5 ms·

IBM did a fair amount of research on this in the 1970s and 80s. They talk about some of it in their Santa Teresa design paper I think: http://domino.research.ib

IBM did a fair amount of research on this in the 1970s and 80s. They talk about some of it in their Santa Teresa design paper I think: http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/9fe6a820aae67ad785256547004d8af0/fb3c49ab2d463e1c85256bfa00685aec!OpenDocument http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/9fe6a8... The major takeaways I have from reading about this when I started in tech entrepreneurship are: 1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency 2) They need 100 square feet of space 3) cubicles are as good as an office if the walls are over 8 feet high (!) 4) small teams tend to want to talk at the same time, and be quiet at the same time. These together round up into recommended 400 or so square foot offices with doors that close and house teams of four people, all working on the same thing at the same time. If teams are 2 or 3, they should have a smaller space. That's enough space for desks, a couch, a whiteboard area, etc. I have found over the years that this tracks fairly closely with my own preferences. I really want to be able to talk and interrupt a team-mate when we're working if we're working on the same thing. We also often are hacking away and need silence, but instant access to whoever is in the know about a certain bit of code is undeniably great, and provided we aren't breaking each-other out of flow, is fine. This system works really well when it's a small team and the team is working on the same stuff. It breaks down when there are multiple things happening or more than four or so people: interruptions abound, killing productivity. I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion.

vollmond 11y ago
I haven't had that exact structure yet, but what I have had tracks well. I've had fully open-plan, single cubicles, and 4-6 person super-cubes. The super-cubes definitely seemed like the best option. I had easy collaborative access to my immediate teammates, with a bit of visual and audio barrier between us and other teams. Open-plan was workable. Some sound pollution from other teams, but easy access to my team was good. Individual cubes make no sense to me at all. All the sound pollution of open-plan, with none of the easy access to teammates. I hate it.
- silverbax88 11y ago
  Wow, do I hate open plan. Have seen it implemented at several companies and all suffered trackable drops in productivity, even as they continued to tout how much better it was. Numbers don't lie.
  - a3n 11y ago
    As long as you ship something, anything, people will buy it. So it's two curves and where they cross.
a3n 11y ago
> If teams are 2 or 3, they should have a smaller space. That's enough space for desks, a couch, a whiteboard area, etc. That's how Rob Petrie worked, with Buddy and Sally. That looked like fun.
rdtsc 11y ago
I worked in that structure and it is pretty good. But it is important to emphasize that the team should be working on the same thing. For a while my company was mixing tech support/customer relations and engineers in the same 4-person office -- that doesn't work too well. When switching project it is important to switch offices as well. (Doesn't Valve do that with their desks-on-wheels?)
rprospero 11y ago
If I remember correctly, the 30 square feet of desk space was largely to be able to have a large number of tech manuals open to the necessary pages at the same time. Given how much documentation is now digitized, I wonder where the same recommendation would still hold, or if you could just condense it down to the space of a couple of monitors?
- noir_lord 11y ago
  I have ~22 sq ft of desk space http://i.imgur.com/hKkW0T4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hKkW0T4.jpg and it's glorious, custom built my desk to my requirements (standing because I have a back condition) with enough space to thrown a laptop and another screen on the end, it also feels lovely to work at because I never feel 'hemmed in' by all the stuff on the desk.
  - dkuntz2 11y ago
    This is entirely off topic, but I'm starting to think about making my own desk at home. How'd you do that, what did you use? Your desk looks great, and worth emulating.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      That metal structure looks like scaffolding pipe, or industrial modular storage. It's not going to win any design awards but it looks sturdy as hell.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        Not interested in design awards ;), I wanted something brutally simple that would be the last desk I ever need (worst case I replace the panel if it gets battered). As for sturdiness, it's weight and rigidity make it a very stable desk. I've already had two people ask me to make them one (with a nice margin on top), I think a lot of people are tired of crappy fall apart desks.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
tbrownaw 11y ago
1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency I expect this to be different now, and possibly more dependent on screen space than on physical desk space. I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion. There have been a couple big projects where we flew in the remote people just to get the whole team in a room together. So it's not only the workers that know this; management does as well or they wouldn't approve the travel budget.
- vessenes 11y ago
  There's definitely research that shows more resolution and screen real estate are helpful for productivity. And, of course, more of our work does happen on screen now than in the 70s. Still, I'm personally happier with more desk space. We still use paper all the time. Tufte points out in one of his books that humans are better at spatial comparisons than time-based comparisons, hence his fetish for data density, and mine for lots of screen and desk real estate.
- Bahamut 11y ago
  Maybe a little different, but having a lot of physical desk space is still very important IMO. It feels great to have lots of desk space, it helps carve out more privacy since there are less possible closer places other people's desks can occupy. I dislike when people peek around my screen just because it is convenient to.

vollmond 11y ago

I haven't had that exact structure yet, but what I have had tracks well. I've had fully open-plan, single cubicles, and 4-6 person super-cubes. The super-cubes definitely seemed like the best option. I had easy collaborative access to my immediate teammates, with a bit of visual and audio barrier between us and other teams. Open-plan was workable. Some sound pollution from other teams, but easy access to my team was good. Individual cubes make no sense to me at all. All the sound pollution of open-plan, with none of the easy access to teammates. I hate it.

silverbax88 11y ago
Wow, do I hate open plan. Have seen it implemented at several companies and all suffered trackable drops in productivity, even as they continued to tout how much better it was. Numbers don't lie.
- a3n 11y ago
  As long as you ship something, anything, people will buy it. So it's two curves and where they cross.

a3n 11y ago

> If teams are 2 or 3, they should have a smaller space. That's enough space for desks, a couch, a whiteboard area, etc. That's how Rob Petrie worked, with Buddy and Sally. That looked like fun.

rdtsc 11y ago

I worked in that structure and it is pretty good. But it is important to emphasize that the team should be working on the same thing. For a while my company was mixing tech support/customer relations and engineers in the same 4-person office -- that doesn't work too well. When switching project it is important to switch offices as well. (Doesn't Valve do that with their desks-on-wheels?)

rprospero 11y ago

If I remember correctly, the 30 square feet of desk space was largely to be able to have a large number of tech manuals open to the necessary pages at the same time. Given how much documentation is now digitized, I wonder where the same recommendation would still hold, or if you could just condense it down to the space of a couple of monitors?

noir_lord 11y ago
I have ~22 sq ft of desk space http://i.imgur.com/hKkW0T4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hKkW0T4.jpg and it's glorious, custom built my desk to my requirements (standing because I have a back condition) with enough space to thrown a laptop and another screen on the end, it also feels lovely to work at because I never feel 'hemmed in' by all the stuff on the desk.
- dkuntz2 11y ago
  This is entirely off topic, but I'm starting to think about making my own desk at home. How'd you do that, what did you use? Your desk looks great, and worth emulating.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    That metal structure looks like scaffolding pipe, or industrial modular storage. It's not going to win any design awards but it looks sturdy as hell.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      Not interested in design awards ;), I wanted something brutally simple that would be the last desk I ever need (worst case I replace the panel if it gets battered). As for sturdiness, it's weight and rigidity make it a very stable desk. I've already had two people ask me to make them one (with a nice margin on top), I think a lot of people are tired of crappy fall apart desks.
  - noir_lord 11y ago

tbrownaw 11y ago

1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency I expect this to be different now, and possibly more dependent on screen space than on physical desk space. I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion. There have been a couple big projects where we flew in the remote people just to get the whole team in a room together. So it's not only the workers that know this; management does as well or they wouldn't approve the travel budget.

vessenes 11y ago
There's definitely research that shows more resolution and screen real estate are helpful for productivity. And, of course, more of our work does happen on screen now than in the 70s. Still, I'm personally happier with more desk space. We still use paper all the time. Tufte points out in one of his books that humans are better at spatial comparisons than time-based comparisons, hence his fetish for data density, and mine for lots of screen and desk real estate.
Bahamut 11y ago
Maybe a little different, but having a lot of physical desk space is still very important IMO. It feels great to have lots of desk space, it helps carve out more privacy since there are less possible closer places other people's desks can occupy. I dislike when people peek around my screen just because it is convenient to.