Ways of creating Creative Workspace

By: Kristina Shrestha

Creative workspaces can be created. The space where a person works has the capacity to enhance as well as decrease the creativity of an employee. There are different methods which can be applied to create a creative workspace.

1. Messy room

Messy room affects eating habits of people. People in orderly room tend to make healthy food habits. According to Kathleen Vos, a marketing professor and a psychological scientist from University of Minnesota, messy room motivated firms, and industries to adopt creativity [1]. In a research, participants were told to fill out a questionnaire some people were asked to fill it in a clean office while others were told to fill the questionnaire in a messy room. They were asked to make a charitable donations and pick chocolate or apple on their way out. The people working in tidy room tend to choose apple over chocolate and gave more donation than those participants in a messy room. In another experiment, participants were told to make as many as possible creative use of ping pong balls. The participants in messy room had same number of designs as that in tidy room but the participants in messy room had better creative solutions.

2. Furniture

The furniture which employees use also determine their creativity. People prefer round furniture or curve furniture to rectangular furniture. In a study done by Sibel Dazkir and Marilyn Read to study the effects of rectilinear and curve furniture. In the study, undergraduate students were showed the four computer generated rooms via internet and they were supposed to compare the rooms on the basis of the feel of pleasure and approach. After the study they found that they preferred room with curve furniture. They felt curve furniture gave them the sense of comfort and sense of welcoming [2].

3. Color and light

The use of color also determines the creativity of the employees. Beside colors, people are also sensitive towards intensity of light and they prefer to work in an environment where there is an option to vary the intensity of the light. In a series of six experiments, they demonstrated that red color provoked caution, avoid motivation and encourage works which dealt with details. On the contrary, blue color encouraged creative work.

In another experiment which included computer task, the participants were given a proof reading task and a word-recall task. They seemed to do very well in red background instead of blue or white background. In another experiment, people were given a task of making creative use of bricks. The participants who had red background seemed to perform good but the participants who were working in a blue screen seemed to produce better quality solutions and creative ideas [3].

References:

1.      Messy Work Spaces Spur Creativity, While Tidy Environments Linked With Healthy Choices;

             http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/messy-work-space-creativity-desk-tidy- healthy_n_3721818.html

       2.  Dazkir, Sibel and Read, Marilyn, Rounded, curvy furniture puts people at ease.

           http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/apr/rounded-curvy-furniture-puts-people- ease, Accessed on Nov

           14, 2015, 2:30 pm

       3.  Colors affect mental performance, with blue boosting creativity, http://digest.bps.org.uk/2009/02/colours-affectmental-performance-with.html, Accessed on Nov 14, 2015, 3:15 pm