Uncovering the secrets of a productive environment, A journey through the impact of plants and colour

This PhD concerns the relationship between the physical environment and knowledge productivity. To create an optimal environment it is important to study the needs of knowledge workers in connection to the characteristics of the physical environment. Two components of the physical environment have been analysed: plants and colour. The effects of plants on productivity are studied by a critical assessment of the literature. The impact of colour has been studied by an extensive review of the literature and a comparison of human responses to a red and blue painted meeting room, in a real life setting. In addition, questionnaires have been disseminated to measure peoples’ colour preferences on different topics. The choice for plants and colour is based on personal interest and because it is relatively easy to add and change plants and colours in real life settings. In the reviews of the literature particular attention has been paid to the research methods applied by other researchers, in particular in the field of environmental psychology, in order to understand the mechanisms behind the interaction between people and their environment and how this interaction affects their productivity. Based on these insights, a new framework has been developed to measure the perception of the built environment. Chapter 2 discusses the relationship between productivity of the knowledge worker, his networks, and knowledge, in connection to the physical environment. To ensure that the knowledge worker will be both productive and happy, it is hypothesized that it is important that he can fulfil all his needs. The psychologists Ryan and Deci (2000, 2001) mention three psychological needs: competences, relatedness and autonomy. Pink (2010) added two other needs: purpose and mastery. In knowledge work a distinction can be made between four types of work moods that not only matches with insights of modern Western psychologists, but also with ancient Eastern wisdom: social observation, collectiveness, contemplation and awareness. It is concluded that four characteristics of the physical environment can contribute to knowledge productivity: structure, variety, psychological safety and identity. These four factors have been elaborated into practical guidelines how to support the energy and different moods of the knowledge worker. Chapter 3 presents a critical assessment on the effects of plants on productivity, based on an review of the literature. Next to effects on indoor air quality and relative air humidity, plants have in general a positive effect on productivity. The reactions of people can be physical/physiological, affective, or cognitive. Due to the huge variety in research methods and research settings, the research findings are not well comparable. For this reason, an overview of test aspects and a list of plant characteristics is presented that should be taken into account in conducting new research. In this thesis will be focused on the totality of the environment. After a review on a component that easily can be isolated, the next component is integrated in context and can only be approached in totality. Chapter 4 presents the real life test whether different coloured meeting rooms (red, blue and a reference room) had any effect on self-reported productivity. No significant effects were found in the responses to the questionnaires. It is assumed that the participants were fully occupied by the meetings so that they didn’t experience consciously the surrounding colours. A relatively large number of subjects responded that colour did not matter related to productivity (65%), collaboration (58 %) and wellbeing (33 %). Chapter 5 provides an overview of colour preferences of 1077 Dutch people who were asked to fill out a questionnaire. Gender, age and education and some personality characteristics were significantly related to colour preferences. The overall favourite colour was blue although differences exist between males and females: especially males prefer blue. The overall colour preference for clothing is black: females preferred this colour a bit more than males. The most preferred colour for the interior of buildings is white. Regarding states of mind most people prefer white to be quiet or being able to concentrate, and red to be energetic. Regarding being creative, they stated to have no colour preference. Remarkably most people choose for the physical environment the colour white (30 till 40%) and a substantial percentage (16 till 22%) stated to have no colour preference. Based on this analysis of colour preferences, people seem to be less interested in the application of particular colours in their environment. Chapter 6 presents an in-depth analysis of the experience of colour in order to shed more light on how colour affects people physiologically, affectively and cognitively. This analysis is based on theoretical knowledge found in the literature. This literature shows that scientists, philosophers, artists and architects are rather sceptical about the often rational and scientific approach to understand colour. Theoretically, twelve colour characteristics can be discerned how colour appears in nature which can be linked to the twelve senses that were mentioned by Rudolf Steiner and to twelve colour contrasts. Both in practice and science, the HSI values (hue, saturation and intensity) are used to define colour, which is limited to only three colour contrasts. It is concluded that in order to understand the experience of colour in its totality, all twelve colour contrasts should be taken into account that can be related to the twelve senses. Chapter 7 discusses possible pitfalls in conducting colour research by using questionnaires. By means of accurate observations during the colour test of Chapter 4 it turned out that the responses to the questionnaires could not always clearly be related to the research topics and did not always reflect the actual views of the subjects. For this reason additional personal interviews have been conducted with a number of subjects after the test. Contextual, personal and psychological factors showed to influence the responses of the subjects, including well-known phenomena such as the impact of personal interest, social desirability and cognitive dissonance reduction. Chapter 8 reflects on the often applied three dimensions arousal, pleasure and dominance, that were developed by Mehrabian and Russell (1974) to measure people’s environmental experiences and are still widely used in environmental psychology research. The many studies on people-environment interactions are hard to compare due to the different interpretations of these dimensions and the use of a huge variety of related adjectives. In this PhD research an attempt has been made to explore the connections between pleasure, arousal and dominance, the ABC model of attitude with the factors Affect, Behaviour and Cognition, and the three functions of the soul, feeling, acting and thinking, that were mentioned by Plato. It can be concluded that the dimensions of arousal, pleasure and dominance as Mehrabian and Russell originally have meant to be, are still appropriate to be used to describe peoples’ experience of the physical environment, provided that the dimensions are well defined and operationalised in valid adjectives. In particular the often neglected third dimension ‘dominance’ deserves a rehabilitation. Based on the discrepancies and the flaws that were found in research using pleasure, arousal and dominance to measure the experience and perceptual qualities of the built environment, chapter 9 presents a new framework with bipolar adjectives to describe the experience of the physical environment. This framework refers to the twelve senses that were mentioned by Rudolf Steiner. By linking sensory information of the twelve senses to specific parts of the environment, it is possible to define people’s experience of the physical environment in a more clear and objective way. The framework has been tested with practitioners from the field of housing and care and with designers. It showed to be applicable to get a sound understanding of the qualities of the physical environment, why people respond differently to the same environment, and how to improve this environment. Further testing of the framework with different samples and in different settings is needed to validate the framework. The thesis ends with chapter 10 that presents the overall conclusions and recommendations and reflects on the limitations of the research and next steps. This study tried to disentangle the complex concept productivity into four different work moods (contemplation, social observation, collectiveness, and awareness) and mentions four important elements of the physical environment: structure, variety, psychological safety and identity. The review on the effects of plants on productivity showed that plants in general have positive effects. Based on the research on colour, this relationship could not clearly be defined due to the complexity of both the concepts colour and productivity. However, the effects of colour on mood are definable. Because productivity can be conceived as a phenomenon existing of four types of work moods, future researchers can approach productivity more concrete. The developed framework to value and assess the totality of the environment can be helpful.