The importance of proximity to our ability to collaborate with others was definitively proved by MIT’s Thomas Allen, with his work resulting in the eponymous Allen Curve, which illustrated how our likelihood of collaborating increases as our proximity with others increases. Recent research from MIT continues this tradition and explores how building design and architecture influence the interactions we have.
The researchers looked at email traffic between staff on campus and found that physical proximity was hugely important to our propensity to collaborate, but they add nuance to the well-established Allen findings. For instance, they found that we’re much more likely to communicate with people after we’ve bumped into them at the campus diner than we are in a crowded corridor.
Email traffic
The email data was gathered during February 2020, which is the month before Covid disrupted normal routines on campus. The data tracked the bilateral exchanges between research units on campus, allowing the researchers to examine the typical amount of person-to-person communication.
They then explored the spatial relationships between the various research units to better understand how the built environment on campus was influencing the email exchanges. They also modeled the probable walking routes based on the 2018 Commute to Work survey conducted by MIT and attempted to estimate the foot traffic of each corridor and eatery on campus.
The findings confirmed the importance of proximity shown by the Allen Curve all those years ago, but there were some particular aspects of proximity that mattered. For instance, workers located nearest to the same dining facility were most likely to interact.
“Cafeterias are spaces where verbal and visual communication is an important part of eating culture, especially in a research environment like MIT,” the researchers explain.
Comfortable spaces
The ability to interact in comfort was also important, with people interacting more when they didn’t have to venture outside to do so, with this undoubtedly influenced by the cold Massachusetts winters. For instance, for teams equal distance apart, those that were linked by an interior corridor were more likely to interact than those linked by an outdoor space, even if the communication was via email.
“We clearly saw that if people’s offices are linked via the indoor Infinite Corridor system, they are more likely to engage in email exchange than if the logical connections between their offices require outdoor paths,” the authors explain.
What’s more, when corridors are busy, they seemed to generate the kind of brief greetings that fizzle out rather than the kind of exchanges that resulted in a follow-up conversation.
“We found that if the corridor where person A may be walking past person B’s office on the way to work tends to be more crowded, then it reduces the likelihood of A and B engaging in email exchange,” the authors continue.
This wasn’t the case for crowded eateries, however, as these tended to encourage more follow-up conversations, perhaps due to their ability to facilitate group conversations where new social ties can emerge. This underlines the importance of preexisting relationships when it comes to explaining the importance of proximity, as proximity leads to more face-to-face interactions among those already familiar with each other. For those previously unfamiliar, proximity seems to result in more email conversations to begin with.
The findings demonstrate the possibility to take a smarter approach to how, and where, people are located so that interactions can be encouraged.
“Planning environments to encourage greater interaction across different groups may offer a pathway to bridge siloed social networks and encourage information exchange between otherwise unlikely parties,” the authors conclude.
