Breaking Barriers: How to Structure Environments to Support Accessibility Needs

This July marks the 33rd anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This historic law, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities, is celebrated throughout July as Disability Pride Month. The law addresses multiple environments where discrimination might occur, including in the transportation sector, in communications, in receiving local programming and services, and perhaps most significantly, in the workplace. How can being mindful of disability accommodations in the workplace have positive outcomes for everyone, no matter one’s disability status? 

It’s likely not difficult to recall a time when you had trouble communicating or collaborating at work. This might’ve been a result of the work environment failing to meet your need to 1) understand, 2) feel competent and clear-headed in your work, and 3) meaningfully contribute to your organization’s goals. Now imagine that you identify as having one or more physical, intellectual, or developmental disability. How might it feel to consistently navigate environments in which your needs aren’t being considered? How might these unique challenges intersect and overlap with the existing workplace challenges that we all already experience? The three domains of the Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) framework can help us understand the issue of accessibility in the workplace and implement potential solutions. 

Building A Model for Inclusivity

One of the three domains of SEE describes our need to increase our understanding of the world by exploring new environments and ideas. We refer to this as “building a mental model” of the world, or “model building,” for short. This exploration is, at its core, information gathering from other people and the general environment. In order to build a shared mental model of a community that is inclusive of people with disabilities, there must be people with disabilities actively involved in discussions of community structure and function. The inclusion of a diverse group of people in these conversations, all sharing their own stories, not only contributes to building that shared mental model of what our community looks like, but it also contributes to the creation of mental models about a life experience that is different from our own.

“People want to understand and explore the world around them. They resent things that don’t make sense to them.”

Several disabilities, especially those that are invisible or complex, are ones that many people lack familiarity with. In essence, they “don’t make sense” to us, because we don’t have a basis, or a model, for understanding them. By including more individuals with varying disabilities in our conversations about accommodations, we can begin to get a glimpse of a different life experience. This approach fills a critical information gap, allowing people to form a more robust mental model of what life can look like. Looking beyond the workplace, it also creates a more informed community that feels capable of advocating alongside those with disabilities for the essential accommodations they need.

Feel Capable Through Restoration

Another domain of SEE describes our desire to feel competent and clear-headed. As humans, we have attention-related needs that stem from how we’ve evolved, and that are not always supported by our modern environments that constantly bombard us with information. Just like how our body fatigues after physical exercise or exertion, so does our ability to pay attention after focusing for extended periods of time. Everyone needs breaks to restore their attention and feel competent and clear-headed, and often, the necessary frequency of these breaks is not aligned with how we structure a typical workday.

“How are we creating space for people to take care of themselves while they bring their skills and interests to the work?”

Beyond the universal need for mental restoration, some individuals may have additional bandwidth needs to consider. Those with disabilities may experience reduced attention spans or regular periods of physical discomfort. 

Have you ever had a day at work where you had trouble staying on task or being productive because of distractions in your work environment? Maybe a co-worker paid an unplanned visit to your office, or you continued to receive disruptive texts and phone calls from a well-intentioned family member. For individuals who identify as having a disability, these interruptions may feel more pronounced or produce additional stressors that place a greater strain on their time and mental resources.

When we increase our focus on mental restoration and individual well-being by including people with disabilities in the development of supportive structures, we ensure that mental restoration will be more accessible to everyone. Embracing inclusivity will not only benefit individuals with disabilities but also foster a more productive and compassionate work environment for all.

Meaningful Action and the Reinforcing Impact of Accommodations

Another domain of SEE describes the desire to know that your actions are making a difference or having a positive impact, referred to as “meaningful action.” This need is shared by everyone; we all want to contribute to conversations and actions that will positively impact those around us, and be asked to participate in making these changes a reality. To achieve this, we have to consider any barriers to participating in these conversations in order to expand positive impacts through collaboration. In the way our environments are often structured, individuals with disabilities may not always be able to participate in important workplace or local community conversations. We can explore this in the context of a larger team meeting in an office environment:

• Is the meeting location accessible by wheelchair?

• Is there enough seating for all of the attendees? 

• Are there accessible restrooms nearby? 

• Will there be an interpreter available for American Sign Language, or any handouts printed in braille? 

• Are there multiple ways to participate and give feedback, besides having to / needing to speak in front of everyone? 

• How long is the presentation or discussion? And will there be breaks if the meeting is longer than 1 hour?

“People thrive when environments, policies, and projects encourage genuine participation and allow people to do things that matter.”

