for the desk of someone not in my closed quarters, would be very annoying.

Below a link to a picture of the building:

[http://www.pss-archi.eu/photos/photo-14209.html](http://www.pss-
archi.eu/photos/photo-14209.html)

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andmarios
An even greatest example of such architecture are the older buildings (also
called the brown buildings) of the Technical University of Crete (Greece).

They are full of various shaped classes, most are in a free polygon form. It
is not unusual for a large cylindrical pillar to be in the middle of a small-
ish class, obscuring view to the blackboard, or for a seat to be one meter to
the front, 3-5 meters to the side of the board.

The shape and placement of buildings confuses the first year students, many of
whom don't feel at ease until the second or third year. We used to joke that
they would make a great Doom level.

Despite the university being in a remote area with great weather, windows
frequently are absent, or small and placed high.

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jister
>> “The way we live life is very diverse … I have some of my best ideas in
random places—the car, the shower—so we developed a space that is highly
diverse,” Corbett says.

People justifying their stupidity...

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outsidetheparty
The communications department in my old college campus was in a building
designed to be deliberately confusing -- you had to go upstairs to get into
the basement, hallways changed direction unexpectedly, etc -- with the idea
that that'd get the students to communicate with each other because get it
we're lost and have to ask each other directions and it's the communications
dept see we're communicating get it get it huh do you get the joke hilarious

yeah they tore that sucker down a couple years ago apparently

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makeitsuckless
In other words, they put themselves in a boring industrial terrain in a boring
suburb, just like any other boring company, and then try to recreate the
creative impulses you get if you would live and work in a lively city.

What they cite is their motivation is exactly why I live and work in an urban
environment, but the office is supposed to be the place where I can focus in
turning that input into productive results.

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jeremysmyth
I'd have thought they'd want to spend their employees' finite daily decision
making and problem solving skills on their business.

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BillinghamJ
This seems kinda stupid, but I'd welcome some explanation as to why it makes
any sense

~~~
wingerlang
> According to research in neuroscience, this kind of visual chaos can help
> workers stay more alert, by asking them to constantly reengage with their
> environment.

I didn't read the article, but the text for image 5/8 said this.

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noonespecial
I tore an entire doorframe out and rehung it once because the slight but
obvious angle between it and the low ceiling in the room made me crazy. I
obsessed about it even when I wasn't in the house!

This might not be the best place for me to work....

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chinathrow
Wow... what a stupid idea. But hey, it's cheap PR!

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bussiere
He could get a good placebo effect with this if he communicate well :) That s
the only thing that i could imagine as a good effect

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davegardner
Surely the disorientation would only last a few weeks at the most, so any
benefit would quickly disappear.

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gregjwild
... this feels beyond absurd.

Attention and focus is important. Sounds like start-up kool-aid to me.

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jalayir
It honestly doesn't look THAT confusing in the pics.

