09/04/2024 • 4 min read
Boost focus and productivity through smart design
by Haworth, Inc.
Creating spaces that support optimal mental performance is crucial in today's fast-paced work environment. Haworth's Affordances framework, particularly through its Cognitive Affordances, offers insights into how the workplace can enhance mental functions like focus, planning, learning, and memory. Designing environments that leverage the brain’s interaction with its surroundings, can help employees perform at their best.
Cognitive Affordances optimize the workplace to support mental performance. They create spaces that enhance focus, improve memory, and foster the discovery of new knowledge. The brain’s function is not isolated but deeply intertwined with the environment. Understanding this relationship can create workplaces that elevate cognitive capabilities and help employees thrive.
The workplace can boost cognitive function by embedding tools that store and display information, allowing employees to focus on more complex activities.
Externalization is the use of space to aid cognition. It centers around transforming thoughts into an external form to improve creativity, project planning, and problem-solving. An effective externalizing environment offers various channels for sharing thoughts and share ideas with teammates.
Everyone has their own knowledge, but to flourish at work, we must regularly acquire new knowledge. Access refers to how attainable and available information is and how we store and retrieve it. Sources of knowledge include our interactions with other people, experiences, and media.
Insulation refers to how the workplace can allow people to focus their attentional resources without distractions or interruptions. This involves ensuring the worker is comfortable, able to focus, can isolate meaningful stimuli in their environment, and can filter out distracting stimuli.
Organizations can enhance mental performance by designing workplaces that support cognitive functions, allowing employees to thrive. The Cognitive Affordances—embedding, externalization, access, and insulation—provide direction for creating environments that empower workers to perform at their best.
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09/03/2024 • 4 min read
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