futuresrambling

SaaP Space as a Product

By Laurie Aznavoorian Article 114

Recently I read a book by Nir Eyal, he was the CEO of a company that places ads on Facebook and is known for his expertise in behavioural engineering that he uses to teach software designers clever tricks for developing habit-forming products. I’m not sure if he was also responsible for the algorithms used to tailor ads to users’ accounts. Mine were for adult diapers, this along with the 2016 US elections motivated me to close my account in a huff. My distaste for Facebook did not stop me from reading Eyal’s book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products which I devoured with great interest given its focus on the overlap of human science and products.

I am not a religious person, since being married by an Armenian priest wearing embroidered slippers curling up at the toes and a matching cape with a collar that stood up like a dog cone… wait there’s more, the cape had a photo of Jesus in a plastic sleeve on the back that got me wondering (as you do during your wedding ceremony) whether he changed the photo depending on the service. That query was put to rest a few years later when the same priest christened our son wearing a different slipper/cape ensemble. The point here is, religious lore is not my forte, hence my need to turn to Google for confirmation of the 7 deadly sins; because I’m pretty sure I am disposed to at least one after reading Eyal’s book – envy.

The book proclaims the virtues of the ‘hooked model’ a methodology to create habit-forming behaviour in users via a looping cycle that consists of a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment. Software designers use this to exploit our flawed human psychology, we get hooked because when we engage with their product it gives us a dopamine rush. Domamine is one of 20 neurotransmitters that carry messages around our bodies telling our lungs to breath, our hearts to beat, it tells us to drink water when we’re thirsty, and to play with our mobile phone 2 to 4 hours a day if you’re a light user.

Leveraging the same neural circuitry employed in slot machines product designers encourage phones to be unlocked 150 times a day on average, 71% of us sleep with them, 75% take the phone to the loo and 66% of the world’s population shows signs of nomophobia no-mobile-phone-phobia. So why you might ask, would you be envious of designers that use persuasive technology to influence behaviour and addict people to something as habit forming as nicotine, alcohol, amphetamines and cocaine? I suppose I’m pissed that we didn’t think of it first, we are every bit as clever as software designers and have better fashion sense to boot.

The capacity for so-called “persuasive technology” to influence behaviour is only now being understood, but it is something worthwhile for architects and workplace designers to consider. Especially if you believe Hub Australia and Worktech’s latest survey that indicates a fifth of respondents said the physical office will be obsolete in the next decade. So that gives us ten years to figure out how to make ourselves relevant. While we work on our next moves, our clients will need to sort equipment and tools to support virtual space and do some hard yard with their leaders. Some surprisingly still believe they can coerce employees to return to the office full time by threatening loud unemployment to offset quiet quitting and other mutinous pandemic spawned ideas.

Last post I floated the idea that technology is now the place where work is done leaving the workplace as an enabler. Continuing on that path, if you can swallow the concept of workplace being a thing or product, then how much more of a leap is it to treat space like other products and then how much further do you need to go before applying a small bit of Eyal’s thinking in order to make spaces more sticky, attractive and worth going to – not to mention to encourage occupants to behave in the way we hope they will?

Before abandoning the idea remember when co-working became popular, we accepted the idea of SaaS – space as a service – maybe this is the SaaP decade? Please don’t misunderstand, I am NOT endorsing the adoption of nefarious mind-altering strategies, I may be envious, but have moral conviction unlike Mr. Zukerberg. This is merely a suggestion for our industry to toss around over a few beers and see where it takes us. Do that thing we are good at, think about problems and solve them.

At the University of Arizona Professor Doug Macneil introduced our first-year architecture class to Grady Gammage Auditorium which is considered to be one of the last public commissions of Frank Lloyd Wright. The building looks like a wedding cake that led the students to conclude Wright was drunk when he designed it, but Doug wanted us to pay attention to an inside balcony with a low guardrail. He suggested the height discouraged people from going close to the edge without the need for a sign, he followed this example with a photo of a wall tile pattern in a tunnel at LAX that encourages rapid movement. As if one needs a nudge to get out of LAX.

Our professor didn’t use the words nudge or choice back then, if he gave the lecture today, he would call this ‘choice architecture’. In the last decade nudging and choice has been used to varying degrees of success to encourage changes in consumer behaviour, it is built on well-established behavioural research. You see one example of this in fast food restaurants where kilojoule counts are displayed alongside the price.

The concept of deliberately encouraging individuals to do something because it is in their, or societies, best interest is also sometimes called ‘libertarian paternalism’. It’s a way of encouraging behaviour without removing freedom of choice. Unfortunately, nudging relies on sustained behavioural change, which is difficult. Humans are not rational beings even when they know what they are doing is not in their best interest. I for instance had three glasses of Pinot Noir at my friend Agustin Chevez’s book launch this week knowing it was a mistake, but I did it anyway. By the way you should read his book A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Workplace. download for free here https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-4759-9

The way choice architecture works is it provides information about an issue, product or service with associated warnings or risks. Goals and reminders like retweets and likes are employed to increase engagement, and in some cases data or insight into habits provide the gory facts that inspire change. You might see this at the end of the week when your iPhone informs you of screen hours. Kudos to Apple for trying! In contrast Nir Eyal is against companies regulating habit-forming technology. He thinks individuals should take responsibility for their actions, but since most Tik Tok and Instagram users are 15 and can’t remember to brush their teeth it’s a weak position.

Of course, many of the examples above are technology, but I’d posit the overlap between technology, space and people’s behaviours is more important now than ever before; and through exploration of this mix, we can make ourselves more relevant. I love to use the line ‘space is a powerful tool’ with clients, I believe it, but admit we don’t leverage space to its full potential. Briefs are simplistic and omit problems that we think are not in our department such as isolation, loneliness, and a growing mental health epidemic.

I know why we do this, because we don’t have the fee to explore tangents not to mention the fact that many practices made their thinkers and experienced professionals redundant during the pandemic, replacing them with graduates to crank out Revit. Frankly, our education also doesn’t provide the skills and many of us simply don’t have the desire to do more. Face it lots of architects and designers like making pretty things and could give two stuffs about real problems. This I fear is precisely the thinking that may lead us to be replaced by AI.

Attitudes change, my parents drove around in Chicago winters with the windows rolled up, both chain-smoking their hearts out. Not one of us wore a seat belt so if my father had to slam on the brakes, I have no doubt my younger brother would have been jet propelled through a cloud of cigarette smoke into the windscreen. Parents don’t do that anymore. Another example is the tennis star Serena Williams who was endlessly pooh poohed for being too black, too bold, too strong, and too unlike svelte white European players in crisp white outfits. It may have taken decades, but at least in her retirement Serena is lauded for her work ethic, mentoring and for rattling an institution that has not kept up with the times. It’s a good lesson.

Sources:

Deyan, Georgiev (2022) 51+ Scary Smartphone Addiction Statistics for 2022 [Nomophobia on the Rise] Techjury

Eyal, Nir (2014) Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Penguin

Parkin, Simon (2018) Has Dopamine Got Us Hooked On Tech? The Guardian

Haynes, Trevor (2018) Dopamine, Smartphones and You a Battel for your Time” Harvard University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences blog

Tratford, E.P. and de la Hunty, A (2021) A Gentle Nudge: Can Choice Architecture Play a Role in Retailers’ Efforts to Promote Healthier Choices?

The Green Acres of Hybrid Work

By Laurie Aznavoorian

My mother used to say if you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all. As a rebellious teen and know it all young adult I rarely followed her advice, but now well into older ‘ahem’ adulthood I finally have. I haven’t posted for over a year because with the pandemic, fires, floods, wars and the erosion of democracy and truth, not to mention the death of Wally Cleaver so soon after Eddie Haskell, there wasn’t anything good to say. I feel differently now, don’t get me wrong there still isn’t anything nice happening, but there is plenty to say.

In March I departed a 30+ year career to pursue a PhD at the University of Melbourne. The degree sits in the faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning with an overlap into human sciences but unlike America, advanced degrees in Australia are research based so I don’t attend classes. As a first year a PhD candidate I spend my time reading everything to be found on my research topic, the impact of physical environment on human behaviours and the role that plays in decision making, and I do a lot of thinking, pontificating, and pipe smoking wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches.

I’ve done so much I feel it would be inhuman not to share my learnings and vow to return to frequent posting. You can thank an abundance of time and absence of timesheets for this head space to ponder the meaning of 1960’s American sitcoms. Valuable life lessons were imparted in shows like Mr Ed, Leave it to Beaver and The Beverly Hillbillies, but today I will focus on Green Acres and the parallels one can draw between that and the current lame rollout of hybrid working.

Recognising many of you are still required to fill in timesheets and don’t have the luxury to rewatch 1960’s television, I’ll offer a quick snapshot. Green Acres is about a prominent and wealthy New York City attorney, Oliver, fulfilling his dream to be a farmer, and Lisa his glamorous Hungarian wife, uprooted unwillingly from an upscale Manhattan penthouse apartment to a dilapidated farm. Oliver does his chores in a suit and drives a Lincoln Continental convertible. Instead of washing dishes, Lisa sometimes tosses them out the kitchen window.

They don’t understand country life, perhaps you can see the connection? The first problem with hybrid began when we imparted an office pathology to a completely different medium that would have been better off without it. In the same way it is silly and very funny to transpose city life to the country, one should not plop the office and all of its crap into people’s homes. That’s not even funny.

The early days of the great hybrid experiment not only exposed but transported the toxicity and all that was broken in the office: the wasted time, unproductive meetings and larping directly to your residence. Larping is a character-driven type of gameplay conducted in the real world, guys (yes mostly men ) dress in character and wack each other over the head with foam swords.

Applied to work larpers are tossers who want to make sure everyone knows they are there and doing something useful. They used to say dumb things in meetings and now they say dumb thing on Slack, Teams, or Email. Either way they are a waste of time.

Now that we are allowed back in the office, the same make-believe role playing is being applied to Hybrid work. There is no shortage of debates about the number of Zoom rooms, days various teams will be in the office and lots of stupid talk about what a good idea it is to have a book club to reinforce company culture. It is not, that is a foam sword.

Planning hybrid requires deep thought to move forward with design intentionality, but instead we’re shovelling shit in a Brooks Brothers suit using a foam shovel. There is a lot of noise around what to do in physical workplaces when there should be noise about what we are really doing. I’ll bet you’re staring at a screen right now, I’ll bet that is what you spent much of your workday doing and what you did last week, last year, last decade. Isn’t it time we acknowledge the table has turned and work happens in technology, it is the PLACE. The physical workplace is one of many enablers.

Many reading this will be sputtering about how great physical presence is for collaboration, culture and the absolute necessity of being together for intense creative brainstorming. It’s a valid point, but when our offices were boarded up, we continued to innovate digitally (except for those who shirked quarantine restrictions to sneak to the office) and university design courses continued to be taught using Teams and Miro. We figured out new ways, all I am saying is it is undeniable – the pandemic busted many great myths of the past and that we should get ready and aim before we fire.

It would be unfair not to point out well documented positive sides of hybrid such as flexibility and the way it opened doors to greater inclusion. But you could have learned that watching Green Acres. Arnold Ziffel is a pig who understands English, lives indoors, watches Westerns on TV and attends the local primary school. In one episode they wanted to get him into Harvard, which gives me great hope for my cat Saucy Pissweak. The point is the town views Arnold as human, but Oliver only sees livestock. Similarly, in a digital environment you don’t know if you’re talking to a person or a pig, could be both.

Hybrid in its current form is a great start and research makes it clear that hybrid is not going away despite the desires of stale, grey, pale, males who lead companies. But is this current state really the template for the future? Shouldn’t our future begin with an investigation of the inherent flaws in the ideology of the office and phenomenology of work past. Shouldn’t we look at issues through the eyes of the people who use space, study their needs, pains, and expectations instead of porting old mentalities and slightly tweaked but obsolete physical environments into the future.

Bullshit Jobs

Post #112 by Laurie Aznavoorian

Yes, I know it’s been ages since I’ve composed a post. Other pursuits such as PHD proposals and novels have occupied my time. If you know any publishers or agents who might be interested in a humorous memoir or a cynical tome titled ‘The Pitch’ – a story of three design firms competing for a prestige project, please let me know. By the way, should either be published, you would not find them in the literary fiction section.

Yesterday I did a presentation to our office on pre and post Covid workplaces and commercial office buildings, I talked about the inevitable imperative for place to now ‘earn the commute’ along with other key themes including employee’s strong desire for their work to align with their individual sense of purpose. Pragmatist may argue there’s no need to pay attention to such silly woke ideologies, which is true if you’re happy to have younger workers, in particular Millennials, leave. This is the cohort that a new report by McKinsey says are three times more likely that others to be re-evaluating work.

The same report found that 70 percent of employees’ sense of purpose is defined by work, so it makes sense for organisations to pay attention because it is becoming clear the work first culture is being replaced by something more personal and altruistic. Also, people who live purpose at work are more productive, they’re healthier and have greater resilience and when an individual’s purpose aligns with the organisation’s, they’re more engaged, loyal, and likely to recommend the company to their mates.

These findings mirror recent research conducted in the US and Australia by Atlassian and PWC. They don’t mince words with their recommendations.

“It’s now clear that employees expect their employers to make a difference. We are seeing an increasingly activist workforce that holds business to account and prioritises wellbeing over career progression.”

Atlassian Co-Founder and CEO Scott Farquhar warns the consequences of inaction will be real in the war for talent, he says there has never been higher expectations of businesses and their leaders.

So how do you know if your job aligns with purpose? It’s a tough question, one test would be to ascertain whether you have a bullshit job. The term comes from the anthropologist David Graeber’s 2018 book. He postulates some jobs are meaningless and cause societal harm, he goes on to suggest that over half of societal work is pointless and psychologically destructive, particularly when comparing what we do to a work ethic that associates work with self-worth.

Mentioning bullshit jobs in the office caused my colleagues to laugh nervously and look at each other, their eyes silently imploring – are our jobs bullshit jobs? The answer is no. For a job to be a bullshit job the person doing it can’t even justify its existence, and if a bullshit job is eliminated society would be no worse off. If architects or interior designers suddenly vanished the world wouldn’t work very well and face it things would be butt ugly. Society might not miss us the way they would teachers, garbage collectors or shelve stockers at Woolworths, but our absence would be felt.