Making these necessary accommodations for colleagues with disabilities in your workplace and community is not only essential for their ability to contribute toward meaningful actions that are ongoing, but is itself a meaningful action. Considering these accommodations will have a visible and positive impact on the cohesion and connectedness of our shared environments.

Bringing It All Together

Here, we have begun to build a mental model of what our workplaces and communities can become when we consider the needs of others. They can:

• Actively include those with diverse perspectives and experiences when building a shared understanding

• Allow the freedom to take restorative breaks as a tool for feeling capable, and

• Value and encourage everyone's participation so that they know they’re making a difference

Rachel Fink is a 2023 reDirect Fellow collaborating with the City of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation. She is a current Master’s student at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Appalachian State University.

Reflections on the Environment as “The Third Teacher”

“In every classroom, there are ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ and at any given moment these roles can, unexpectedly, shift: the educator who learns from and with a student as they share their passion for dinosaurs and insects, the student who learns a new memory song from a friend. We are familiar with these roles and able to see the meaning in allowing these roles to be reciprocal, but what about the Third Teacher? The Third Teacher is the environment that is cultivated to convey how we are expected and encouraged to exist in a place.”

Photo from a Verdi EcoSchool classroom.

Who We Are

Verdi EcoSchool is a private, not for profit urban farm school in Melbourne, Fl. Established in 2016, Verdi EcoSchool is the only place- and project-based school in the region committed to using the entire community as a campus. The place-based education philosophy envisions the immediate environment as the student's most important classroom. An education that is rooted in what is tangible and what is unique to our own community provides the foundation for all learning to come.

The entire school experience emphasizes the development of self-regulation, self-direction, and self-reflection, as we recognize that these deeper skills will determine lifelong success for each individual. This commitment to practicing skills and utilizing tools that benefit the mental, emotional, and social health of the child is not solely confined to children; it is also essential work for educators and adults who guide and model behavior for the students they work with.

Learning Conscious Discipline

Conscious Discipline is a comprehensive approach which utilizes everyday events to cultivate emotional intelligence. It achieves this through a self-regulation program that integrates social-emotional learning and discipline. This approach acknowledges that adults are the most meaningful models of this inner work for children: if we can show what we do when the world doesn’t go our way, we can help children to practice these skills as well. At EcoSchool, every educator commits to completing an introductory 10-session course in the Conscious Discipline methodology, in addition to ongoing practice of the skills and structures that help to build trust, connection and empathy within a community.

The work of Conscious Discipline is challenging. It requires that adults be willing to examine their own triggers and judgments of why incidents happen and shift toward understanding and solution-finding, instead of blame and anger. As we build a “School Family”, unexpected connections and tensions can arise: how do we respond to them in a way that is helpful to the overall culture of the community? What do hurtful responses look like, sound like, or feel like?

In the past year, we have implemented a series of supports based upon the powers and principles of Conscious Discipline, but one of our fundamental learnings from this framework is that of leveraging the “Third Teacher,” or the environments, that we’re either intentionally (or unintentionally) creating.

What is “The Third Teacher”?

In every classroom, there are “teachers” and “learners” and at any given moment these roles can, unexpectedly, shift: the educator who learns from and with a student as they share their passion for dinosaurs and insects, the student who learns a new memory song from a friend. We are familiar with these roles and able to see the meaning in allowing these roles to be reciprocal, but what about the Third Teacher? The Third Teacher is the environment that is cultivated to convey how we are expected and encouraged to exist in a place.

“An Environment is a living, changing
system. More than a physical space, it
includes the way time is structured and
the roles we are expected to play. It
conditions how we feel, think and
behave; and it dramatically affects the
quality of our lives. ”

— Caring Spaces, Learning Places: Children’s Environments That Work (Jim Greenman, 1987)

The Third Teacher doesn’t just exist in classrooms and schools but is present in the world around us, supporting our everyday actions, reminding us how we should interact with each other and within a space. On a recent trip to a local Panera restaurant, I noticed the shared behavior of the patrons: willingly retrieving their food orders from a countertop, finding an open table, enjoying a meal and then thoughtfully scraping food refuse into a garbage bin and placing reusable utensils and plates in a separate bin for washing. What supported this behavior? How did everyone know that this was an expected part of the Panera experience? Why was I following along?! Panera’s environments did a great job of encouraging each of us to engage in a set of supportive behaviors, encouraging customers to help share the responsibility of keeping the restaurant clean and welcoming for patrons to come.

