Your Environment Matters

Consider your living room. How does it look? What’s the energy in the space? When you’re at home, are you inspired, tired, relaxed, feeling rigid?

If you’re dissatisfied with the decor, it only takes a simple search on Pinterest to fuel hours of interior design inspo. We see folks all over the country sprucing up their living spaces with fresh ideas found on the web and decluttering until their joy is sparked. Heck, I’m even guilty of joining the self-made-interior-designer party with a few too many home projects.

But why the sudden fascination with the way our home looks? Is it just one continuous game of keeping up with the Jones? Are we all so concerned about our house’s resale value?

Maybe. But I think the answer is less vain than those proposed above.

I think, instead, we’ve finally given weight to our environment and its causing folks to get to work.

We see this in home trends, restaurant remodels, and open-concept workspaces. Even public parks are experiencing innovation in their design.

So why then is the research industry clinging so hard to its sterile rooms with harsh lighting and the oh-so-obvious one-way mirror?

After all, aren’t we supposed to be on the cusp of innovation? Aren’t the people involved in market research meant to be the free thinkers, the creatives, the blast-through-the-ceiling, disrupt-every-industry kind of type?

If you ask us, it’s time for research facilities to catch up to the rest. An overhaul of how and where we do research has been desperately needed for years, but our stubborn, traditional mindsets have kept us stagnant.

So let’s commit to change. Let’s start designing our facilities to meet consumers where they are. Let’s start prioritizing respondents’ comfort so we can tap into more of their authentic, felt responses and not just their verbal answers. Let’s start creating spaces where researchers and consumers can have honest conversations, without feeling like they’re in the midst of an interrogation.

Why would we do all that? Because your environment matters.

The behavioral sciences would agree with that statement, and we think you should too.

The Living Room has been designed as a creative space since its inception, but we believe our facility is one of very few. We’ve decided to ditch the one-way mirror altogether, without giving up the perks of standard observation, by employing technology to do the viewing work for us.

Our rooms are intentionally designed to mimic the look and feel of a comfortable living space (hence our name). When you walk into our Research Suite, you step into a room with beautiful wood floors, exposed brick, natural light, and plants galore. Not a dimly-lit waiting area with a front desk.

But we know we’re not alone. There are others out there. Other facilities who are doing things differently. We (fellow creative facilities) may be small in numbers but as the industry evolves, we’ll see more attention given to interior design because we believe this is the way research is going. And the results are spectacular.

So, as our final word on the subject, I think it’s clear to say that it is time for our stale spaces to retire.

Go open up that Pinterest App, and let’s get to work.