In addition, bullshit jobs are often highly respected, and they pay well; we all know that architecture is all flash, no cash. It might be easier to explain the concept of a bullshit job using Amazon as an example.

If the rocket carrying a ridiculously wealthy boss exploded, would we care? On the other hand, if an underpaid shift worker failed to pack and post the HoMedics Pedi Luxe Foot Spa with heat boost power ordered during lockdown for a pick me up, well that would be a different story.

What does this have to do with workplace and commercial office buildings? Quite a bit, Covid has changed how life and work are conducted, it constitutes a social legacy that will lead to social change and that will manifest itself in both our mindset and how we use physical space. In some instance it may demand we reimagine spaces.

One priority that should drive a potential rethink of environments should be mental health given researchers suggest this is the most important issue of 2021. Hopefully it is now understood that supporting mental health involves more than breakout areas, fruit bowls and temperature checking stations. Workplaces must now demonstrate to employees that the organisation cares about them and the issues they worry about, which is increasingly humanity, community, and the planet, not shareholders and supporting a neoliberal economy.

Looking at the projects that are currently on our digital drawing boards suggest there is a greater likelihood of acceptance and inclusion of places that are designed with mental health and social responsibility in mind.

Ideas such as access to multi – modal areas and blurring of public and private space are the same as those pitched pre pandemic, but now they are seriously being considered indicating this may be the time that organisations not only listen but act.

One concept gaining traction involves reimagining commercial building’s ground planes and podiums as spaces that can support and be shared with the broader community. This includes the spatial arrangement, supporting technology and security to enable activation and extended hours of operation. The concept benefits community in that there is somewhere and something to go to at night and on weekends and combats the expected change in city’s population due to changing patterns and the uptake of hybrid work.

Embedded in this idea is the notion of creating zones for building tenants and invited guests that when creatively conceived offer the opportunity for space to support social causes.

It may not be an idea most developers, landlords or organisations can stomach right now, but including the thought and provisions to execute the concept later is damn smart move, especially if Scott Farquar is right about an activist workforce.

An example of how and why this might work came to me after a Zoom catch up with old friends in Seattle who delivered an earful about how hot it was. The Pacific Northwest had experienced what is referred to as a ‘heat dome’ resulting in several days where temperatures were well above average. Roads cracked and bitumen buckled, overhead cables that supply power to electric busses melted, further North in Canada over a million mussels and clams baked in their shells. Oh, and a bunch of people died too because this is a region where no one has air conditioning.

To save lives cities set up cooling centres, big spaces with cots where people escaped the heat. They looked a lot like commercial office lobbies! More cooling centres are being established in the Pacific Northwest to contend with a second heat dome scheduled to hit this region this week.

Australian climate scientists are paying close attention to this weather phenomenon because it is likely there will be a heat dome coming to your town soon, no doubt squeezed in between the bushfires, floods, and pestilence. I would suggest any Aussie architect who comes up with a clever way to use vacant commercial office space to help us out when that all hits the fan would definitely not be someone with a bullshit job.

Sources:

Atlassian, PWC; Return on Action Report 2021 – The Rising Responsibility of Businesshttps://www.probonocentre.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/atlassian-2021-return-on-action-report-australia.pdf

Dhingra, N., Samo, A., Schaninger, B., Schrimper, M. (2020) “Help your employees find purpose or watch them go”, McKinsey & Company https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/help-your-employees-find-purpose-or-watch-them-leave

Graber, David; Bullshit Jobs, A Theory, Penguin Books, 2019

Milman, Oliver; “Nowhere is safe’: heat shatters vision of Pacific north-west as climate refuge” The Guardian, July 22, 2021

Spocchia, Gino; “Jeff Bezos criticised by Amazon workers and customers after thanking them for funding space launch.” Independent.co.uk July 28, 2021

Remote Onboarding

Post #111 by Laurie Aznavoorian

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay
It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn’t it ironic … don’t you think

No need to get into the chorus of that Alanis Morissette song, we heard it enough in 1995 to subject ourselves to it again or stomach another debate about whether these examples are situational or literary irony. For the record, they are not irony, but unfortunate events makes me think of personal experiences I’ve had over the past few months. In fact here are a few ideas for additional lines:

You resigned from work to start a brand-new job The very next week a pandemic hits the globe It screwed your going away drinks and made onboarding a bitch Isn’t ironic… don’t you think.

Colleagues who sat beside me in the past know I’m a kinesthetic learner, one who acquires knowledge through actions and repetition. It is only through incessant questioning of co-workers that I have managed to grasp the basics of computer operations; and accountants in more than one architectural practice can attest I’ve never truly mastered the nuances of timesheet coding.

Now with Stage 4 restrictions for those lucky enough to live in Melbourne, there’s no going to the office, masks are required, no outdoor strolls lasting more than an hour and an 8:00pm curfew to boot. Before stage 4 my husband and I took turns choosing who would work from home while the other went to their office to avoid dualling Teams meetings.

Now it’s us full time with Saucy Pissweak, our cat. For me the absence of a captive colleague at the adjacent desk to ask how do you …is devastating. Don’t get me wrong Saucy’s smart and clever enough to run from the room if Mike Pompeo or Mitch McConnel appears on television when we watch the US news, but these advanced feline skills have done nothing to facilitate rapid onboarding in the new role.

Researchers have identified onboarding as one of three critical activities for organisational health that have suffered during this pandemic. While it is important, the reference has nothing to do with the silly things like timesheets that I’ve joking about, you can learn that if you bother to read the new employee pack. This refers to the transfer of tacit knowledge such as how things are done around here, who is who in the zoo and the ability to be steeped in company vision, history, process and culture.

The second activity is the ability to develop what they call ‘weak ties’, relationships that occur between teams and connections you make over time waiting to heat up your leftovers or kicking the photocopier. These shallow or peripheral contacts are vital for innovation because they enable exaptation to occur. That is when characteristics from one process are applied to another. In our world it might be a workplace designer chatting with a health care designer about materials that are more hygienic.

The third activity is leader’s ability to observe and foster relationships among their team that are likely to produce benefits for the practice in the future. Perhaps this is the most important as it accounts for the invisible spark you see when creative people riff off each other. One last activity mentioned did not make the list of those deemed critical, which is surprising given the role it plays in career development – remote work makes it difficult to schmooze, make small talk, arse kiss and brown nose.

What this research and our own experiences reminds us is something we learned studying architecture or design; space matters, especially spaces that foster human connection. Human beings want to belong and feel a connection to their colleagues, for many this is a key motivator for going to work – along with a pesky mortgage, car payment and habit of wine guzzling.

In an article arguing the importance of keeping and returning to offices post Covid INSEAD adjunct professor Gianpiero Petriglieri talked about the anxiety he felt when he didn’t have an office, he acknowledged much of this was performance driven, a manifestation of a fear that you hadn’t made the grade, achieved your numbers or look the part.

He was talking about a physical office but has since reflected on this in response to many questioning the need for any office. Anxiety he argues can become existential, leading to a fear that our job has no meaning. Furthermore, “when we take the office away every performance becomes existential, anything you do becomes an expression of who you are…You may find this happening to you, as office after office closes around the world and our professional lives start feeling far more precarious.”

It’s a bit heady, but the part about performance becoming existential struck a chord. I felt this when I was asked to present myself to my new colleagues on a Teams call. Staring at a laptop with dozens of still pictures and mute icons activated I talked about where I had come from and what I hoped to achieve in my new role.

