How can we get our people to “buy in” to our new workplace design? How can we involve them in a way that ensures the best possible result from our investment? And how do we engage our organization’s leaders in helping to make the new facility work?

Research demonstrating the impact of color on human physiology suggests that the answer is yes. Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association of the U.S., points out, for example, a study conducted in 1978 by Alexander G. Schauss, Ph.D., which showed a certain shade of pink’s ability to calm aggressive behavior.

At the corner of Ohio and State streets in downtown Chicago, a short walk from the famous Magnificent Mile, a cozy Starbucks store beckons. People sit at tables enjoying Americanos, wireless access, and all the accoutrements of what social scientists call a “third place,” a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg.

Ergonomic tips for the office.

It is estimated that more than 40 million North Americans spend their working lives in cubicles, with many of them passing more waking hours in the open-plan office environment than in any other—even their own living rooms.

Practically every organization, not just service and knowledge businesses, includes knowledge workers. Customers expect information when they buy hard goods, too: the hardware store customer seeking a 1/4" drill bit, as the story goes, is really after a 1/4" hole. In other words, people don’t just buy products or services, they seek a solution to a problem—and that requires knowledge and experience.

We live in a color saturated world …and make choices about color every day. Yet there’s a lot about color that isn’t understood or hasn’t been explored. What are the connotations of color? What effects do colors have on people…and why? Do our eyes and brains process different colors in different ways, and could that be important to know?

It seems unnecessary to quote statistics about the growth of cell phone use (every minute another 1,000 users are added to the 2.4 billion existing users1), the global growth rate of Internet use (200 percent between 2000 and 2006), or how many e-mail messages and instant messages compete for our attention every day (an estimated 62 billion and 14 billion, respectively).