The Untapped Design Secret to 10x Employee Performance with Kay Sargent

0:00Actually, the latest statistic is that it's one in five. When we started eight years ago, it was considered to be one in eight. Now it's one in five. I don't even think that's right. Our research is showing that it's probably far closer to about one in three, if not even higher. And I think in the UK right now, there is an eight year waiting list to get diagnosed for certain things. And so it's very, very difficult for a lot of individuals. And so there's a huge discussion about how do we improve that? Or are there other ways to do that? Or why do we even care? Like, why are we even putting labels on this stuff?

0:32Let's just acknowledge that we all are different. Well, thank you so much for coming in, Kay. I think we're ready to roll. All right, let's do it. Everybody, today's guest is someone that's very special because she's reshaping the way we think about workspaces. Kay Sargent, really well-known senior principal and director at HOK. Do you say HOK, Kay, or do you say HOK? We say HOK. I hear both bouncing around the industry. Yeah, well, the ones, it's HOK. It's named after our three founders, Bellman, Obata, and Kassabohm. HOK. Very nice. I'm glad I asked. But, Kay, I love how you've really delved into inclusive design and neurodiverse design.

1:19It's a massive thing. I mean, I'm having tons of conversations about it at the moment. Everybody's bringing it up, and I was on a panel. I'm delighted to hear that. I love that. Yeah. Well, it's a funny thing. And I was on a panel about it the other day as well. And it's really strange. You start talking about neurodiversity and you think it's this like crazy group of wackheads and everyone's talking about it and like the sort of the effects of it or how it translates into everyday life. And I'm sitting there thinking, hmm, definitely relate here. Yeah, I cannot tell you when we first started talking about this, I think the first presentation we ever did was in Singapore or Hong Kong, probably like six years ago, maybe, maybe longer.

2:01No, it had to be like seven years ago, way before the pandemic. And I had to prepare my colleagues because I said, every time I present on this or share, there's an aha moment that somebody has in the audience and people start to relate to this. And I think this, you know, people have said, what is happening now that all of a sudden the numbers of people that are neurodivergent is increasing so much? And I don't think it's actually increasing. I think it's the awareness is coming off of something that has always been there, but that we either just suppressed or wrote up as something else or just tried to ignore.

2:41And now people, I think, are realizing that we all think differently. We process things differently. And we have just all been muddling through trying to, you know, kind of be that average person doing the average thing. But I don't know who that is anymore. And so I think we're just embracing who we really are. It's so like, it's so funny to hear that because when I was on the last panel, you could see everyone in the audience nodding, like loads of these aha moments that you're saying and you're thinking yeah there's about 25 of people but it's so hard to get diagnosed or whatever you probably know the stats better than here of course but yeah i i actually the latest statistic is that it's one in five when we started eight years ago it was considered to be one in eight now it's one in five i don't even think that's right our research is showing that it's probably far closer to about one in three, if not even higher.

3:35And I think in the UK right now, there is an eight-year waiting list to get diagnosed for certain things. And so it's very, very difficult for a lot of individuals. And so there's a huge discussion about, okay, well, how do we improve that? Or are there other ways to do that? Or why do we even care? Like, why are we even putting labels on this stuff? Let's just acknowledge that we all are different Even if you're neurotypical, and by the way, calling somebody typical has never been a compliment, but even if you are neurotypical, every single one of us is being impacted by the built environment that we're living in, light, temperature, sound.

4:19And so this isn't about the fringe group that is a minority. This is about sensory processing, cognitive well-being to maximize human performance so that everyone can thrive. yeah I'm really glad you brought that up so early on because that is actually something that I'm really passionate about as well in the sense that it's so often thought of this small minority group which a is not a minority group it's like you well I've never heard this one in three maybe higher but that sort of shows something and then secondly it's how everybody benefits, which is what I think is a learning piece that everybody needs to kind of see, I guess.

5:06Yeah. I think there's two sayings. If you design for the edges, you get the middle for free. Or when you design for the extreme, you benefit the mean. Every single one of us is going to benefit if we create environments where we have more control, options and choices about the types of spaces that we're in. Yeah. Have you had any, because you've got like extensive experience in that, have you got any examples of when something might have seemed like a niche specialist thing for this neurodiverse group, but actually just turned out to be a huge benefit to absolutely everybody that was occupying the space?