The plan is to start small, begin with a tiny task, eliminating a single word from our conversations – that word is staff. I envision a world where we refer to employees differently. This initiative has deep roots going back to my childhood. My brothers and I often called each other names when we were young, our favourites were turd or retard.

Our working-class parents rolled their eyes. They had their own Rat Pack lexicon comprised of dandies like broads, dames and a plethora of racial slurs that peppered everyday conversations. They saw no harm us calling one another turds or retards in fact sometimes they did it too. But those were innocent times, now we are woke. Apart from the word turd, which we can all agree will never lose its timeless allure, we’ve retired many words that were once commonplace. Isn’t it time to call our co-workers just that: co-workers, teammates or how about people?

Sources:

Gianpiero Petriglieri, “In Praise of the Office.” Harvard Business Review, July 15, 2020

Ethan Bernstein, Hayley Blunden, Andrew Brodsky, Wonbin Sohn, and Ben Waber “The Implications of Working Without an Office.” Harvard Business Review, July 15, 2020

Nathan Furr, Jeffrey H Dyer and Kyle Nel, “When Your Moon Shots Don’t Take Off.” Harvard Business Review, January-February 2019

POST COVID

I caught up with an old friend, as you do when you’re housebound reminiscing about the days when you could grab a chicken laksa at Jimmy’s or share a beer after work. He mentioned former colleagues of his were on the verge of moving into a new office just as Covid-19 hit and wondered aloud whether the design would still be relevant. He asked what I thought.

Another old friend called and wanted to know the same, followed by a colleague in London and then a client – all imploring, what does it mean, where to next? Having the privilege of talking with many company leaders about what keeps them up at night, they felt I might have some enlightened viewpoint.

But truth be told I wasn’t even savvy enough to ask the company I did a workplace strategy for in January to consider pandemic. It seems an egregious oversight now, and even Mr. Stable Genius in America saying “who’d of known a pandemic was in the midst” doesn’t make me feel better.

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Briefing Room, Monday, March 23, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

We should have known, history proves it’s happened before, real stable geniuses warned us.

The experience has caused a lot of us to consider what’s next. In this post, I share my views with the warning that they are coloured with a shit brown crayon. A cynical posture developed from consuming more world news and political podcasts than is healthy, and while it would be right to argue judging society and what may happen next by the shortcomings of world leaders and the other yahoos who make the headlines, it never the less has significant bearing on my outlook.

With that caveat, here goes:

ITS JUST LIKE FEB FAST – ON MARCH FIRST YOU’RE BACK TO BOOZING LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW

History tells us there will be pandemics that can and will disrupt lives. Despite the earnest dedication some practice in following restrictions, as soon as we get the chance, we’ll revert to what we were before. Especially if the behaviour satisfies a real or psychological need lying dormant under our compliant facades. We need our Super to recover, Kardashians need nose jobs and bogans must have new tattoos! You want proof, the governor of the US state of Georgia has opened for business despite experts’ warnings, and people in that state are already queuing up to get haircuts and fake fingernails.

Certainly, some behaviours will stick, singing Happy Birthday will become a part of handwashing rituals, but don’t expect much more. AIDS did not stop people from having sex it simply changed the conditions of the exchange. 30 years beyond the initial crisis, AIDS is now returning and the twenty somethings that didn’t experience the heartache of going to seven funerals a year don’t understand what’s the big deal about not wearing a condom. It simply proves, people are people: they’re horny, selfish and greedy and many would lose a memory challenge with a goldfish.

Putting a more positive spin on this, Aristotle eloquently noted in 385 BC.

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”

We are neither beast nor god, we haven’t changed in +- 2400 years and we aren’t going to change now. In fact, since the 1950s there has been a steady increase in migration to cities that is expected to continue,

people like to be by other people, amenity, culture and possibilities that come from living in a dense environment. Going to work everyday provides much of the same.

Reflecting on sage advice another philosopher named Dolores once gave me “honey be careful what you wish for”, she said that after she said, “clean your room or you’re grounded.”

Before Covid people wished they didn’t have to go into the office, now that the realities of working from home are apparent: partners passing wind with abandon, kids no longer cute and the cat proving to be a poor conversationalist, many have changed their tunes.

GENIES DON’T GO BACK IN BOTTLES

Through this process we’ve been exposed to technology that has changed the way we communicate. Looking to history again, we’re not known for giving up shiny things that intrigue us even when they’re untested or fail to serve us well e.g. the atomic bomb and gene editing.

We’re now a population of Zoomers, experts in lighting and stage setting, possessing great proficiency in muting when necessary; we will never give up the tools we’ve discovered. Never

But that does not mean we won’t want to occasionally sit in a room with others again and we will want to be closer than 1.6 meters apart too. The technology will become another tool that enhances experience over distance.

If we’re wise, these experiences could herald an age of greater inclusion, it’s been a veritable watchword for the past decade tossed around loosely with little conviction, but perhaps now we can be truly inclusive by employing people who can’t come to an office like those with disabilities, neuro diversity or a preference to live in places without a good coffee shop.

The past weeks proved many jobs can be done out of the office with the right technology, the challenge we’ll now face is whether micromanaging bosses will insist their underlings return to the office to sit under their noses the way they did pre-Covid. It’s not a point to be tossed aside lightly, don’t underestimate the power that comes from making others treat you as a demigod, especially when they’ve been left with only the ability to endlessly pontificate about is how many VC’s they’ve attended to make them feel important; they’re itching to get back to being kowtowed to.

A LICENSE FOR FURTHER INEQUITY?

One of the maladies of our times is the inequity and polarisation that’s metastasised through society, sadly this pandemic has only exacerbated that. We forget how privileged we are to work from home while nurses, EMTs, firemen and the check-out girl at Woolworths have no choice. Their only choice is to eat or risk getting sick.

The ad campaign – *violence* ‘is
never OK.’ … by The Victorian State *Government*

Will Covid become another divisive issue that drives a wedge between haves and have nots? You say no, we would never! But this pandemic has proved some people are real shits. Seriously, having to fine people $5000 in New South Wales for spitting and coughing on public officials, yelling at checkout clerks because there’s no toilet paper and harassing nurses at the petrol pumps! That sounded bad till I read about the Republican-controlled state legislature in Wisconsin who thinks it’s okay to force voters to stand in the cold, exposed to Covid to be handed a ballot from a senior citizen volunteer rather than allow a vote by mail. What’s more, in America they don’t even get a sausage as they queue.

It is these behaviours that bring out the shit brown crayon.

People ponder, will Covid signal the end of co-working! No, it is merely an opportunity for further specialisation, which is already prevalent in the industry. There are co-working spaces for women only, veterans and start up entrepreneurs why not push this further and further differentiate?

Once we develop tests for antibodies and can track people using the CovidSafe app, Co-working companies will be free to cater to haves and have nots (in this case antibodies) Clubs can open for those who want to get infected because they believe herd immunity is a good thing, somewhat of a resurgence of Chicken Pox parties that were all the rage before a vaccine was developed in 1995.

At their 1:6 seating ratios WeWork sites would suit this perfectly and they can save money by forgetting Purell dispensers that others will be forced to install. They can also forget putting bollards out front to keep the protesters at bay who are sick of the haves getting everything. If a centre or two is blown up it’s just herd mentality on steroids.

