Herman Miller blog: Discover » New York Times

Rhythm and Blues of the Daily Grind

David Foster — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:00:22 +0000

Maybe you prefer jazz while on the job, or to waltz while at work. Alliterations aside, if you’re not listening to music in the office, you may be missing out.

“Music breaks you out of just one way of thinking,” explains Dr. Lesiuk of the University of Miami in a recent New York Times article. Music does this by improving our mood, which reduces stress and encourages creative thinking. A study conducted by Dr. Lesiuk even suggested that music can benefit productivity, as long as a person is not a novice to the task at hand.

So which type of music is best? Dr. Sood of the Mayo Clinic recommends music without lyrics. But most importantly, it should be something you enjoy. So if the song stylings of Weird Al bring a smile to your face, then that’s all that matters—just be sure to invest in a good pair of headphones to be kind to those around you.

What do we listen to while at work? Visit Herman Miller’s Lifework Blog for a weekly playlist from our creative network.

Designing Offices Against the Curve

Randall Braaksma — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:07:51 +0000

A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Just ask T.J. Allen. His research of communications and its relation to collaborating led to the idea of the Allen Curve: the more distance there is between people, the less they will communicate. The effect really kicks in at 50 meters, or 150 feet.

Designing offices to be more compact is one way to counter an aversion to taking a walk at work. This ends up being a win-win for the business: People talk more (coming up with better ideas) and real estate costs go down.

Smaller offices and places for people to gather or bump into one another, as J. Michael Welton writes about in The New York Times, shared offices, compact conference rooms equipped with technology, quiet spots to get away from it all, choices in where to work given the task at hand, all these are elements in creating the right balance. That’s key. Intelligent remixing between individual offices and group and community areas, as opposed to simply shedding real estate, is necessary for enabling one of the organization’s largest resources—its human talent.

Adapting Design to the Digital Age

Randall Braaksma — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:00:09 +0000

One of the big appeals of technology devices is that they get smaller and more powerful with each successive design. This trend toward miniaturization makes these devices easier to carry and store, and much more convenient to use, which affects how we live and work. The logical conclusion for miniaturization—implanting computers in our bodies—is now less the stuff of science fiction and more a matter of future labs.

Miniaturization, as you might expect, has affected the furniture and other objects that support it. This complementary effect is known as dematerialization, and it means that less—or even better, no—material is used to create a product that provides the same level of function to the people who use it. Steven Kurutz, in the New York Times, sees this trend affecting industrial designers, who are adapting their designs “in ways big and small, subtle and not so subtle — to new forms of technology and the proliferation of devices like the iPad, e-readers and ever-thinner flat-screen TVs.”

Both trends—miniaturization and dematerialization—are likely to continue and speed up. As Ryan Anderson, our director of furniture technology, notes in the article, designers used to have time to anticipate where technology was headed and plan for it. But with the speed of technology change today, the furniture, and the space it occupies, have to adapt almost instantly.