5:49I could give you a long list, but let me just pick two or three of my top top favorites um focus rooms you know now there it's almost like guaranteed that almost any space that you go into but 10 years ago those were kind of a novelty you didn't really have that and just this notion that every now and then we just all need to be able to cut out the noise and and to be able to focus and concentrate but i think we also need to realize that not everybody is hyper sensitive a sensory avoider there are some people that are actually hype o sensitive or sensory seekers. And sensory seekers may not want to be in a small confined box.

6:27They might need to move and fidget. They might want to be in a buzzy environment. Think about all those people that go work in a Starbucks, right? It's not because a coffee is so cheap, right? Or it's quiet. It's because a lot of us actually feed off of being around the energy of other people and we need that. And so we need to kind of create those balances. But, you know, sound. There's a lot of environments where we're putting in sound masking and about 10 % of the population gets headache from white noise and can't handle that. We used to think that having adjustable lighting was nice, but there are a lot of people that get migraines and being able to be in a room where you can actually turn the lights off or down significantly can be really important for certain individuals.

7:14and just to give you a real live example we designed ARIPS space in Birmingham and you probably did this early started on early in the pandemic and from the beginning we're designing for engineers okay so they want to know why this and why that and you know all of this right so there's a science to what we do and so we really leaned into the whole thing about neurodiversity and it helped expedite the process because they could understand why we were recommending what we were recommending. And so they're like, okay, great. We get it approved. Right. So that expedited the process, but we really thought about everything.

7:53And we worked with their engineers to really think about the lighting and the acoustics and just all of the different things and the different types of space zones and how people are going to be using this space and how do we create, you know, introduce elements of biophilia, just everything. Every element of that space was intentionally and very specifically designed. And it won a bunch of BCO awards, which we're really, really proud of. And about two, about a year and a half ago, we were touring some folks and one of my colleagues was there. He came over and he was just really emotional. And he said, this gentleman just came up to me and he said, are you the designer?

8:30Now, you don't necessarily always want to know how you want to answer that question, because if they have a beef that it's like, you know, okay, here it goes, right? But this gentleman, he says, yes, you know, we're the designers of this space. And he goes, I just want to thank you because I worked for this company for 10 years and I've never been able to be in the office because either the lighting or the humming, the flippering of the sound system or the lighting system and all of those things really bothered me and I couldn't function. I said, for the first time in 10 years, I've actually been able to be in this space without getting physically ill.

9:05And I've connected with my colleagues in a way I've never been able to. And it's been a total game changer for me. So thank you for that. And I will tell you, that's better than any award we've ever received. It has a real impact on people. And as designers, we have to acknowledge that if we believe the spaces we're designing have a positive impact on people, and we wouldn't be in this profession if we didn't. We also have to acknowledge that if we don't really understand the impact of what we're doing, it could have a negative impact. And in our game, like in our world, that's just not okay. No, no, no.

9:40What a beautiful story. So thank you for sharing it. Is it such a thing that someone can jump between hypo and hyper? Oh yeah, you can be - I definitely think I'm that person. You can be hypersensitive to one thing and hyposensitive to something else. All of those elements are totally independent of each other. And you can, you know, other things can exacerbate the situation. So if I'm feeling anxious and I'm under a lot of pressure, then it can make some of those things even worse, right? So if I come in in the morning and I'm really anxious and I know I have this big deadline, you know, it can make everything like just heightened.

10:20but in the afternoon i've done it i've submitted it it went great i'm really excited now i get to just take a moment and breathe and you might need a very different type of space later on and so think about just as humans our moods sometimes you're a great moon sometimes you're not right sometimes things are agitated something times things are not um your environment all there's all kinds of things that are impacting us as humans. And we need to acknowledge that not only do we have a whole variety within ourselves, but just across the spectrum of people. And so this whole notion that I can design one space that's going to be right for everybody all the time is just so ridiculous that we need to break free from that.

11:06Yeah. You were going to tell me three spaces that you thought were the most eye-opening. You gave me focus pods. I'm definitely not letting the other two go yeah so focus pods yeah um the lighting so the migraines right so having the adjustable lighting and then uh even just like having giving people options and choices okay so if you have assigned seats and you assign somebody to sit in a spot i don't know any company that says guy do you have any sensitivities are you sensitive to visual distractions people walking by constantly? Or do you feel psychologically unsafe if your back is exposed to an opening and you can't see who's coming up behind you?

11:49Or are you troubled by acoustic stimulation? Nobody asked that. And so you come in, there's a desk right across from the conference center that I'm going to sit you at because that's the available spot. Your ability to function and be high functioning need has just plummeted based on where I randomly selected you because it's a total mismatch for your sensory needs. Whereas if you had options and choices, then you would intuitively kind of instinctively navigate to the spot that was most comfortable for you. And I say intuitively and instinctively because I think we have suppressed our sensory intelligence so much that most of us don't even know what our own triggers are because we've never really had the option to choose or to think about it.

