R&D Workspaces: Some Quotes
Posted by: Rowan in BBC R&D Manchester, tags: BBC, Design, North, Quote, R&D, Work, WorkplaceOne of the challenges I work on in developing BBC R&D North’s new premesis (both the interim solution and our long term base at MediaCity:UK) is figuring out just what we as a department need to do our work. I’ve talked a little about the technology, but the physical environment is important too. Just what makes a space that engineers can work effectively in? I’d love to hear any suggestions you may have (use the comments), but I also thought I’d share some quotes I found when trying to quantify and communicate the environment we’re trying to create.
The first and largest problem is creating an environment free enough of distraction that engineers can concentrate. We use the idea of flow – a well established psychological concept – to illustrate this. As Wikipedia puts it:
Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove.
We need to balance collaboration and openness with this desire for contemplation and focus, a problem often faced by others, such as web software firm Digg:
I was particularly worried about the open area being too disruptive for productive engineering work and about the difficulty of managing the delicate balance between good communication and an excessively distracting environment. To mitigate this concern, we took inspiration from the “caves and commons” pattern and installed a cave area, for developers to retreat to.
– John Quinn, Digg
One way we’re seriously considering breaking up the space is into “project neighbourhoods”, an idea used by others including design firm IDEO. Tom Kelly has some interesting things to say on the matter in his book, The Art of Innovation:
We believe in the importance of neighbourhoods and community in fostering innovation.
– Tom Kelly, IDEO
Space is the team and the work. If a member wants to jump aboard another project, he or she needs to be able to quickly take off and land [in the new team’s neighbourhood].
– Tom Kelly, IDEO
Finally for this post, I’d like to share thoughts on one of the words I seem to say an awful lot these days; flexibility. With a regularly changing workplan and a remit to develop the next generation of media technologies, whatever they may be, our requirements change. One size does not fit all, and we’re keen to ensure we can adapt. I’ll leave you with my favourite quote, an extract from Workplace By Design by Becker & Steel, which explains that an organisation’s body language (what it does) must match what the organisation says.
An R&D center laid out in rigid ways… is like a lover whispering “I love you” in a bored voice while doing a crossword puzzle.
– Becker & Steele
Please do share your thoughts in the comments!
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The ability to “hide” when trying to work on something that needs concentration is important, and very difficult if your office doesn’t have a door (from personal experience). On the other hand, having to get people into your office to demonstrate something because that’s where your desktop PC is, and it’s the only thing with all the right software is a pain. Maybe remote desktopping or thin clients are the answer, so your environment can both be flexible / self-administered and follow you around. Doesn’t help if someone tries to phone your desk phone – unless that could tell that you have accessed from somewhere else and redirect the call …
Noise is really annoying, but so is silence. Other people’s noise is even more distracting – make provision for everyone to plug headphones in! Having hardware and software development too physically separated is a problem – having to cross the road to program a chip and come back to see if it boots is not an efficient way to work! This tends to mean the division between “Lab” and “Office” is unhelpful, although too much merging can also be a problem. Do you have two heights of work surface, one shorter for computers and one taller for doing hardware bench work? Getting this wrong is the main reason not to use a computer in the lab all the time – the table is too tall vs. the chair. Adjustable height desks?
I’m not sure about the “flow” bit. I’ve read about flow in relation to sports psychology, but I wouldn’t consider what I do at work ever achieving that state. Flow occurs when you’re doing something you’re thoroughly accustomed to, which is complicated but entirely familiar. If we’re doing something familiar in R&D, we’re doing it wrong, cause it isn’t R any more.
You don’t need a peaceful, quiet environment to achieve flow. Because it’s something familiar, you can enter that meditation-like state under a wide variety of circumstances, in situations of high stress and with many distractions. I believe the reason we need places to work that are free of distraction is because we can’t enter that state. We need peace and quite so that our brain can focus only on the (unfamiliar) inputs we are trying to focus on at the time, and build our new mental models. This is quite a different mental state from flow, where you are using well-established mental models on an instinctive level.
Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.
AG
I just opened up a Firefox profile I’ve not used in a while and this came up. I remembered I was going to add a comment ages ago but don’t think I ever did, so here goes. Hope it’s still useful!