For WeWork it will be a resurrection. Like a Phoenix emerging from the flames destressed bonds will be forgiven, defaulted interest payments and talks of bankruptcy a distant memory. Neumann will emerge from the smoke, climb into his Gulfstream G650 and party again like it’s 1999.

**Adam Neumann**, WeWork’s cofounder and former CEO, has lost his billionaire status, according to Bloomberg. The ousted CEO was worth as much as $14 billion before WeWork’s botched IPO, according to Bloomberg. Now, Bloomberg estimates his net worth at $450 million.

By Laurie Aznavoorian

The Age of Anxiety

Futures Rambling # 109 By Laurie Aznavoorian

The following article was written for WORKTECH Academy – the fastest growing global online knowledge platform and member network exploring the future of work and workplace. The Academy showcases best corporate practice, academic research, thought-leadership, business tools and industry trends. For more information go to Worktechacademy.com

She’ll be right mate. That’s what we used to say in Australia, but the situation here is clearly not right. It’s hard to breath and most of us can’t tell whether our eyes are watering due to air quality or the visions we see on television of koalas suffering and people being evacuated from burning shores. We’re no longer happy little Vegemite’s.

Americans aren’t much better. Life expectancy fell for a third year in a row due to ‘deaths of despair’, which is the phrase they use when one succumbs to alcohol, drugs or suicide. And not to be left out, one in four people in the UK suffer from loneliness. It’s so bad a Minister for Loneliness has been appointed.

Selecting an uplifting moniker to define the dawn of this new decade may be a challenge. Some are already calling it the age of anxiety.

For architects and designers, it’s a conundrum. It pains us to look at the humanitarian crisis unfolding around us and feel we can’t do more to solve problems. After all, our training taught us buildings should bring joy to the heart, and we drank the Christopher Alexander Kool Aid – “a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.”

“A person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.”
Christopher Alexander

Surely, we can fix this, but how? For some time, we have been keenly interested in sociology, neuroscience and psychology, but to date it’s bore scant application to our practice. This is understandable, measuring the cognitive effects of space and understanding it’s impacts on human behaviour isn’t easy. What’s easy is designing pretty breakout areas, popping in a plant and fruit bowl and ticking the box that says wellbeing.

But perhaps our anxiety may elicit a greater call to action, after all, if having the World Health Organisation deem depression as a leading cause of disability worldwide is not motivation, what is? The good news is today we have a little help. Researchers have identified specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brain that are attuned to the arrangement of space and cognitive scientists have leveraged new technologies to measure space’s impact.

Wearable devices can monitor psychological arousal using skin conduction, smartphone apps conduct user surveys about their emotional state and EEG headsets measure brain activity relating to mental states and mood. All of these are important developments that will give us a much better idea of the kind of environments people like or find stimulating.

If we’re serious about creating environments that address the maladies of our age, we also need to go back to basics and pepper what we know with science to leverage the properties of space to promote better cognitive engagement, for instance:

Details and scale – both add visual depth which triggers sensory imagination.

Tactile sensations – stimulate our visual and auditory cortices.

Curved surfaces –generate an ’approach’ behavior, as opposed to sharp angled shapes and spaces that cause discomfort and fear.

Architectural variation – is so appealing that studies indicate humans will cross the road to be near buildings that have more variation.

Volume – data indicates people think more creatively and have a better response to abstract concepts when seated in rooms with high ceilings

The impact of space on human behaviors is not only a manifestation of the space itself, but a response to how it can be used. Neuroscientist studying navigation found that when people can relate things to one another they feel connected, and don’t suffer the negative impacts of feeling lost or disoriented. Connection and belonging are further enhanced by our ability to exercise agency over the spaces we occupy, it leads to a sense of ownership.

Architects and designers possess an intuitive awareness of the impact of space on behavior, but paired with better science and diagnostic tools, we can back that intuition up. Perhaps a combination of gut and data will give us the tools we need to take a stab at addressing the growing maw in our social fabric? We can hope, but let’s be realistic, there’s work to be done convincing some (who pay the bills) that investment in people is a worthy cause.

Perhaps a combination of gut and data will give us the tools we need to take a stab at addressing the growing maw in our social fabric?

And then there is the caution we should practice regarding the panacea of new technology. We’re still waiting for the flying cars, alternative energy and a cure for cancer. We may wish to develop a plan B considering the ways technology has failed us: misinformation, social media, hacking and the horrible bioethical issues associated with gene editing to name a few.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel a twinge of ‘techno pessimism’, perhaps that’s par for the course in the Age of Anxiety. But what architects and designers are very good at is solving problems, it looks like the times have brought us a new one to contemplate.

The Loneliness Epidemic

By Laurie Aznavoorian

We are all a little less worried about sitting these days, remember a few years ago when sitting got touted as the new smoking?

Now the new smoking is breathing outdoors if you live in Sydney. Analysis of the city’s level of smoke-related particulate solution known as PM2.5 performed at UTS was found it to be the equivalent of smoking up to 32 cigarettes. Air quality here is ten times worse than some of the most polluted cities in the world! Isn’t that special.

So, you can take the weight off your shoulders you’ve been carrying about sitting on your arse all day and while you’re at it, take the weight you’ve been carrying about your weight too because they are the least of our worries. Climate change is without a doubt up there, it’s indeed a conundrum, but not one to talk about now. Today’s focus is a new malady that’s proving to be more lethal than either obesity or smoking. What’s the new concern, the one public health experts have deemed an epidemic? Loneliness.

More than one-fifth of Americans and British people say they are chronically lonely and in Australia we fare no better, according to the Australian Psychological Society’s Australian loneliness report one in four Australians feel lonely.

. The bad news is that loneliness does not just impact us psychologically, it’s also linked to physical health. Researchers at UCLA have learned that social isolation triggers stress hormones leading to cellular changes that cause inflammation, which leads to heart disease, stroke, metastatic cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. As if that is not enough, when were lonely we become sooks and forget about exercising, eating right or going to the doctor. Consequently, lonely people have a 26% higher risk of dying.

The UK is so concerned about this that they’ve appointed a minister of loneliness and put in place programs to confront the ‘loneliness epidemic’. Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand are considering similar moves. But detecting and dealing with loneliness is no small task, we know humans are social beings, but just because someone is alone does not make them lonely. Similarly, we can be surrounded by people and have a robust number of social media friends, but still feel our social relations are lacking.

The rise in people who report being lonely tracks with other societal shifts that have occurred such as younger people increasingly moving away from home and their established social networks, delaying marriage, skipping kids and working all the time. But older people not as impacted by those shifts are also lonely. Nearly half of Britons over 65 say television and pets are their main form of company. And the poor Japanese have the hikikomori, they are hip under 40s who don’t leave their house for six months.

Entrepreneurs can smell opportunity in the air and have developed products and services that they hope will put an end to isolation. One is Tribe, a co-living space in Brooklyn whose motto is “we help you make friends”, and of course there is WeWork who claim to be “building a new infrastructure to rebuild social fabric and rebuild up the potential for human connection.” (for their former CEO Adam Neumann that means getting stoned on a private jet). Microsoft’s new London store is designed less as store and more as community hub and meeting place. And then there are services like Hey Vina, Bumble BFF and Peanut expressly designed to help humans bond with other humans.