12:43And so we really aren't that aware and we're all just masking. And I'll give you the perfect example of this guy. If I said, we're going to go to lunch. Do you have any preferences about where the table is? Most people would be like, yeah, I don't care. But the second you'll start walking into that restaurant, every single one of us is like, oh, no, no, no. I don't want to sit over there. I want to sit over here. And you don't even know why. And so we have got to tap back into who we really are, what kind of environments are going to support us best so that we can make better choices and decisions.

13:17That's amazing. That restaurant analogy, it floods into my head. I'm like, oh, I'm so that person. I've got to sit in that seat. Everybody is. We're all that same way, right? Well, that's Shayar. Like, no, no, I'm not sitting there. That's my seat, right? And again, most of us can't even articulate why. You just instinctively know that's where you want to be. When people are, obviously, everyone's now creating flexible spaces and choices are now a much bigger thing, which is great in lots of ways, like you said. And I think that is huge for everybody. Everybody. And is there anything that you're seeing that companies are sort of typical mistakes that people are making pitfalls when creating those flexible spaces?

13:58I'll give you two. Variety, anxiety. Okay. So if you give people too many choices and it's too chaotic and confusing and it's not, you know, legible or you can't really comprehend it, then that's another stressor. Okay. So we have to be very structured about this. It's not just randomly throwing a bunch of things in there. the other thing is that i think uh in most open environments we have this whole this is where all of our research on workplace comes together with all the research on neurodiversity and our research on workplace will tell us that there are six things that people are doing when they come into an office right they're either concentrating contemplating that's different right what is deep thought the other one is almost freeing your mind right that's kind of the opposite one is kind of process or communal workings you're doing in a group setting there's creating congregating and socializing okay so having the right mix of that kit of parts and those modalities is important and we want to have a hyper and a hype o version of each one of those as best as we can or even kind of zones within zones right but even if you have the right kit of parts, the way that we're laying things out in offices, it's like taking your dinner right before you're eating it, throwing it into a blender, pureeing it, and then pour it into a cup.

15:19We are pureeing the workplace because we are just throwing everything in there together, intermixing it, and not clearly defining the zones for the intention, right? So we have a bunch of workstations that are all together. And then we plop in the middle of it, a gathering space. And then right next to it, we put a quiet spot for somebody to sit. Because of the proximity of that, none of those really function in the way that you hoped that they would. And therefore they just negate each other. It's like taking your dining room table and putting it in your bedroom and wondering why you can't sleep when your kids are having dinner.

15:55Okay. So spatial sequencing is really important. And 90 % of the open environments that I would go into that are very challenging for people that can't handle that much stimulation don't have clearly defined zones. And I'm not saying you have to have a wall that says, here's the zone, right? But just, you know, with intention, we are designing spaces so that in a quiet space, it really is quiet. And you might have a little softer lighting and a little bit of different colors. And, you know, maybe it's higher sound masking in some of those spaces. And in another space, it's meant for loud, gregarious laughter and brighter colors and bigger spaces.

16:39And, you know, maybe there's a little bit of music, etc. We just are putting one masking system across everything, one lighting system, and just pureeing everything in there. So we need to be much more intentional about the types of zones or environments. And this is where I think we are evolving from activity-based working. You choose where to sit based on the activity you're doing to environmental-based working. You choose where to sit based on the space that meets your environmental needs. It's quieter. It's louder. It's warmer. It's colder. It's a little darker. It's a little brighter. and then you feel more safe and secure in that space and it's functioning in a way that you need it to function yeah and how the thing that's triggering off straight in my mind is how do you like tie that in with um brand cohesion and consistency and i know we're designing for people and it's not all about the brand but at the same time i can hear like end clients saying that potentially yeah well guy we we believe that the space should be the physical embodiment of the organization, its culture, and its work styles.

17:52So you have to really understand what are people doing and how do they connect and how do they really work? Having the space represent who you are, I think is really, really important just to tap into a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of mission that is so important for all of us to have. And so creating kind of that space has kind of the shell. And we think about like guidelines, a common thread that goes through the space that ties it all together, right? But then you can have a little bit of options and choices in that. And in every built environment, there are naturally occurring warm areas and cooler areas, darker spaces and brighter spaces, you know, busier areas and choir areas.

