Spatial design for better habits
By: Jesse Bruce
Tags: Interior Design, Habit Building, Habits, UX, User Experience

Spatial design for better habits

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

My mom was an interior designer, and if I do say so myself, a very good one.

She was good not because she had the most creative designs or the best color combinations, she worked for the military so she used a lot of greens and beiges.

What made her a great designer was her ability to create a space that functioned so well for the people who used it that they could do their work in a state of flow.

They didn’t have to occupy their mental space worrying if there were enough chairs in the conference room for the daily meeting they were about to have, that was taken care of when the building was designed. They didn’t have to worry if they missed an oil leak in the tank they were maintenancing. The floor was white, any leak was completely visible.

Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash

The best advice I ever got about design came from my mom. When she met a client for the first meeting she wouldn’t ask about specks, the size of the building, the number of rooms, the color of the paint or furniture, etc.

Her question was much more simple: “What did you do yesterday?”

As the client went through their day my mom would gain an understanding of how they moved through space, what offices needed to be close to one another, if teams needed to sit together, how many conference rooms were needed and how big those conference rooms were, if there needed to be a retracting roof so that a Blackhawk helicopter could land in the building.

Asking the right question

This question fascinated me. I’ve been obsessed with habits for a long time. I know that good habits are a key to how successful and fulfilled I feel at the end of the day.

Maybe I could change the question. Maybe instead of “what did you do yesterday” it could be “What did you wish you would have done yesterday?”

Maybe I could use these same theories of spatial design to subconsciously influence myself to have better habits.

Design with the end in mind

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

In order to decide what habits I wanted to cultivate I needed to better understand my goal. I don’t just want to get more done, especially if what I’m doing is meaningless. I want to feel good about what I get done. I want to feel fulfilled at the end of the day. At peace.

What makes me feel fulfilled and at peace?

Learning something new and important

Exercise

Meditation, journaling and reading

Quality time with my family

A daily review

Making progress in my work and projects

How do I design my space so that these habits are natural?

Here’s my answer thus far:

My alarm goes off shortly before six. It is a special alarm, it wakes me up with light instead of noise. If I fail to get out of bed in the 30 minute that the “sun is rising” birds will start chirping and that will wake me up. This brings me peace instead of anger first thing in the morning. I roll out of bed and there is a yoga mat on the floor, next to the yoga mat is a bookshelf with my journal and a book of meditations. I will read the meditation for the day and journal. Next to my yoga mat is a kettle bell, I’m already on a yoga mat, I might as well work out. Next to my mat is a couch, I like to sit on the couch to meditate, so that’s what I do.

Photo by Ivan Pergasi on Unsplash

This continues throughout the morning and includes things like a cabinet perfectly set up to make my rather complicated breakfast, an ad hock coffee nook where I can sit with my wife and read, and a giant whiteboard painted on the closet next to my computer which acts as a parking-lot for ideas that go through my mind throughout the day.

Room for improvements and iterations

It’s not a perfect set up, I’m still working on my office space, (I’d like a desk that allows me to both stand normally and sit on the floor and I’m not sure that it exists). I could also figure out a way to add daily learning and review consistently into my routine. But the way I organize my space has largely taken away the question “what should I do next” from my morning.

Designing my flow through space is one of the most important changes that design has brought to my life. The user journey is my own, my flow is not interrupted by minor inconveniences that take my attention away from my work, my time with my family, or my quality of life.