The Third Teacher led each of us through a series of steps without a sign or a directive but instead via a collection of gentle invitations or cues: an open counter with trays, self-serve coffee and fountain drink stations, open bins for dirty plates at every garbage stand. We are comfortable with these invitations because they are clear, and they make sense to us. But what happens when values and expectations for behavior are not clearly communicated in our environments?

“The Third Teacher” In Our Classrooms

Imagine a classroom. Imagine a windowless classroom with empty library shelves and uncomfortable seating. Imagine children who stare at bare walls, a cluttered teacher’s desk and with garbage strewn about. What values do you think are shared with students who enter this classroom? Do you think they feel inspired to learn? Do they feel valued?

Now, imagine a classroom with sunlight streaming through windows, illuminating shelves full of books and student resources. Imagine a variety of choices for seating: cushions, stools, comfortable chairs and couches. Imagine positive affirmations posted on walls, pictures of friends and family members. Imagine a teacher’s desk that is organized with a posted board that assigns a special job to each child, offering them an opportunity to take part in keeping their classroom clean and beautiful. What values are being shared with the children who enter this classroom?

Photo of a Verdi EcoSchool classroom’s "job board.”

Chaotic environments inspire chaos. A Third Teacher that is unsure of what values to share - or worse, an absent Third Teacher – can work against an educator in the classroom. An educator that has thoughtfully designed the environment to support the shared culture and values of the School Family, on the other hand, will find that the Third Teacher speaks even when they do not.

Challenges, Successes, and the Importance of Feedback

Nurturing the Third Teacher requires purposeful and intentional planning. Thinking deeply about what others see and understand about a place when they enter the classroom is an important part of the process. A willingness to be objective and consider not just how we exist in a space, but who we are designing it for, is paramount.  Taking pictures of your space, sharing them with others, and asking what they see, can be a helpful way to gain objectivity.

Using visual prompts such as a daily schedule with pictures, posted norms and expectations, or recycling bins for used paper, can guide others to how they should interact with and within a space, and develop a shared mental model for the School Family. Designing opportunities for exploration – cues or provocations, invitations to learn or relax – can add a sense of wonder and excitement to a space. Science shelves with nature guides and magnifying glasses set out for use, facing the front covers of books outward and at eye level to entice readers, designing safe spaces to engage in calm and quiet thinking, are all examples of what can help the Third Teacher thrive.

As we design, it is easy to overlook the most important part of cultivating the Third Teacher: gathering and acting on feedback. The most meaningful feedback will come from your users, and becomes a critical part of your reflection and next steps as the designer. We cannot understand how the Third Teacher has guided others if we’re not actively seeking out that information!

Personal Reflections

Every leader manipulates the Third Teacher - the environment - when working to reach those whom we serve. Great leaders facilitate experiences. As I reach toward a greater understanding of my role as a facilitator, I frequently reflect upon what I have indicated as being important in our shared environment:

• What is absent?

• Who is represented?

• How does the Third Teacher support the culture we are building?

Small choices can have a big impact: bright and organized workspaces for educators; quiet, calming spaces to be alone and work in solitude; coffee mugs with funny quotes and positive affirmations in the kitchen (don’t forget the extra coffee/tea!); a new potted plant, or an essential oil diffuser. Big choices can deepen trust and encourage connection. For Verdi EcoSchool, this has included creating collaborative workspaces, resources, and materials that honor a diverse range of lived experiences, beautiful outdoor classrooms, and community boards that encourage School Family members to share moments of kindness and join other classrooms and learning experiences to witness moments of risk taking.

Unexpectedly, cultivating the Third Teacher has offered me a profoundly humbling experience: the realization that the way I exist within, and interact with, a space is not necessarily how everyone else will. My mental model had not yet included the perspectives of others! De-centering myself and deeply reflecting upon the needs of those who I share space with — who I serve — is the most profound step that I can take toward allowing the Third Teacher to do its job!

Ayana Verdi, an educational leader and environmental advocate, co-founded Verdi EcoSchool with her husband, John, in 2016. The duo is committed to cultivating community-based and environmentally aware learning options for children in Melbourne, FL. As a reDirect partner, Ayana Verdi and her team worked to learn and explore the parallels between the Conscious Discipline model and the SEE framework.