The healthcare market has responded to epidemic by practicing ‘social prescribing’ a new way to help patients that involves placing social workers and non-medical support people in doctor’s offices to link patients to a wide range of social, emotional or practical services to address: housing problems, financial stress, loneliness and social exclusion.

While we haven’t labelled it as such and our motivations may be different, architects and designers have been tackling the problem of loneliness for some time. We search for the “genius loci”, a spirit of place or distinctive atmosphere that draws people to place and one another. Even the typology of typical commercial office buildings has also evolved to foster connection, now footprints, core locations and the introduction of stairs and atriums all contribute to the building as a platform for community building. More buildings today feature outdoor areas, fresh air and daylight that provide much needed areas of refuge for sound mental health.

Similarly, workplace designers use spaces as attractors to encourage serendipitous interaction and exchange of information. They also encourage movement with clever planning devices. And in recent years much attention has been placed on the interplay between the digital and physical environments to heighten, real time predictive user experiences. Workplace apps connect people in space and enable them to establish professional and social networks.

Our vocation is to make spaces for people, it’s imperative we think about how the environments we create help us tackle social issues like loneliness. It’s not a simple problem but one we hope to learn more about. .

I am excited to finally be able to tell you about the launch of a research project we are doing that will address the impact of spatial design on human’s ability to establish workplace networks, build community and feel a sense of belonging.

The work is being conducted by B:Hive – a workplace community BVN designed in Auckland New Zealand), BVN Architecture, The University of New South Wales and the Worktech Academy who are the fastest growing global online knowledge platform and member network exploring the future of work and workplace.

After many reviews and false starts we have launched a survey to B:Hive users this morning and will follow up with interviews and observations. Our findings will be published on the Worktech Academy website and used in other academic and design related publication. Watch this space!

Sources:

Butler, Sarah; Microsoft to Open First European Store in Central London; The Guardian; July 11, 2019

Entis, Laura; The Big Business of Loneliness – Coworking spaces, friendship apps, and adult dorms are selling human connection;

Howe, Neil; Milennials And The Loneliness Epidemic; Forbes, May 3, 2019

Liotta Morgan; Fostering Connections to Overcome Loneliness; New GP; April 2019

Ozcelik, Hakan and Barsade, Sigal; Work Loneliness and Employee Performance; published on line doi.org November 30, 2017

Philpot, Catherine; The Silent Epidemic; The Salvation Army; April 30, 2019

Social Prescribing – A New Way to Think About Healthcare; blog chf.org.au; September 6, 2019

They’re Back

FUTURES RAMBLING #107 By Laurie Aznavoorian

There is a lot of talk these days about robots changing our lives and taking over jobs, but what really happens when a robot comes to your workplace, how does it impact work?

The Universal Robotics 10 industrial robotic arm in the BVN studio

They first appeared in the office at the end of 2017 a month or two before Christmas, young and nimble, they worked like troopers too, late into the night, making the rest of us appear particularly slothful. They have minds like steel traps, I’ve never once seen them cross the studio to get something only to get there and forget what it was they were after.

Naturally the company loves them, suckers for shiny new things. It doesn’t hurt that they’re not incessant bellyachers like the rest of us whining about: how cold it is, how hot it is, the guys in health care using speaker phones in the office, the broken zip tap – wah wah. Nor do they have a vehement belief that it’s sacrilege for lollies to be distributed at 4:02 rather than 4:00 on Thursdays.

No one complained when they silently slithered away in the same stealth fashion they arrived. Sure, we reminisced, but the studio returned to the way it was. They’re back now, younger and prettier than ever, twisting and turning, not bothering to appropriately cover their long limbs. When they move, nothing in their body continues to move once they stop. (think about that next time you exercise).

Just like before they’re super clever, artistic and amazingly efficient. Morale in the studio is plummeting, the rest of us feel like old turds floating in a punch bowl.

What, you think I’m talking about the new graduates? Ha ha, Well yes, but no.

I’m talking about the KUKA KR 10 and Universal Robotics 10. They’re the robots we’ve had in our office at various stages over the past year. Truth be told, when they first arrived plenty of naysayers queried what they were doing, snarky comments surfaced about their contribution to the practice. The catalyst of the discontent was of course fear: that the interlopers would drink our coffee, eat our lollies and take our jobs.

But one person wasn’t afraid, Chris Bickerton. He knew exactly what they were doing because he is BVN’s primary liaison and keeper of robots. Once a typical computational designer obsessed with parking garage entries and curtain walls, he heeded the advice of the country song and took his job and shoved it jumping from a traditional role within an architectural practice to chart a new course involving robotics. Chris is never coming back. He’s hooked like a hillbilly on OxyContin.

There is a lot of talk these days about robots changing our lives and taking over jobs, but what really happens when a robot comes to your workplace, how does it impact work? I can think of no better person to ask than Chris. But before we delve too far, you should know Chris is a real person with a real job, but for the purpose of this article he’s a personification of a broader group of talented people at BVN who have championed the introduction of robotics and other new technology.

You might ask why we chose to get into bed with robots, particularly when we didn’t know what they would do or how they might contribute? The answer is simple, robots are a technology that will significantly disrupt the building industry.

Welcoming them into our studio forces us to think about that disruption and puts us on the front foot. In the past 12 months we’ve learned plenty, their presence has changed our collective thinking and the way we design.

One example is our own studio. We assumed the overhead booms that distribute power to our mobile desks would have to be made by a steel fabricator, which is what we did for the majority of them. But we also took a punt and got the KUKA KR 10 to make five unique booms. Day and night KUKA wove carbon fibre around a 3D printed circular frame. The result was beautifully hand-crafted (albeit robotic hand) circular trusses that parallel their steel sister’s functionality.

The kicker is the beautiful booms cost the same, they’re fun to talk about and unlike the steel versions, they arrived on time. What did we learn? Working alongside a robot opens the door for bespoke, handmade elements in space – the things architects and designers abandoned long ago due to cost. Full disclosure – the robots cost money and ours were on loan from Sydney University and the University of Technology in Sydney, if we had to pay for them it would be a different story.

Woven carbon fibre on a 3D printed frame

Additional disclosure, several technicians from the university observed KUKA KR 10 with clipboards and controllers issuing instructions. Chris stood on a ladder wearing a lab coat and goggles for weeks wrapping carbon fibre around plastic hooks because the robot didn’t have the dexterity for such nuanced tasks. Over time the robot learned enough to do a ‘nudie run’ and wove solo, but Chris still had to tell it what to do.

Robots build cars, drive them and write articles. They can deliver individually tailored learning, but they’re not going to show you how to load filament around a 3D printing spool because to be honest, they’re not very good at it. Consequently, we have found ourselves typical of organisations that embrace new technology, internal learning is an imperative. Now part of Chris’ job is teaching old dogs new tricks.

The story highlights how interaction with robots causes each of us to play to our strengths. Jobs won’t disappear but continue a trajectory that started decades ago when work evolved from being about hands (manual labour) to heads (cognitive tasks) and in the future to hearts. Heart tasks call on human skills that are interpersonal, creative, thought based and cognitive. You can’t mechanise that.

