by Paul Reynolds — When the office environment fails to offer sufficient natural light, or indeed any views of the outside world, what can be done? Paul Reynolds of CCD Design reports.
How can technology be used to enhance users’ experience of a workspace?
One study currently being conducted in a Swedish school is seeking to determine the effects of ‘full spectrum’ electric light on the experience of a dark Nordic winter as well as the hormone level changes caused by long nights and short, gloomy days.
The study has gathered evidence about the way in which artificial light can be used to counteract problems associated with living under such conditions. Its aim is to help people perform better at school and, by extension, the workplace. Similar studies have been undertake in the past, but their relative scarcity underlines the fact that firm scientific evidence is thin on the ground. Although there is much anecdotal evidence, it’s often not enough to sway purchasers.
Sky windows
Most workspaces include at least some windows, but technology such as Sky Factory’s products can still prove valuable where natural light is weak. There is evidence that these panels, which mimic the sky, can influence the way people experience a space by making it feel more spacious, inducing a physiological relaxation response and even contributing towards the easing of stress.
But these potential boosts to staff wellbeing and productivity are largely based on anecdotal data. The most subjective data currently available appears to come from studies in medical facilities, which have found that such products ‘can create a hyper-real illusion that has the power to elicit the same psycho-physiological relaxation response that occurs when we view real sky’.
If installing this technology can elicit such positive responses, organisations should at least consider how they might incorporate them into their spaces.
One area of a building where the sky simulation panels could be most valuable is the area around the architectural core. Floor plans often feature open spaces arranged around the perimeter of a building so that users who spend a lot of time in these spaces can make the most of views to the outside and capitalise on the benefits of natural light.
But this often results in a level of compromise for those meeting spaces that consequently end up near the core and which, while they may have some borrowed daylight, are generally devoid of outside views. In such cases, sky simulation panels could bring the meeting spaces a much-needed connection with the natural world while also making the room feel larger.
For people who spend a lot of time in meetings during the working day this could be beneficial to maintaining their natural body clock or ‘circadian rhythm’. There are studies on the use of sky simulation panels in medical facilities that show the Luminous SkyCeiling product can help re-establish or maintain patient’s circadian rhythms while in intensive care units, which significantly contributes to the healing process. Medical facilities may be quite an extreme example, but it’s easy to extrapolate that similar benefits could be achieved in other environments.
Biodynamic lighting
With our work often requiring us to consider the impact of shift work (especially in 24/7 control rooms and contact centre environments), we are particularly interested in the prospect of using lighting products to explore how the natural body clock could be influenced to keep users alert at the right times. Coupling this with a (perceived) view to the outside world could enable significant change in the way users experience this sort of shift work. The biggest challenges are to make the imagery convincing enough to fool the body clock of users and that the lighting changes are sufficient to improve performance, without risking people ending their shifts at work insufficiently aligned with the time of day in the world outside.
Could light change people’s perceptions and bring about more positive physiological responses to spaces? Biodynamic lighting can vary the quality and quantity of artificial light to mimic the rhythm of natural light, the theory being that this will have a positive impact on vision, the biological clock and overall worker wellbeing. It’s a technology often used for therapeutic reasons to treat existing conditions, but perhaps it’s time for biodynamic lighting to become more prevalent in this preventative role, reducing the chances of some conditions developing in the first place. Companies like Waldmann and PhotonStar are producing technology to control light in a more automated and dynamic way, supporting different ways of working and adapting to changing occupancy levels.
Luminous textiles
Luminous textiles provide another technological opportunity and gradually accumulating evidence that the experience of a workspace can be improved through clever use of technology. The Philips luminous textile range includes options for a variety of fabrics, colours, dynamic content and sounds while bringing benefits that many other lighting products don’t (e.g. acoustic absorption).
Again, a substantial amount of the research related to these products originates from their use in medical facilities. One Danish case study explains how luminous textiles have been effective in improving the experience of women in labour. The gradual iterative improvement and tailoring process that has been followed to optimise the technology for that environment could be replicated for other environments. Maybe workspaces where stress levels can be very high at times (for example, emergency services control centres) could benefit most from this tailoring approach.
So what does all this tell us? In workspaces with a scarcity of natural light or views to the outside world, some technological developments offer a range of interventions that could make a real difference. Evidence of the benefits of each is being compiled gradually, but they clearly point to a number of psychological and physiological benefits.
The greatest challenges ahead are in applying these in effective ways to support people at work and proving a genuine return on investment. Natural light 3
Bringing outside inside: blue-sky thinking
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) worked with CCD Design and Ergonomics to redesign the workspace for its design team. One meeting room now features illuminated ceiling panels that display a sky scene. These panels are slightly recessed into the ceiling grid to make them look as close to skylights as possible within the limitations of the space (see picture). Staff now using the meeting room get a sense of the outside world in a space that, because of building constraints, features nothing else that links them to the external world0. – See more at: http://www.fm-world.co.uk/features/feature-articles/natural-selection/#sthash.RQi7JSDY.dpuf