The Big Idea of Small Experiments

Small experiments – whether in the design of spaces, programs, or just our own lives – can have big impacts. They can also keep us from making big mistakes. Although the quick, flexible, and impermanent nature of small experiments can make them feel haphazard, they are anything but.

Photo by Anne Kearney

Over the past few years that I’ve been living in Barcelona, I’ve noticed many pockets of urban design that have a very slapdash feel to them – restaurant patios carved out of the street with concrete barriers, pedestrian zones created from traffic lanes using nothing more than paint and a few posts, and small green spaces tentatively claimed by potted plants in areas where parked cars and motorcycles used to sit.

Even the much talked-about Superillas (Superblocks) that were being created in my old neighborhood of Poblenou had a temporary feel. The idea behind the Superblocks is to join nine regular city blocks together into one zone with limited car access in its interior, thus freeing up space for pedestrians, playgrounds, plazas, and plants.

Superblocks sounded like a great design idea to me, but when I went to actually see some, I felt let-down. The playground areas were just painted patterns on newly blocked-off streets. Pedestrian areas were similarly marked with paint and a few round concrete barricades. And the promised greenery consisted of a few forlorn skinny trees in industrial planters. It was an improvement on streets choked with the usual car traffic, but the slapped-together look was far from the ideal I had envisioned.

Now, however, I’m looking at these urban designs with a fresh perspective and I love what I see! I’ve recently learned that many of Barcelona’s new urban spaces, including the Superblocks, feel temporary deliberately. Their skeletal quality isn’t intended as a finished design but as the framework for something more permanent to come.

This approach is part of a broader international movement called Tactical Urbanism. The idea is to mock-up a design quickly and inexpensively so that the city and community can see how it works before committing resources to permanent construction.

Tactical Urbanism in practice. Photos courtesy of Ajuntament de Barcelona BY/ND/NC (v.4) Creative Commons license.

The Tactics Behind Tactical Urbanism

Tactical Urbanism is all about small experiments. Instead of plunging headlong into a big construction project that looks great on paper or in a city employee’s head, Tactical Urbanism calls for a quick, real-world, and inexpensive design test first. Does the new space meet people’s needs? Is it being used in the way it was intended? Are there unintended consequences of the new design, like poor traffic flow, problems for people with limited mobility, or noise? Is there something missing?

By using paint, concrete blocks, basic urban furniture, minimal yet sturdy planters, and temporary road signs and signals, a wide range of spaces can be carved out of existing roads – bike lanes, wider pedestrian lanes, small public squares, protected areas around urban schools, and outdoor eating spaces. Then, if these spaces are shown to work well, or are tweaked until they do, the design can be made more permanent.

Thinking Small

Small experiments are not only useful in urban design. Many of us, in fact, regularly perform small experiments, although we may not call them that. A couple months ago, in a whirlwind of kitchen organization, I decided we needed a tall narrow shelving unit on which we could offload some clutter. My husband, though, was concerned it would be in the way. Instead of taking a chance on buying something that would be hard to return, we mocked-up the basic shape with an assortment of cardboard boxes and then lived with it for a week. After determining that we weren’t going to bruise our hips when rounding the corner, we went ahead and bought the shelving unit – and it’s been perfect.

This idea of small experiments – of taking a flexible incremental approach towards solving a problem – is a central concept in the SEE Framework. In a world where “go big or go home” is often lauded as the brave and bold approach, we may think that small is somehow less. But in many ways, small experiments are more – more economical, more flexible, and more responsive to feedback.

Small experiments are also often more compatible with human nature than large-scale approaches. People function best when they have a clear understanding – a good mental model – for how things work. But sometimes we don’t know enough about a problem to be confident in a proposed solution. We can’t see clearly enough to predict unintended consequences. We are unsure if what worked for another group or in another place will work in our particular situation. Instead of taking a potentially disastrous leap of faith, small experiments allow us to start from our existing mental models and incrementally grow them as we learn more. By implementing and testing problem solutions, we learn what works and what doesn’t and are able to hone in on appropriate strategies and designs.

In groups, we work best together when our mental models are shared – when we have common ground for thinking about how to approach problems. But although we might assume that everyone sees things the way we do, that is often not the case. People may disagree on the nature of the problem itself let alone the best solution. In these situations, a series of small experiments can offer a way forward. By trying things out and sharing the results along the way, we can develop a deeper and shared understanding of the problem and its possible solutions. We may still disagree about what is best, but at least we will be speaking the same language.

Public participation in urban design. Photo courtesy of Ajuntament de Barcelona BY/ND/NC (v.4) Creative Commons license.

