The golden rule of designing to prioritise people before technology

I am regularly amused by people who ask me how they can design their offices so that their employees feel valued, engaged and psychologically safe.

I’m entertained by this question because it assumes that design has a magical power over people. As someone who consults on design-related topics, my ego grows yet larger when my field is categorised among the all-powerful, but I know that, alas, it is not. Workplace design is just one force among several that makes employees feel they belong, and all the rest.

If you want people to feel valued (and if they feel valued all the other desired outcomes, the engagement, psychological safety, etc, will almost inevitably follow), value them.  Remember The Golden Rule, which is a tenet of all of the religions I’m familiar with: its core concept is to treat others as you would like to be treated. Keeping this in mind as you make decisions makes making decisions a much more straightforward task.

Would you feel valued?

Would you feel valued if the work that you and your colleagues do is in constant danger of being shipped to a low cost (and potentially non-human) provider?

Would you feel valued if the design of the work environment you are asked to use doesn’t align with what you need to do to be successful? If the managers and designers involved in deciding your workspace insisted that it does, but never had a meaningful conversation with you about it, would you feel valued?

If finishes seem to degrade before your eyes, in real time, into a battered and forlorn ugliness, would you feel valued? If you started to learn way too much about your colleagues (and they about you) as the sound leaks out of nearby conference rooms during performance review season, would you feel valued?

No, you would not.

Hegemony of screens

As AI establishes itself as a threat (real or perceived) to the future welfare of so many people, showing those people that they are valued, in all of their humanness, becomes particularly important for their wellbeing.

One way to seem to prize humanness is to combat what I have heard called ‘the hegemony of the screen.’ We all spend a chunk of time every week staring at screens—on our laptops or hung on conference room walls—but looking at tech instead of other people makes that tech seem more important than the other people present.

One way to indicate the importance of the people coexisting in the same place is to embed the tech at an angle that will include a view of the other people present. We can buy furniture that supports talking to others without using tech, thus setting an example. We can set lighting colour and intensity so that they are best for humans speaking with other humans in the flesh – and alter the screen settings for best visibility in those lights.

Humans first

The mantra is this: don’t set ambient conditions for working with machines, set them for working with people. Design for the convenience and comfort of humans, not efficient management of inanimate technology.  Reengineer the technology to put people first.

And while you are re-engineering your workplaces so that people feel like you care about them, never underestimate the intelligence of the space users. Every time you think you can compromise on the human experience in some way and users won’t notice or won’t care, they always do notice and they always do care. They just might not spend a lot of time telling you about it.

You may find yourself saying that all those efforts to humanise spaces are just not worth it for some employees—which begs the question, ‘then why are they your employees?’ If these folks are doing an OK job but are easily replaceable, you can treat the tech better than these humans to the extent your conscience allows.

But don’t be surprised if these folks have no loyalty to your firm and the churn is great among these positions. If the employees you don’t value are easily replaceable and hiring costs are low, you may decide not to invest in design to support this group’s wellbeing—but be prepared to reap the consequences of doing that. There is a simple, homespun alternative: to create a workplace where people feel valued, treat users as if they have value.