Everyone is not alike
A built environment can make people comfortable or it can drive them crazy — or drive them out the door, according to Augustin. Sensory details like lighting, scent, traffic patterns, colors and their nuances can incline people to think creatively, agree with someone else's point of view, or buy a consumer product. But not everybody has the same responses to sensory stimuli.
"There is evidence that introverts actually do a better job of processing the sensory information that's available to them, so that might be why they're more easily overloaded in a particular space," she says.
Take the "great room," for example, the large, high-ceilinged, multi-purpose public area common in homes built in the last 50 years. TV home-rehab shows tend to celebrate their cathedral-like openness, but the truth is, not everybody likes a great room, Augustin says. Its scale requires large pieces of furniture, which don't suit everyone. Its high ceilings and "the way sound bounces around cue more formal behavior, which is a fundamental disconnect in a place where you're going to be hanging out with your family and friends. If you work at home, and your whole ground floor is open, you could find your work continually disrupted."
It helps to keep in mind the fundamentals of human nature, too. Augustin mentions one office design where everyone's workspace was made deliberately identical. "You can do that. Just know that the people who use the space will find a way to differentiate status," she says. Sure enough, in that office, the common coatracks eventually migrated to stand respectfully next to the stations of high-status workers.
Comfort zones
Good space design facilitates the "5 C's," Augustin says — comfort, coordination to the task at hand, communication (or, if needed, solitude), continuity in terms of people's expectations of their surroundings, and challenge, that is, a setting that gives people what they need to realize their potential.
But designing spaces to help humans feel and function better in their environment is by no means new. Feng shui, for example, is an ancient Chinese practice aimed at ensuring that built environments are in harmony with the energies of the natural world.
Augustin says she thinks "feng shui is cool," because it's a reminder that people everywhere and forever are aware on some level of the effects of their physical environment, "how it can make them feel good from a psychological perspective. What I do is based in Western science, and I have a lot of faith and confidence in that science, but every so often, I find myself in agreement with the feng shui tradition. For example, neither a feng shui practitioner nor I would like to have people seated so that other people are walking behind them all the time — on a path people take to the bathroom or the cafeteria, for example. That kind of alignment is very distracting to people. It stresses them out. I would build up some barrier behind people — it doesn't have to be significant, even a big plant, just something to create the impression of protection. We like to think we are really far removed from the animals, but we still get alerted when people walk behind us, just the way a chipmunk would," she says.
Green for creativity
Augustin puts her knowledge to work in her own home office, where the walls are painted a greenish color to promote creativity; there's plenty of storage to keep the visual complexity to a comfortable level; and her desk is oriented toward "a really nice view into leafy tree tops."
Augustin has done some research herself, but she mostly relies on the work of others. She is the editor of the monthly online newsletter "Research Design Connections," and the author of three books, mostly recently "Designology: How to Find Your Place Type and Align Your Life With Design." She also consults with the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces at the University of California, Berkeley, and she blogs. She is an APA fellow and past president of Div. 34 (Society of Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology).
Augustin grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. She did her undergraduate work in economics at Wellesley College; has a master's degree in business administration from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; and a PhD in psychology from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
She says, "I thought after graduate school in psychology, I'd do retail design projects in a better, more informed way, but at school, I was exposed to research that pertains to all sorts of places. That changed my thoughts on what I'd do when I got out."
To young psychologists who'd like to follow in her footsteps, she says she has found that a career in consulting requires consistent networking, "to create your own opportunities," and the willingness to "talk to people about what your field is, and why it matters in people's lives."
