Germans increase office efficiency with 'cloud ceiling' So you thought you had deployed every form of office technology that could possibly increase the productivity of your company's cripplingly expensive salaried employees? You were wrong. Remorseless German boffins have discovered a way to make office workers still more efficient using - quite literally in this case - cloud …
I hope the people evaluating this are aware of the Hawthorne Effect where it was determined that increases in productivity were not down to changes in the environment (which included lighting changes), but the special attention the subjects were getting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
Of course people are now well aware that the original experiment (and the conclusions drawn) we somewhat flawed. However, the basic Hawthorne Effect is very well accepted.
This does not mean that environmental issues don't make a difference, but it's a good reason to be suspicious of press releases and *research* from interested parties.
IMHO - Hawthorne Effect got nothing to do with this particular one.
I work mostly from home and my home office is in a loft. 80% of the roof is windows exactly for this reason. I have long noticed that my productivity is fairly proportional to the natural light level - blinds fully closed == productivity to min, blinds open == productivity to max. Similarly - looking back at 20 odd years I have been most productive in offices where I was next to the window (especially on the south side) and least in a "modernistic neon lit windowless cave".
There is a simple explanation too. Most of us have some form of S.A.D. even though we do not care to admit it. There is nothing "hawthornic" to this Fraunhoffer gadget - it is just a big S.A.D. light.
i remember some documentary a couple of years ago that showed experiments with ambient light in a pub/restaurant. it seemed that blue encourages us to be more active, telling our body clocks to wake up basically. so probably the same affect going on here.
i also remember another one where blue light made time seem to pass more quickly!
"...experiments with ambient light in a pub..."
Who the hell tinkers with the light in a pub? The best lighting my research has shown is that alcohol is best and most efficiently consumed in dimly lit rooms, with the proper womb-like atmosphere of pipe smoke and stale beer.
pauly: blue light staves off the production of melatonin.
Obvious if you think about it really, the sky is usually blue from first thing in the morning until sunset.
Staring at a screen in the evenings is not helping you get to sleep because the images are usually more at the blue end of the spectrum. Street lamps should NOT be orange!
...but it's probably just that whoever took the photo didn't have a clue.
The human eye is an amazing organ and can deal with ranges of light far far wider than the best camera. I suspect that what's happened here is that the camera's metering system is picking up on the bright light from the window and exposing for that, which leaves the interior of the room looking dark and underexposed.
This is a situation where some fill-in flash would have helped.
...ahem.. smoking room with blacklights, and flourescent stars on the ceiling. The blacklights made the blinds glow a nice pale blue, and made the room look like it was in perpetual "dawn" mode.
The only problem with the room was that you'd never get sleepy in there. You'd look at the clock and it'd be time for work the next morning (and it wasn't because of what was being smoked).
Just opened the blinds a bit more - hoping for a massive improvement over close-to-zero here...
Surely this is an example of blue-sky thinking?
(The no-sex place I work at has intense neon lighting and red-hot radiators and filthy keyboards so I am in a permanent state of stress, thinking about disease, overheated and squinting. Plus the coffee is either awful or too expensive. Also everypermyone is working their notice and the place is full of Indians sucking their knowledge away to Mumbai. The canteen is poor and the toilet smelly. I've been here two months and still not been given any Unix logins, have nothing to do but look busy and offer some advice once or twice a week. To be honest, not one of my best contracts.)
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