Aerons and Air Hockey... dot com excess or essential tools?

The Aeron chair. Air hockey. Espresso machines. Hip, urban design with a touch of MOMA. In the pre-bubble dot coms, aesthetics mattered. Having a fun workspace mattered. Having the best toys (including workstations, ginormous monitors, etc.) mattered. But when the dot coms went south they took the chairs and the toys and the stimulating workspace with them. We want them back. We need them back. You can keep the lame (and by "lame" I mean "WTF were they thinking?") business models, thank-you, but bring back our Aerons!

The thing is, we all expect and understand why designers have--and need--creative work spaces, yet we somehow think programmers (or just about any other role that's not considered one of the "creatives") don't. We act as if programmers don't care about their environment. But you don't need to know an Eames from an Eero to appreciate the impact your environment has on your energy, creativity, productivity, and happiness.

Way before the dot com days, I spent several years in Los Angeles working at design/creative shops, often as the sole programmer in a sea of artists. The first thing I noticed when I started working at these places was how good it felt to be in a place where the aesthetics were taken very seriously. Lighting, walls, materials, colors, floors, layouts, offices-with-doors (you can't be creative without some alone time!). I swear I wrote better code in those environments.

Then I started working at game companies, where it was expected that everyone's workspace would be knee-deep in toys--light sabers, life-size Capt. Kirk standees, Lego masterpieces, vintage robots and other sci-fi kitsch, and of course--Nerf weapons. Once I learned to duck at the right moment, I swear I wrote better code in those environments.

Then I went to work at Sun. Not the engineering part, in California, but the huge new Colorado campus. And while you were certainly free to dress up your cube any way you liked, and the coffee was pretty good, this was NOT the Sun that I'd heard about. No weird MIT-style pranks where someone's car is reassembled in their office over lunch. No, it was more like Office Space out here. Not that it wasn't light years better than a lot of--or most--tech companies, but the Colorado campus just didn't have the geek/festive mojo I'd expected.

But then it got worse... I started working from home. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn't so much the other people that were missing, it was the stimulating work environment. I tried coffee shops and considered shared office spaces where other self-employed or work-from-home people can have some of the benefits of an office, but I actually prefer to work alone. It's not the people I miss... it's being in an environment that makes me feel creative and energetic. I want a space that matches my enthusiasm.

All that changed when I learned that Dori Smith had rented a 1957 Airstream office. I'd lusted after Airstreams for years, and when I went to visit her, I knew it was exactly what I'd been looking for.

Finally, after two years of looking (and saving), I found and bought a vintage 1966 (recently restored) 23-foot Silver Streak trailer. (Silver Streak is a "fork" of the original Airstream.) This is my new baby, with my dog Clover in the doorway:

And it's perfect. It's parked exactly two feet away from the side of the house (a house I share with my horse trainer and his wife), and the wifi from the house works beautifully. I haven't felt this good working in years. During my search I found a variety of people who use vintage trailers as their work studios, all equally thrilled. But I also discovered an incredibly passionate vintage travel-trailer community, especially over on Tincantourists.

I don't have an Aeron, but I do get to work at a retro dinette with the original formica ; )

Don't underestimate the importance of your work environment, and don't be quick to consider things like Aerons and office aesthetics and toys wasteful. It's just the opposite. Apparently Joel Spolsky agrees.

A few other relevant links on the importance of a playful environment:

Nial Kennedy on incentives.

Joel's Field Guide To Developers

Metropolis article

37signals on the importance of not being interrupted (I'll say more on the danger of distractions--and the need for plenty of 'alone time'-- in another post)

And my earlier post on the science of how dull environments hurt your brain.

Don't for a moment think that the aesthetics and stimulation of your work environment don't matter! So, what have been some of your most stimulating work environments? And if you work from home, what are you doing to make it inspirational?

And here are a few more pictures of my new office than you really want to see: