A number of years ago, Herman Miller conducted research on the “natural preferred habitat,” which are places that our prehistoric ancestors sought to settle in while they were hunting and gathering. In these spaces, they looked for certain features with benefits. One of these was a wide, distant view. With this view from your habitat, you would get a lot of information, like where your resources were located; whether or not danger was approaching; and if there was a clear path available if you needed to move.

As part of the research, we applied this attribute — a view from the natural preferred habitat — inside that of a built environment. We found humans still have this longing for a wide, distant view, just like our prehistoric ancestors. We still want to put ourselves in a place where we can see out and not be seen. This is due to all the helpful information that a view can give you.

As humans, we are also innately attracted to nature (biologist and researcher E.O. Wilson coined the term “biophilia”)—it’s in our genetic makeup and our genetic memory. We have an affinity to and seek comfort in nature, and when we have views of it, it enhances our well being. In fact, there have been studies done in the healthcare arena that indicate that when patients have a view of nature, they heal a lot quicker and don’t need as much medication.

There may be more attention given to nature nowadays because our lives are more hectic. We are always online, always connected, always on, 24/7. It has put us in this continual state of partial attention to everything, without focusing on anything. And that does cause stress. Anything you can change in your surroundings to alleviate stress is healthy — and making sure you have a window view to nature is one of the best, most human things you can do.

- As told to Amy Feezor

Find the above featured Nelson Swag Leg Desk, Eames Molded Plastic Chair, Aeron Chair, Setu Chair and other inspiring furnishings for an elegant and intelligent office in the Herman Miller Store.

IrfanView: Great for beginners and experienced users, IrfanView is a freeware graphic viewer that has many unique and interesting features. This application supports a plethora of file types including Adobe Photoshop filters. For the incredible price of free, it’s hard to find a better option for the last majority of your photo needs (pictured above).

VirtuaWin: The vast majority of us no longer work in one application at a time. All too often we find ourselves switching between a few browser windows, an email client, photo editing software, and maybe even word processing documents. If this is the case using VirtuaWin to create virtual desktops is a great solution. Similar to Spaces on Mac, VirtuaWin gives you up to 9 virtual desktops to help reduce clutter on your screen.

Fences: On your PC the desktop tends to get cluttered rather quickly. While some go out of there way to keep their desktops clear, for most this isn’t practical. Instead of trying to remove everything from the desktop, use Fences to keep everything organized. Fences helps you create logical groups of the different icons floating around your desktop.

Force Empty Trash: If you use your computer long enough, you will inevitably run into the problem where you can’t empty your trash because a file is supposedly in use. If you have seen this then you know the frustration that it brings. Fortunately there a nifty little program called Force Empty Trash that overrides your system to empty the trash. Just make sure you know what is in there and that you are not trying to delete important system files.

Alfred: An incredibly useful productivity tool, Alfred allows for you to navigate and search your Mac as well as web apps within seconds. Alfred also allows for quick keyboard shortcuts to increase the speed at which you can navigate your machine. A great replacement for Quicksilver and Spotlight, Alfred is one of the best productivity tools available for Mac.

Laundry: Desktop backgrounds help set your computer apart and give it a unique style. Unfortunately, no matter how awesome your background image, after a while it becomes old and boring. Instead of letting this happen, liven up your desktop by using Laundry to rotate your desktop background in predetermined intervals. Laundry is able to pull from RSS feeds or even from Flickr to keep your desktop images lively and exciting.

You know it’s time to drop Fliqlo and move on to a new screen saver. Here are a few screen clocks that will have your friends crooning, “Where’d you get that?!”:

Analogy A circular clock that’s just as beautiful as the more popular Word Clock, but not found on every screen at the local co-working space. For Mac OSX, Windows and Android.


The Colour Clock This rainbow-colored clock takes the six hour, minute and seconds digits of the current time and interprets it to display a hexadecimal color value. For Mac OSX 10.5+, Windows and Android.

Crazy Scribbles Another round clock with a dash of color and plenty of style. Get it here.

The Timeline This screen saver features just a few simple bars scrolling across the screen. It comes bundled up with the screen saver below, plus a bunch of other more hideous creations. Try to ignore the Comic Sans. For Windows.

Handwritten Clock Bundled with the one above, this cool screen saver displays the time with several small photos of each digit drawn on paper. As each digit changes, a real-life hand comes in frame to erase the old one and draw the new. For Windows.

By Taryn Fiol