Affordance Impacts on Human Performance

When it comes to where and how people work, there are a lot of choices—from a laptop on a dining room table to a smartphone in the subway to a state-of-the-art headquarters with the finest tools and technology. However, the work environment and the elements within it have a profound effect on people's ability to perform—which, in turn, affects business goals.

Haworth has adopted the concept of affordances, which help identify the characteristics of a space that help people do their best work. For over 20 years we've been studying affordances, and how different design elements encourage behavior, enhance engagement, and provide spaces for employees to excel.

What Are Affordances?

According to the Harvard Business Review Who Moved My Cube, the concept of affordances, developed by psychologist James Gibson, explains how individual objects communicate their purpose, as well as possibilities for action.

Consider, for example, the affordances of a doorknob. None of us would teach our toddler how to use one because at that age we’d prefer they didn’t know. However, children learn quickly on their own. The doorknob's shape, location, and configuration make its affordances—and partnership with the affordances of the door itself—very strong.

Affordances and Space Design

A well-designed space that takes affordances into consideration enables optimal human performance. We’ve developed a framework that identifies the space-related elements that contribute to human performance. These Affordances are divided into 3 distinct but interrelated categories:

• Physical Affordances – Support the body's needs (e.g., supplying natural light and fresh air).
• Emotional Affordances – Nurture a person’s psychological state (e.g., fostering a sense of belonging and well-being).
• Cognitive Affordances – Help people do their mind's best work (e.g., how space supports memory and learning).

By tailoring spaces to the specific needs of individuals and groups in these 3 categories, we can offer solutions that optimize human and organizational performance.

Over the last 30 years has been a focus on improving facility performance metrics—reducing square footage, dematerializing workstations, unassigning workspaces, etc. After 2020, our office focus was redirected to optimize the work experience, with greater emphasis on human performance. affordances must be curated to meet the desired experience.

Affordances aim to increase human performance whenever possible to support any available impact on cost reductions. Ultimately, what any organization wants from its people are the highest possible levels of judgment, planning, strategizing, analysis, creativity, and decision-making—all impacted by Cognitive Affordances. But organizations also want their people to be fulfilled, engaged, happy, collaborative, safe, and comfortable—all supported by Emotional and Physical affordances.

The Bottom Line: Practical Application

A worker's relationship to their space is of the utmost importance. In his article The Intelligent Use of Space, David Kirsh of the Department of Cognitive Science as UC Sand Diego says, "Whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly organizing and re-organizing our workplace to enhance performance. Space is a resource that must be managed, much like time, memory, and energy. When we use space well, we can often bring the time and memory demands of our tasks down to workable levels. We can increase the reliability of execution and the number of jobs we can handle at once.”

At Haworth, we’ve created a framework of Affordances that allows individuals and groups to accomplish their tasks. For example, one of the 3 core Physical Affordances is movement: The workplace must afford the worker opportunities to change posture, position, and location throughout the day. Identifying opportunities for movement within a work environment can be aligned with activity-based design characteristics that people desire within their workplace.

We believe affordances are necessary for all employees regardless of who they are, what tasks they have, or where the tasks take place. This means that affordances can be applied across job functions, cultures, and locations.

There isn’t a perfect workspace. No single work location or instance can accomplish all the affordances. In fact, the presence of some requires the absence of others. It is the cumulative effect of an employee’s entire workplace system must completely meet their physical, emotional, and cognitive needs.