Observing Chris in the office he appears to be doing a lot of what he did before KUKA KR 10 arrived: most days he’s here – although sometimes he works from home. The lab coat has been abandoned for a return to the architect’s uniform: black tee shirt and jeans. He still sits in front of a computer, but looks can be deceiving, his days are quite different and anything but routine.

This tracks with what’s happening whether robots are in the picture or not. According to Deloitte non-routine jobs that require cognitive abilities have been the single largest source of employment in Australia. By 2030, one quarter of Australia’s workforce will be professionals, driven by a continued shift towards non-routine, cognitive-based jobs. And who’s going to do the routine stuff you ask? KUKA KR 10 and UR 10.

But who tells the machines what to do? That would be people like Chris Bickerton. The robots aren’t dumb, in fact over the course of the time KUKA was in our office it learned enough to be trusted on a ‘nudie run’, the equivalent of crossing the road alone. KUKA wove carbon fibre like a big boy, but someone looked both ways first and told it what to do and where to do it.

Chris along with others are facilitators of circumstances that allow individuals within the practice to interact with new technologies that include: robots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud and quantum computing, drones, virtual and augmented reality and 3D/4D printing, we don’t have all of these yet, but someday we might.

Each has the potential to challenge our standards, risk profiles and the limits of our intellectual property; consequently, another aspect of this reinvented role is policing their application.

As professionals we naturally question what it all means. What are the consequences of a robot creating a plausible sketch, which is what UR 10 did in our office. Who owns the sketch, who’s responsible if it’s wrong, what happens when someone 3D prints something that falls apart and hurts someone?

Chris and others are acutely aware of our lack of knowledge in areas of contract law, intellectual property and how to assemble equitable working partnerships. None of these are standard in an architecture curriculum. We will need to know how to deal with added complexity, layering and blurring of boundaries in the future of work.

Finally, there’s the moral dilemma. Today we have the ability to create digital humans that look real, mimicking human movements and voice. If you’re sceptical check out Lil Miquela, she looks so real that Bella Hadid made out with her in the new Calvin Klein Speak My Truth in #MyCalvins ad. Given she’s not real, but a sentient robot and virtual influencer with 1.6 million followers on Instagram that’s pretty impressive. She’s getting more action than your garden variety incel! It’s where the term deep fake comes from and why it is eclipsing fake news in our vernacular.

Robots are incapable of exercising emotional judgment, they don’t know how to behave in a professionally ethical manner. They don’t know what it means to be fair or accountable, but Chris does.

He thinks about every aspect of this as he leads us into the future, all while maintaining excitement about possibilities, helping us to overcome fears.

There’s one thing I am certain of, neither of the industrial robotic arms we had in our office can do that. So regardless of the changes that have taken place with Chris and the redefinition of what it means to work in an architectural practice, he need not worry about his job. We’re choosing him hands down over the robots.

Sources:

Deloitte Insights – Building the Lucky Country #7 http://www.deloitte.com/insights/luckycountry

Buzzing in the Hive its all about sonic branding

My work is a drop in the bucket, a speck in the cosmos. I’m just a pea in a pod, another cog in the wheel, maybe a more appropriate descriptor of insignificance for me is a tool in the shed – a very blunt one. Idioms aside, being a bee in the hive need not be a harbinger of doom. Particularly when you’re a bee in the hive at the B:Hive in Auckland New Zealand.

After spending time at this new workplace collective, I felt anything but paltry. Buzzing with the swarm left feeling like I belonged, despite not knowing a soul in a place. The B:Hive is home to several disparate tenants, each has their own secured office space, but they share amenity. Unlike the stereotypical co-working cohort, many patrons of B:Hive come from established companies that fall outside the sexy start-up epithet. But hey, who’s to say selling non-corrosive coatings isn’t sexy.

Tenants at B:Hive are naturally attracted to the networking opportunities that sharing space offers, but they also like a delivery model that enables them to expand or contract twice a year. More importantly, officing in the hive grants entry to a community of organisations that share the same values: rejection of waste and opulence, refusing to accept that being small dictates a work life of suffering in shitty, soul crushing, suburban office parks.

Instead they’ve opted for daylight, fresh air and amazing amenity: break areas, technology enabled meeting rooms, places to focus, hold assemblies and play ping pong. A plethora of interesting furniture groupings supporting different workstyles and demands is on offer. BUT WAIT THERES MORE. The steak knives of the deal come in the form of a bright orange corkscrew stair that any sane ambulant person would choose over the lifts. It’s gloriously fun to use and the exercise keeps your behind right sized.

One enters the B:Hive by traversing The Good Side, a conglomeration of food and beverage purveyors who have sipped the same ‘communal ethos Kool-Aid’. Shared outdoor seating encourages customers, or non – customers, to seamlessly flow between the dozen or so retailers. Permeable boundaries suck in occupants from surrounding buildings and neighbouring residential areas.

The resulting cornucopia of users is what makes the experience unique. Stumbling on an assembly of retirees enjoying a coffee next to a corporate faction in the throws of a serious business discussion is par for the course. Children frolic as their mothers eat lunch; climbing up, around and underneath concrete tables. In this cross-pollinisation of humanity anything goes, there’s no fear of damaging property or retribution from traditional workplace stick in the muds.

What makes this possible is a very deliberate non-precious aesthetic and a welcoming vibe. Apologies for the pun, but it’s what gives B:Hive its buzz.
There is a real buzz too, an omnipresent background noise in both workplace and at The Good Side that serves as an aggregate binding the incongruent parts together. The soundtrack to B:Hive has been carefully curated, it is the brainchild of the CEO, who amongst other things, was once a DJ. For a person with the concentration qualities of a dog near a squirrel, I found the sound honed my focus and I felt less pathetically alone.

Human beings for the most part experience sound subconsciously, we tend to focus on what’s seen and pay little attention to the noises that impact our experiences. Like most things, these can be positive or negative such as shopping at Coles and listening to ‘down, down the prices are down’ ad nauseum. It makes you want to go to Woolies just to hear the ‘fresh food people’ song.

Songs trigger emotional responses, jingles have historically been an integral part of branding, but beyond catchy tunes sound is an effective and very underutilised tool in design. This concept became clear at a conference I attended in San Francisco where we in the audience were asked to listen to tones Apple uses in the iPhone. Then we voted on what sounds would be appropriate for a fictitious Apple Airline: music at the gate, check in, the tone your phone makes when you receive an upgrade.

It became obvious that some sounds are on brand and others are way off. The strategic use of sound to convey rich, emotional stories is referred to as ‘Sonic Branding’ it’s the focus of agencies like Man Made Music in New York who worked with companies like AT& T to identify their brand’s sound. They’re responsible for the six – note chime used in ringtones, commercials and in-store music for AT&T.

Scientists have experimented with integrating senses to improve experiences. One interesting study conducted at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford in 2010 drew connections between different tones and pitches and the way we experience basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. By pairing music tracks with tastes, they found sound altered a person’s perception of food.

This is due to a rare neurological phenomenon that causes one sensory pathway to be experienced through another called synesthesia. Chefs like Heston Blumenthal are on to this, he loves to tinker with the relationship between auditory and olfactory senses and taste. So too does sound designer Felipe Carvalho; he used synaesthesia to compile a soundtrack for eating. No kidding, you can purchase “Sound of Chocolate” online.

In the UK venues like Spiritland are jumping on the sonic band wagon by touting their restaurant / bar as a place to have an acoustic eating experience. Conceived as a ‘dining room of sonic architecture’, Spiritland has velvet curtains, rounded leather booths, custom ceilings and walls that deliver superb sound quality and acoustics.

At least six more venues in London follow this new trend of providing high level listening, eating and drinking experiences where sound quality is as important as the taste of the food. With top-notch sound systems and a return to vynal, they’re an audiophile’s dream. Some say heralding a return of quality over convenience, inviting us to engage with music in a more purposeful way.

I suspect the intent of music at B:Hive was not a deliberate overture in sonic branding; never the less, the impact it has there and at The Good Side leads me to believe sonic branding may be more than a buzz word earning a square on the workplace bullshit bingo board.

But before you go full hog designing noise into your next project, heed the advice of sonic branding experts. They warn a little sound goes a long way and recommend leaving plenty of white noise e.g. silence, to balance out the sound the world throws at us. They say everyone could do with a little less noise these days. I’m inclined to agree.

Sources:
Smith, Jessica and Walker, Josh; “Listening Clubs”; https://www.LS:N Global Music: Streaming: Retail; January 30, 2017
Sedacca, Matthew; “Sonic Seasoning is the Growing Scientific Field That Uses Sound to Make Food Taste Better”; Quartz; December 24, 2016
Zemni, Hakim; “A Sonic Branding Revolution is Going on and You Are Not Ready For it”; Insights Consulting; November 29, 2018
Molloy, Shannon; “Victoria Police Hunting for Bourke St Hero dubbed ‘Tolley Man’ Over Alleged Burglaries”; Newscorpaustralia.com; November 16, 2018
“What Does Your Brain Sound Like?”; Fast Company Co-Design; October 22, 2014

Corporate Responsibiltiy

Futures Rambling # 105

By Laurie Aznavoorian

Most people don’t know who Sisto Malaspina is and they draw a similar blank when they hear the name Michael Rogers, but when prompted with the words shopping trolley and Pellegrini’s those in Australia will recognise Malaspina as the cafe owner killed by an armed terrorist in Melbourne last November and Michael Rogers as the homeless man who attempted to stop the attack by ramming Rogers with his shopping trolley of worldly possessions.

A gutsy move and a great example of individuals making a difference, in some instances doing the jobs of others such as: law enforcement, authorities, elected government officials and business leaders. Becoming a vigilante or shouting one’s dissatisfaction with the state of the world is by no means a new phenomenon, but the shouts are getting louder. In fact, today PR firms like Weber Shandwick’s have built entire practices advising corporate leaders on how they should talk about divisive issues like: guns, race, sexual orientation, gender, immigration and the environment.

In the big tech mega centres and bastions of globalization, technology and market liberalization: San Francisco, Seattle and the nooks and crannies of the Silicon Valley; people are screaming their heads off. Perhaps because this is there where the contrasts between the haves and have nots is gut wrenchingly profound. Everyday in those cities people commute to work past people sleeping in the streets in cardboard boxes or tent encampments. Not all, but some of those people displaced by their very success.

Walking that gauntlet as I did exiting the Bainbridge Island ferry in Seattle, or now riding my bike up Kent Street in Sydney, causes one to pause and question what responsibility we have to those negatively impacted by our success? Do the companies we work for have any accountability? Is it reasonable to expect business leaders to protect us from disruptive changes in our industries?

These questions are rife in the tech sector, the industry is in a collective crisis over this predicament and perhaps they should be, they have plenty to answer for. Of the 143 tech billionaires in the world, half live in the Silicon Valley. The rest of the schmos who drank the tech Kool-Aid never got what was promised, had their data compromised and if unlucky enough to live anywhere near them, got priced out of the housing market by those that made it big in tech.

The worry is not confined to the domain of tech. We thought a lot about the impact of disruptive technology in the design of our studio. The physical manifestation of our pondering is a large experimental zone that cuts through the workplace dedicated to robotics, VR, 3D printing and anything else that tickles our fancy. It’s perhaps a token measure, but one we hope will broaden our perspective of what architects and designers do. Truth be told, we’re kind of scared of the day when computers are smarter, less snarky and more accurate than we are.

It’s a challenge for those who dabble in academia too. Students aren’t told they’re learning skills that might be radically different, or obsolete, by the time they graduate. Nor does anyone let on that employers select candidates based on adaptability, cultural fit and personal curiosity. Who tells the kids that the impact of AI and other disruptive technology will mean knowing soft skills that machines can’t perform will be their true worth.

Corporations have long played a role in social issues and the political process that surround them. Today this has been exacerbated to the extent that this has been coined the era of the ‘activist CEO’. Business leaders (in particular the billionaires) assume the role of stewards of company’s values; accountable parties who stand up for employees, customers, partners and communities. They do this, because the public demands it and have told them they must serve a higher purpose beyond maximizing shareholder values.

Some listen. Marc Benioff the CEO of Salesforce contributed $7 million to a Proposition C, which is San Francisco’s ‘homelessness tax’, and he challenged his contemporaries to do the same suggesting it was a moral responsibility of tech companies who have received tax breaks to give back. And in May Seattle’s City Council voted unanimously to pass a similar payroll tax to support the homeless in that city.

That didn’t go so well. Amazon threw a dummy spit and threatening to stop construction of their new office building in Seattle; understandable, Jeff Bezos’ needs to finance a divorce and even Donald Trump, who knows plenty about divorces and pay outs, says that divorce is going to be ‘huge’. In San Francisco Apple and Lift opposed the measure as did Twitter a company who benefits from a massive tax break just to operate there.

Benioff may have been swayed by employees shouting outside his San Francisco headquarters “Caging children is a crime. Salesforce, fuck your bottom line”. That of course had nothing to do with Prop C but was a response to a contract they signed to provide human resources services to US Customs and Border Protection. The point is, employees aren’t quiet anymore; 20,000 Google employees who staged a walkout to protest the company’s payouts to executives accused of sexual harassment certainly aren’t keeping their mouths shut.

It’s a tough predicament the world is in. One that will require a handful of courageous companies to change the rules, otherwise no one wins. Star Trek fans will recognize a Kobayashi Maru situation.

For my part I’ll continue challenging corporates who claim they’re socially responsible with suggestions they let the homeless sleep in their empty offices. Maybe someone, someday will say yes and not look at me like I have three heads. Who knows, it may be the start of new breed of social workplace. As for the university kids, maybe they should skip Revit training and go to the pub to work on their people skills.

Sources:

Captain, Sean; “Meet the Silicon Valley Socialist Who are Pushing a Tech Worker Uprising”; https://www.fastcompany.com; July 17, 2018

Chamorro-Premuzic Thomas and Frankiewicz Becky; “Does Higher Education Still Prepare People for Jobs?”; Harvard Business Review; January 14, 2019

Chatterji, Aaron and Toffel Michael; “The New CEO Activists”; The Harvard Business Review; January – February 2018

Molloy, Shannon; “Victoria Police Hunting for Bourke St Hero dubbed ‘Tolley Man’ Over Alleged Burglaries”; Newscorpaustralia.com; November 16, 2018

Rogers, Adam and Tiku, Nitasha; “San Francisco Billionaires Go To War Over Homelessness”; Wired; October 29, 2018