STOP JUMPING TO CONCRETE SOLUTIONS: 7 NEW QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF NOW REGARDING YOUR WORKPLACE

By Anh Tran

You’re probably reading this because – before the pandemic hit – you were looking for answers. You want to know what will be next, what will be best, what will really solve the things you’ve been thinking about in your workplace for lo, these many years. Is open plan going to be amaaaaazing or is it the worst thing ever? Can we fit 50 more people into this space or do we need to find a new one?

And then…COVID-19.

Now, you most likely have a different filter – can I send people who depend on me back into the spaces we already have? Can I serve clients, employees, collaborators, patients? Can I please say hi to someone in person? What can I do? What will I do?

When we need solutions, it feels daunting to spend time feeling our way around the edges of vast issues - the place where our workplaces intersect with our humanity, and our health, and our economy, and our neighbors, and our communities - and all the worries we have for ourselves and those we love. To look at what we’ve designed previously and what we were going to design, and cross-check whether we’re doing enough to safeguard and future proof space against pandemics and other threats.

I can’t give you a pat answer; I don’t have one. And this is no judgment on everyone running to try and make or find answers – especially as designers, we’ve spent years training and obsessing over solving problems, and many of us are trying to predict, control, and affect what’s become an even more unknowable future. Therapy for the therapist, as it were.

But, that uncertainty is probably where we need to live right now in order to move forward when we’re ready. If we sit with our discomfort and the things we’re worried and anxious about, that will tell us about the outcomes we’re looking for and the choices we’ll need to make. We’ve always used visioning to start this process, but with the unintentional expansion of time we’re experiencing right now, it seems less a luxury than a necessity. We will all have to focus on what we want to accomplish when this is more manageable, and then adjust our strategies accordingly.

With that in mind, we’d like to share some questions we’re always asking our clients, and are asking ourselves as designers now:

1. How do I want to feel in the office? How do I want to work?

2. How do I want my colleagues to feel? How do I want to work with them?

3. What can we do that would be helpful to the kind of culture and practices we want to have?

4. What things would help me feel safe and healthy in our space?

5. What makes me uncomfortable right now? What worries me?

6. What makes us who we are together? Does our space encourage us to hold onto the good things?

7. Where do I see myself and my organization in (whatever time period you’re comfortable imagining)?

These questions are an invitation to avoid jumping to concrete solutions too early, and hopefully they begin some of the deeper conversations and dialogue that will help all of us figure out what our next moves will be. And if you need one, there’s a design team somewhere ready to keep you company on physically distant sofas, stress-eating chips, furiously drawing and thinking about what we’ll do about all of the environments we usually move through. But there won’t be any answers until we’ve had the conversations.

Anh Tran, LEED AP BD+C, is a Workplace Anthropologist and leads Little’s measurement team. She can be reached at anh.tran@littleonline.com