Every one of us is different

While doing your grocery shopping have you ever looked for a canned drink with your name on it? Have you ever used configurators to design your own sports shoes or a car tailored to your needs? Adjusting products, otherwise produced on a mass scale, to individual customer’s needs is called ‘personalisation’. This is the latest trend that has affected the way of designing things, from cereal to cars.

Supporting individualists

As each of us is different and wants to manifest his/her individuality, more and more often we are looking for the things which are created just for us. Adjusting products to the needs and situations has become a real must. That trend has also been influencing the way contemporary office furniture is being designed and produced. Nowadays, thanks to psychology and neurosciences studying brain activities, we have become aware that people are not machines, but instead, they are truly complex individualities. They are not only different from one another physically, but they all perceive the reality in a variety of ways (extraverts vs. introverts), they also have different tempers, experience, and are of different ages.
It is an enormous challenge to design the office that will match the needs of those unalike generations: Millennials, who are just entering the market, Baby Boomers, who are still an active generation, as well as Generation X.

People and their needs

Why is it crucial to focus office design on employees and their needs? The answer is quite simple -  in each company it is its people that matter. At present, managers are facing the greatest challenge of all, which is how to create a team and motivate it. Research shows that employee engagement depends on whether workers can actually  have any impact on the way they work and on their workplace. So, this is why the personalisation of the office is so important. It simply gives each of us an opportunity to shape the surrounding the way we please and to adjust it to our own needs.

Flexible office

A contemporary office resembles a mosaic as it consists of completely different areas, for example, there are rooms to hold formal meetings (conference rooms), or to hold working meetings, there are also rest zones (canteen, patio), or quiet rooms there. The office is arranged in this way so that the employees could select and adjust their workplace to the task they need to perform. And that’s one of the levels of personalisation. The other level is to adjust your workplace to your own needs. It’s about setting the temperature or light intensity inside the room you are in, but it’s also about introducing small, yet significant, changes that will result in greater comfort at work and will increase work productivity.

Design: Workplace Solutions, realisation: Workplace Solutions,  BALMA Showroom in Warsaw,  conference table from SIMPLIC Collection, photo by Adam Grzesik

Design: Workplace Solutions, realisation: Workplace Solutions,  BALMA Showroom in Warsaw, table from Balma PLUS Collection in the background, photo by Adam Grzesik

Design: Workplace Solutions, realisation: Workplace Solutions,  BALMA Showroom in Warsaw, photo by Adam Grzesik

Ergonomic furniture

It is vital to make use of all the possibilities that contemporary, ergonomic furniture can provide. Desks with adjustable top height allow to choose the most convenient height for us. Some desks promote  working in a standing position, it’s definitely advisable to try out that option and change the position in which you work in your office throughout the whole da.

Personal space and emotions

Edward T. Hall – the father of proxemics – in his studies concluded  that the space in which people live or work can affect their well-being and the level of stress they experience. The presence of too many people around us  or the feeling that our personal space has been invaded – all of that will have a negative impact on us. On the contrary, possessing one’s own territory will greatly contribute to the sense of security. Yet, in open-plan offices, where employees are constantly visible, it’s hard to protect your privacy. Psychologists state that the lack of privacy could lead to significantly less concentration while working, and that’s why, office designers try to enable any office user to create their own autonomous enclave in the office. It’s especially recommended in case of introverts who find the notorious contact with so many people to be disturbing them at work.

According to Susan Cain, nowadays the workspace design focuses mostly on sociable and friendly extraverts. However, both extraverts and introverts need to eliminate situations that make them tired or distracted. Modern office furniture  can offer convenient solutions like screens, mobile walls, which could be used to visually and acoustically separate oneself from the rest of the team if we need a moment to rest or to focus. Phone booths or furniture with a high backrest will also guarantee some privacy in the office. So, it is up to us to decide if we need to contact the others or if we want to work alone.

Emotions do matter

There’s much more to it than just ensuring the comfort – it is also emotions that need to be considered. The area around us may be stimulating too. It’s recommended to have around you some things, photos, postcards from holiday destinations, or motivating quotes. These elements will make your office look a bit like home and they will add a special character to the interior. Thanks to partition walls equipped with a magnetic fastening system to mount various accessories, we can arrange our workplace the way we like, not only thinking about the functionality, but also about building our own world.

Author of this article: Katarzyna Andrzejczyk-Briks, art history expert, lecturer at SWPS University and School of Form