Small Experiments Want Big Involvement

I would have assumed that my lack of awareness of Barcelona’s Urbanismo Táctico approach was my own fault – a problem of not consuming enough local news. But the fact that my well-informed Spanish teacher was also in the dark until recently makes me think there may be a bigger problem of insufficient communication.

Whether it’s a pilot program, a trial run, or even a less formal cardboard-inspired “try it and see how it works” approach, small experiments are most effective when people understand what’s going on. I’m looking at Barcelona’s urban tweaks in a much more positive light now that I know they are actually small experiments in progress. And I’m more patient with the disruptive construction on Leitana – a major street that I must often cross – because I know that the new design was tested and refined before work went ahead. But how many people are badmouthing the designs simply because they don’t know enough about them?

Even better than just being informed is being part of the informing. With any experiment, there are many things that are useful to track – impacts, cost, unintended consequences. With experiments that involve people, it can be particularly important to track experiences and opinions. How can you truly know what’s working if you don’t ask?

Feedback can alert you to problems that you otherwise wouldn’t see. It is also a way to involve people in the process. Providing feedback – in a way that goes deeper than the ubiquitous generic surveys or star ratings – creates an opportunity for meaningful action, for being heard, and for having an impact. Not only will you get useful information, but people are more likely to feel invested in the project and its outcome.

Go Small or Go Home

Our current culture’s call to “think big” and “take chances” is hard to resist. We want to just get on with it, make a decision already, cut to the chase, avoid time-consuming back and forth.

Big actions can feel bold and brave. They can feel like leadership.

But the power of small experiments shows us that sometimes – perhaps especially when pressured to make a big impact quickly – the bravest step is a small one.

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer living in Barcelona, Spain. Her work is inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Aging Four Months With One Phone Call

The way that we understand the world is based, in part, on cultural norms. These norms are often so deeply ingrained that we don’t stop to think that they might be arbitrary – they just feel objectively right. In fact, they are so obviously right that we tend to assume everyone else, if they are reasonable and rational, must understand things the same way. But what happens when they don’t?

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

Did anyone else grow up thinking that Do-Re-Mi was something invented for The Sound of Music? That was what I had always assumed until we moved to Ireland and I happened to be chatting with my Italian friend while waiting to pick up the kids at school. Our conversation veered toward music lessons and went something like this:

Roberta: “The way they teach music in Ireland is so confusing. I don’t know why they use letters for the notes instead of teaching it the normal way.”

Me: “Umm, what do you mean?”

Roberta: “You know, how they use letters like A-B-C instead of the actual names of the notes, like Do-Re-Mi.”

Me: “A-B-C are the actual names of the notes. It’s the system of semibreves and crotchets instead of whole notes and quarter notes that I find weird.”

Roberta: “What’s a quarter note?”

Me: Sound of brain exploding.

It turns out that what I’d always thought was the way to communicate about mainstream western music is just one way.

The difficulty with communicating across cultures was apparent again this week when I found out that my medical claim for an eye problem that was treated while vacationing in the US could not be processed by the US-affiliate of my Spanish health insurance. The problem was a discrepancy in my birthdate. But the real problem is that Europeans write dates as day-month-year while Americans write dates as month-day-year. You can probably guess what happened.

Remember how your science and math teachers were always reminding you to include the units with your answers? It turns out there was good reason. To anyone in the US, 6/10 is clearly June 10th, but to anyone in Spain, it is just as clearly October 6th. My insurance problem still has not been resolved, but it’s looking like the easiest thing to do is ask the clinic to age me four months so that everyone’s numbers match even if the actual dates the numbers represent do not.

The problems that arise from different systems of describing music and dates can make for cute stories partly because they are relatively easy to see and remedy (fingers crossed). But a lack of shared understanding often flies under the radar, causing problems and prejudices that are hard to pinpoint and remedy. When someone doesn’t behave in what is (for us) an acceptable way, or understand what is (for us) obvious, or do things in a way that is (for us) logical it’s very easy to blame the person – they are unreasonable or rude or just plain stupid. It’s much harder to accept that “right” and “obvious” are sometimes arbitrary.

It took me almost six months of living in Ireland before I realized that stopping the car to let pedestrians cross the street was not the cultural norm. In fact, people I knew would regularly wave at me while driving right in front of me as I waited with one foot in the road. It finally dawned on me that what I had assumed was rude behavior was actually the “right” way to drive according to Dublin cultural norms and I had to try and revise my assumptions about people who routinely failed to stop for me and the kids as I walked them to school. This was no easy feat – the speed with which we tend to form opinions and the strength with which we hold on to them can make them very resistant to change.