18:42And the workplace is one of the last places that we aren't being nudged by technology to meet our needs. So you can't even go online and shop without things being directed to you based on your past preferences or choices. But when you go to the workplace, it's like, hey, we've never seen you before, right? Like, who are you? We have all these sensors in the environment. And so if we can tap into our sensory intelligence and say, you know know what, I really prefer a little like spaces that are a little bit cooler, a little bit quieter. I love to have the sun, you know, whatever. And I want to be away from certain people or I need to be next to certain people.

19:22And if we know that, and then those sensors are telling us where are those spots in the building and can feed that into an app so that when you arrive to the office, it says, welcome guy, we know that you like spaces that are really cool and a little bit darker. and you want to stay away from that loud talker, we recommend that you go sit in this part of the building today. But as the sun moves or as people come in or as things change, because they do, buildings are kind of this living ecosystem, it might nudge you to say, hey, you might want to think about moving over to this side of the building now or to this spot because we know that you have like a big meeting coming up.

19:59You're going to be on a call. You're going to be talking a lot. It's getting a little warmer where you are, et cetera. You might want to choose to sit over here. And so it's helping us navigate where we might want to be, just like everything else in our life. Disneyland does this. You know, you tell it before, what are the big things that you want to do when you're there? And then it charts what's happening within the park and can nudge you to go to spaces that they know you want to be in when it's lower peak versus high peak, etc. So that's kind of, in a sense, how they control that flow and help you have a better experience.

20:35But we're not leveraging that technology, nor are our sensory intelligence of ourselves to really help us navigate these spaces. That's phenomenal technology. And you say that's out there? It's there. I mean, first of all, all you need to do is understand what your preferences are. So have a little bit of understanding about your sensory intelligence. And there's lots of ways you can figure that out. And then the sensors are already collecting all that information. So it's just about feeding that information to you. And we're working with a few software developers right now that are really kind of taking this to the next level.

21:11But rudimentary elements of that already exist and are kind of out there and can help nudge us to spaces. Yeah, I'm sure the technology is there. I just haven't heard someone using it in such a proactive manner, to be honest, which is great to hear. Like user experience, that's phenomenal. Is there any brands you can share or is that something that you can't? Well, there's a whole bunch that are emerging and I wouldn't do anybody justice if I started to pick one or two out. But I would say Unwired Philip Ross is really keen, glued into what a lot of those sensory elements are telling us and kind of tracking it.

21:44These things, Guy, are evolving so quickly. It's kind of overwhelming. It truly is. When you think about the number of apps and sensory things that are out there today, it's kind of overwhelming, I think. No, yeah. No, it's amazing to hear. We have cars and have had them for years. where you can start the car before you even leave your house, right? It's by the time you get down there, it automatically unlocks because of a fob that you have in your pocket. And everything in that space is preset to your condition. So you get in there, the music, the lighting, the seat position, the steering column, the temperature, everything automatically adjusts to you.

22:21You sit in your car for about a half an hour, get to your workplace, you walk in, and we're all crawling around on the floor trying to find an outlet. Like we have not leveraged technology to the fullest extent to enable better human experiences. And that means we have to tap into what is it that we actually need and what are our preferences. And then designers need to tap, create spaces that can provide that tied in with that technology, but it's all there. We just haven't connected the dots. Yeah. One of my questions I even find personally, but I know it's a big topic is always signage and i think what you're talking about is just like sort of dynamic signage and in the rawest form like it's probably not very complimentary to call it that but it's it's really just helping people navigate yeah the place to the best optimal let's call it wayfinding right yeah because there's because it's because it's not just like is designers when you walk into a space and you don't know where you are, if there's a hallway to the right that is dimly lit and a little bit narrower, and there's a hallway to the left that's bright and wider, 90 % of people will walk to the left because it's almost telling you where to go, right?

23:37And so there's all kinds of ways as a designer that I can control your behavior in a space. Chairs in McDonald's were designed to be comfortable for 15 minutes and then you get out because it's about turn, right? Where Starbucks originally had these big, comfy sofas that you could barely get out of because who wants to go to a coffee shop where nobody is, right? And so the way we design everything in that space is kind of controlling your behavior. And if we really can tap into that and understand that. But the challenge with signage, this is why I'm going to change it to wayfinding. The challenge with signage is we kind of as designers will jokingly say, if you have to put up a sign, we didn't design it appropriately in the first place.