Richard: There was a project at the DTG lab in Cambridge that solved exactly this issue. Each ‘employee’ could be located via an ultrasonic positioning device and you could set both your workspace and your desk phone to ‘follow you’ as you moved from desk to desk. Very handy. A 2 min Google search doesn’t show up much by way of demonstration, and you have to convince your employees to be locatable all day – so not massively realistic for the near future, but thought you might be interested. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/research/wiki/BatSystemMain is the (limited) documentation I have found. I’m sure there’s more out there.
Gibbo: Wrt flow I think the term is meant to be different (but related) when applied to sport and work. For an athletic sport like rowing or running for example, you can imagine a situation where, under extreme competition and physical effort (i.e. pressure) you enter a trance like state that allows you to push yourself harder than you would normally be able to. Consider for a moment that the reason this is possible might not be the pressure itself, but the way the desire to win asserts a pressure which blocks out everything else (fatigue, pain etc).
In a work context I was first introduced to the term in the excellent ‘Peopleware’ by Tom DeMarco. There, the term is used to describe a similar almost trance-like state where you manage to get things done at a far higher rate than normal, although not due to external pressure but the absence of external distractions (which ties in with the point above).
Lets assume half my day is taken up with random queries/phone calls/whatever. I’m a developer. For a given day when I’m constantly being distracted I may get some small unit of work done (lines written, stories completed, whatever your measurements are) and say sign off 1/2 of that day to my code tasks, half to whatever other job codes I have. But if you’re not distracted and focused on a single goal you can get considerably more done with that same day, say 4 or 5 times as much coding, for twice the time spent. http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/07/10/a_nerd_in_a_cave.html has some interesting thoughts on a similar subject if you’re interested, and this idea is also (kind of) the basis of David Allen’s GTD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done).
Rowan: Interestingly we’re having the same issues at my place of work as well. I think the best approach (as long as you have the space/funding to allow it) would be to have team sized ‘project rooms’ of say 5 – 20 people, each with desks for each team member and a group area for design and discussions. Then, on a multi-team sized basis have some external ‘caves’ for people or pairs who really don’t want to be distracted and then a larger communal area for inter-team meetings (perhaps near the kitchen or central to the team project rooms such that people are forced to walk through here several times a day, to foster ad-hoc cross-team communication).
Finally, some larger meeting/conference rooms for large design meetings, meeting with clients etc etc. A key to this is to allow your team project rooms to be client free (unless the team allows a client in) so they can turn them into a big messy bedroom (if that’s what they want). It’s really annoying to have to work in a clutter free environment because clients are walking past your desk all day!
In order to encourage people to move into the caves when then need to you’d have to make it easy to hot desk. I guess this means giving everyone laptops (as dev over VNC is very painful in my experience), which may not be an option.
Right, I’ve probably bored you with these already, but they’re my top pointers for the whole R&D workspace thing. In no particular order:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html The Joel On Software guide to software developer workspaces. Not a universally aknowledged expert on architecture, but he is a well known development guru. Caveat- we are doing R&D not software product development. None the less, a good guide.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0932633439 Tom Demarco’s Peopleware. Again, largely abot product development, but tales a good long look at the space needs of creative technical people working in small teams.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8639555925486210852# Steward Brand’s How Buildings Learn is a groundbreaking piece of architectural documentary that includes some exquisite insights into the nature of creative spaces. I got two things from this set of programmes (all now available top watch for free online):
Shearing Layers- how you really should think of temporal strata in the construction of a space.
Functionality- First and foremost buildings truely are machines for living in- looks are independant of functionality. Good looks are cool, and can make you feel good about a place, but it will be as nothing compared to how great a brilliant workspace would be. As a fan of brutalist modernism (Trellic Tower for instance) I have to recognise that some modernist stuff is terrible (Eastbourne Congress Theatre- doesn’t work as a theatre) even if it is a ’symphony in concrete.
See also Phil Gyford’s excellent notes on the programme http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2004/10/24/how_buildings_le.php. I recon we could do a lot worse that get Phil in for a few sessions on how we use our spaces.