Even harder was accepting that my own behavior of stopping for pedestrians was probably confusing everyone and was likely more dangerous than kind. My small-town Idaho upbringing still forced me to stop during a driving lesson in order to let an elderly man cross at a minor intersection, but my brief moment of feeling virtuous was squashed when my driving instructor yelled, “What are you doing?! Just don’t do that during your driving exam!”

Since that driving incident, I’ve become ever more aware of cross-cultural differences in how people understand the world. And I’ve experienced how these differences can cause all sorts of problems, from failed communication attempts, to being unable to navigate a country’s system for getting things done, to ingrained negative perceptions of people who you don’t understand.

Looking at my own country with my expat eyes has also made me aware that a lack of shared understanding isn’t just a problem between people from different countries, it can be a problem between people period. There has been a lot of talk lately in the US about “American culture” – and, even more dangerously, about “real American culture.” But the reality is that the US is a country of layered sub-cultures tied to age, religion, race, gender-identity, geography, workplace, family, and more. You can’t assume that the people in your office or at the town park understand the world the way you do any more than I can assume that my Catalan neighbors in Barcelona share my understanding.

I’m not suggesting that problems with communication can all be attributed to culture or even to individual differences in understanding. This is especially true when people have differing opinions that are based, not on a deep understanding, but on something at once more superficial and harder to change. We might have differing opinions on vaccines, for example. If those opinions are based on how we interpret the evidence, or how we understand public health, or the experience of our culture with vaccines in general, then we could likely have a productive discussion. If they are based on anger or political ideology, then we probably cannot. Not every disagreement can have a happy ending.

But there are many times when misunderstandings, miscommunication, and disagreements over the best way to do something are caused – or at least made worse – by the assumption that everyone understands the issue or problem the way that we do.

What would happen if we stopped to consider that what is obvious to us might not be obvious to someone else? That behaviors that we think are normal might be perceived by someone else as rude? That what feels so strongly like the way to do something might just be one way? We might just end up making the world – or at least our small part of it – a better place.

In the meantime, I’m off to unwind by listening to Bach’s Chaconne in, as my friend Roberta would say, Re-menore. I just love Bach’s prolific use of demisemiquavers.

Connection to the Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) Model: Model Building and Being Capable. People build and rely on mental models that encode their understanding of how the world works. Culture, with its system of cultural norms, is one way to fast track model building and ensure that a particular group has a shared understanding. Although sometimes cultural norms are arbitrary, they can feel logical, obvious and universal – until you discover that they are not. Problems can arise when our models don’t match the reality of another culture or country, making it difficult for us to feel capable and get things done. Even within our own culture, problems with communication and collaboration can arise when our models are not shared by others with whom we interact.

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer living in Barcelona, Spain. Her writing and artwork are inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University, and a M.S. in Resource Policy and Behavior and Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Banishing Everyday Stressors

Life’s daily hassles can add up in a big way, affecting our health, our stress level, and our ability to get things done. I had stopped noticing many of the little stressors around our house, but I saw them with fresh eyes when we returned home after an extended holiday. We embarked on a campaign against these small annoyances and not only improved our space, but reclaimed some mental energy along the way.

When I return home after a long time away, I often have a new perspective on my life and surroundings. It’s as if my mind has been reset so that – for a short time – I can see things as an outsider and notice the things to which I had become habituated. This was certainly the case when I returned home to my Barcelona apartment after a 5-week trip to the US.

There were many things about my home that I appreciated anew, like the amount of light that comes streaming through our windows. But there were fresh annoyances – the pile of boxes that had taken up permanent residence in the hallway, for example, and the near impossibility of matching lids to containers when putting away leftovers.

Spurred on by our new awareness of little annoyances, along with the autumn clutter-control bug that seems to strike so many, we decided to do some major organizing. Our approach was part analytical, favored by my software engineer husband, and part simple observation. We spent time walking around the apartment and identifying what we found stressful and we also started paying more attention to what we found annoying in the moment. Many of these things were fairly trivial – the cluttered nightstands, the disorganized drawers, having to move seemingly hundreds of body care products in order to clean the kids’ bathroom. But taken together, these small everyday annoyances can really add up.