24:20And not everybody can read. Not everybody can see. And sometimes too many signs can be overwhelming. So when we are designing and we're taking these principles and we are including them in every kind of space imaginable. So when our team was redesigning LaGuardia Airport, one of the things is that anxiety you have when you're in an airport because you don't know where am I going? How far is it? Are they boarding? Are they not? What's happening, right? And so they intentionally tried to say, can we design an airport with as few signs as possible to make it obvious and clear to people? And of course you have signage, but not just throwing signs everywhere and overwhelming people.

25:07Because if there's too many signs, then you can't process them all and you miss them, right? And so you literally can come in on this level and you can look over the airport and you can see, oh, there's my gate. They're not boarding yet. And I know how far I have to go and I know I don't have to run. Okay. Or, oh, there's a quiet space that I can just go and sit off to the side for a minute and just take a breath. And the areas are designed very distinctly. So the areas that are meant for people that are just kind of waiting have lots of biofields they feel like more like a park than a thoroughfare right and so we need to start embedding these principles that help people intuitively navigate spaces without having to throw up a bunch of slides because little kids can't read people from a different country may not be able to understand our language people that are blind people that are just overwhelmed people that are chatting at you right so we have to incorporate this into the way that we design spaces yeah i know i feel like what you're saying about the technology thing is i know it's been there for a while and i get the whole car analogy like big time and it's we just haven't incorporated it but i do feel that it's like something we aren't seeing mainstream at the minute that we should be seeing mainstream in the next five years i think you know is there any other um emerging trends that or changes to the workspace i don't really like trends because it makes it sound like it's coming and going so um but any kind of emerging changes that we can make to our workspace because the world is moving so fast and is our workspace keeping up is i guess is the question yeah i i think um we're seeing taking the elements that are already there and using them a little bit more intelligently.

26:57So really leaning a little bit more into color theory and really leaning more into, I guess, another thing that's really important is visual clutter. And so this is really a big topic right now in education because they now are identifying children at an early age and such a high percentage of kids. I think there's a study in the UK and in the US where more than 50 % of people in their 20s identified as being neurodivergent. And so when you think about a traditional elementary school or lower grade schools, they tend to just be these visual clusters of just so much overstimulation. And then we wonder why kids can't focus and pay attention.

27:41So as an adult, I go in and I'm like, oh my god like i'm overwhelmed with all the things and so it's about being very intentional about what we're doing making sure that there's visual order not visual clutter and chaos even in open environments people tend to be overwhelmed a lot by visual clutter and things that are out of sync and out of order so having a logic to things making things legible and making it so that they can actually navigate through spaces is really important. And, you know, we lean into the color theory, we lean into lighting, acoustics, all of those. And I think the biggest challenges that we're seeing right now are acoustics and lighting and temperature.

28:28And then just, you know, how do I manage all of this? And I think a lot of people right now are asking for quiet without really understanding that quiet in spaces that are not meant to be quiet is creepy and it's triggering because this it's not natural right if you seek out a quiet spot because you need to focus okay then you you self-selected that but if you're in a big space that is too quiet it doesn't feel right and i i say you know if you go to a restaurant and there's one other couple in that restaurant that's going to be a horrible meal because you're going to hear everything those people are saying if you go to a restaurant and you're shouting because it's so loud that's a horrible experience we don't really want no sound right not all sound is noise we want to have kind of that background hung that just helps people feel more comfortable and that way you're not clearly hearing what somebody else is saying and and so in many spaces today it's not that the spaces are too loud we've taken out all the background hum we've taken out like we put you know silencers on everything in the spaces today and it actually has made it so that they're almost like these echo chambers where you can clearly hear things that are going on all over and again that's far more disturbing so we need to make sure that we're getting the right level of sound for the activity at hand and that we vary that throughout the space so if you really do need quiet you can find it.

30:03But a lot of people need that buzzy space and they're going to seek that out. I was with some people the other day and they literally said, one guy said, yeah, like if I really need to focus and concentrate on something, I go into the public zone where there's all this buzzy stuff and I just feed off of that energy and I get lost in that hum and I can just like, like, just go for it. And the other person was like, no, no, no, no, no. I need total silence and I can't have anybody walking by or any visual distractions. So just two people, total opposite needs, both very valid. And we have to create spaces that can provide that.

30:38Yeah. And it could even be, it could be the opposite way around for those same people on a different day. We can get so tick boxy and try just to meet the rules and get approved and get a rubber stamp, but it's not about that. It's about the flexibility and how humans evolve and their work evolves and they evolve as as humans they change and their life changes yeah and guy i want to go back to something you said before because i think you touched on something that's really important um we design a lot of guidelines and standards for our clients i think in some cases we're you know people are taking them too far they've they've come up with this kind of parts and you know every single thing and you know, et cetera.