The Surprisingly Big Impact of Little Annoyances

Most of us are aware of the negative impacts of major chronic stress, but a number of studies have shown that even minor everyday hassles impact health, mood, and cognitive function – not only in the moment, but also in the long term. Back in 1982, for example, Anita DeLongis and her colleagues at UC Berkeley studied 100 people over the course of a year. They recorded the everyday hassles people experienced – things like not liking work duties or misplacing something. They also recorded major negative life events and measured physical health and energy level. The researchers found that although both daily hassles and larger negative life events impacted people’s health, the daily hassles actually had a bigger effect.

A more recent 2016 study, done by Nicole Mead at Erasmus University in the Netherlands and her colleagues, showed the shorter-term effects of everyday hassles. They found that the more annoyances people had to deal with during the day – things like traffic on the way to work or a dead cell phone battery – the less progress they tended to make on their daily goals and the more mentally exhausted they were at the end of the day. On the brighter side, the researchers also found that the more pleasures people experienced during the same day – things like looking at the stars or spending time with a friend – the less impact the annoyances had. This is good news for me because it means that my organized closets are a double win. Not only am I no longer annoyed when I open a closet, but I get a little jolt of pleasure when I see the order that has replaced the mess.

Reclaiming Mental Energy

We’re not always aware of stressors and their effects, especially ones to which we’ve become habituated. In some cases, I became aware of my negative response to small annoyances around the house only after those annoyances disappeared. For example, I notice the mental cringing and spike in stress when I open the hallway closet only because the tumble of loose grocery bags that I’m expecting fails to emerge from the recently organized space. It’s a quirk of human cognition that we are more likely to notice when our assumptions are not met than when they are. As I habituate to my new organized normal, even this anticipated stress response is disappearing.

Not only is my organized home a more pleasant place, but the time and mental energy I wasted looking for things and being annoyed can be used for other things – like getting into my art studio or writing this blog post. Now I’m ready to extend my organizational spree to things that are less tangible than my physical space, like being more organized about how I keep track of my to-dos.

What is stressing you out? What small changes could you make to alleviate that stress? What difference might that make to your life?

Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE): Being Capable. It’s hard to feel capable when we’re not at our mental best – like when we’re stressed out or mentally fatigued. Sometimes we’re aware of the things that are depleting our mental energy, like a major project at work or dealing with a difficult client. But there are often smaller things, of which we might not even be aware, that can chip away at our mental resources and make us less effective in both the short and long term. Doing what we can to fix or avoid small everyday hassles is like fixing the drip in a faucet – it may not completely solve the water shortage problem, but it’s a start.

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer living in Barcelona, Spain. Her writing and artwork are inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University, and a M.S. in Resource Policy and Behavior and Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.

The More You SEE, the More You Know

The Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) framework gives me a way to view the world from the perspective of what people need to be their best selves. As I look through the lens of SEE, I’m noticing new things, understanding people’s behavior at a deeper level, and seeing how I can improve my own life and my interactions with others.

Have you ever taken a course or read a book and started seeing examples of the ideas everywhere? That was my experience with the first environmental psychology class I took with Steve Kaplan the year I began graduate school. The course was called “Neural Models and Psychological Processes” but it was really about the interactions between people and their environments. We covered a wide range of issues, from how people perceive and think, to what types of environments they prefer, to how different environments can help or hinder reasonable behavior.

As the class progressed, I couldn’t help but start looking at everything around me through this lens of environmental psychology, much as a student of Freudian psychology probably can’t help but analyze everyone they meet. Things I’d never really noticed became relevant. I’d never thought, for example, about why being confused is both painful and hard to admit. Things that had mystified me yielded to explanation. I could now understand why my statistics professor, although clearly an expert, was so bad at explaining basic concepts. And solutions to certain problems came into view. Perhaps the antidote to my fatigued brain, I realized, was in my own backyard.

Many years later, environmental psychology still colors how I see the world. And now the Supportive Environments for Effectiveness framework (SEE) provides an even finer-grained lens for understanding people. The framework brings together decades of ideas and research in environmental psychology in a way that spotlights what people need to function effectively and how environments can be created or tweaked to help meet those needs.

The SEE Framework

The needs addressed by the SEE framework are cognitive needs rather than physical needs. People need sufficient food, water, and shelter, but they need so much more. Cognitive needs also have little to do with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – that general model of motivation proposed in 1943 that many psychologists now consider to be of limited use but that has nonetheless proven to be quite cognitively contagious.

What are cognitive needs? They are the needs we have for knowledge and understanding. People’s survival has always depended more on their brains than on their speed or raw strength. Because of that, we have become hard-wired to need information. We are driven to gather information, to make sense of it, and to use it to make decisions and interact with the world. We are at our best in environments and situations that support these needs.

There are three basic cognitive needs addressed in the SEE framework: 1) the need to make sense, 2) the need to feel capable, and 3) the need to make a difference. These needs are deceptively simple. Making sense, for example, has very little to do with how smart you are. It’s more about how your brain represents and understands the world around you. The need to feel capable isn’t just about having the right skills to do the job, it’s also about having the mental bandwidth to focus on the task at hand. And the need to make a difference isn’t necessarily about doing something big, it’s more about feeling that you have the ability to impact your world and that your contributions are valued.

SEE – Bringing the World into Focus

Looking at the world through the lens of SEE gives me a new perspective on my everyday experiences and environments. Once again, I am feeling the excitement and energy of noticing new things, understanding people’s behavior at a deeper level, and seeing how I can improve my own life and my interactions with others. I plan to share some of these observations in future posts, with the hope of helping bring the SEE framework to life. Along the way, I’d love to hear about how your own experiences are explained or guided by SEE and about how you might apply the SEE framework, in ways both big and small, to bring out the best in yourself and others.

What happens when you start looking at the world from the perspective of what people need to be their best selves?

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer living in Barcelona, Spain. Her writing and artwork are inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University, and a M.S. in Resource Policy and Behavior and Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Reflections on Learning Circles: The Nonprofits’ Journeys

reDirect has used Learning Circles as a strategy for collaborating with nonprofits experimenting with Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) within their organizations. The organizations have taken different journeys—some have dabbled in several areas of SEE applications while others have focused on just one. Here are a few of our takeaways.

SEE is about culture change.

Light bulbs turned on all year as participants realized that incorporating SEE relates to their entire organization and how it does its work. It has implications for how people think about themselves, their interactions with others, as well as how they approach their work. They said this in so many different ways: “SEE is not a project. SEE is becoming part of our DNA.” “SEE relates to how we do our work, not the what.” “It has become the litmus test for how we think.” “SEE is a verb – we SEE things.” “When we asked folks at staff meetings how they used SEE, we used to hear crickets. Now, folks have examples!”

As organizations have reflected on SEE as culture change, they’ve shared some other realizations:

• Helping people get their heads around SEE takes time, intentionality, and multiple experiences. reDirect has supported many touches with the organizations’ leadership and will be encouraging additional opportunities to engage with staff.

• SEE helps build a shared language that takes the “personal” out of conversations. People can step back from their egos/sensitivities to work together and see others through an “assume best intentions” lens.

• SEE provides a robust framework for applying other tools (eg DISC, Emergenetics, Strengthsfinder). This is a really interesting hook for organizations because they often flounder at the “now what do we do” stage with these tools. Having a SEE-informed mindset has helped them implement some strategies for using the insights they gained from these tools.

The power of having a small experiment mentality.

The notion of small experiments has been instrumental in helping participants overcome inertia and start doing something tangible. It gave organizations and individuals permission to try things, to play with ideas, and to be ok if something did not work out.

Less is more.

What a liberating concept this has been for some folks. It is so hard for people to really believe and act on this principle and so effective when they do.

The physical environment matters.

We made a point to remind grantees to be mindful of how the physical environment impacts their work experience and effectiveness. While infrastructural changes are harder to figure out (e.g., changing an open cubical space), participants talked about the positive impact of instituting walking meetings, being more comfortable defining their need for quiet space, and being intentional about how they set up their desk/workspaces.

Learning Circles as a Funding Strategy

Fashioned after the Denver Foundation's Inclusiveness Project, reDirect initiated Learning Circles to help our grantees build a peer network as they develop a road map for implementing Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in their organizations. Our Learning Circle cohorts have focused primarily on using SEE to improve internal organizational functioning.

Below are some of our biggest takeaways as a foundation seeking to authentically work with nonprofits.

reDirect’s work fills a gap in the funding world.

While many nonprofits acknowledge that having effective, highly functioning staff is essential, they have difficulty dedicating adequate resources or time to systematically improving their systems and work environment. And very few funders provide monies to support this behind-the-scenes focus. Participating with reDirect, and engaging with the structure created by the Learning Circles, help organizations to be more intentional and to make time for this kind of work.

Learning Circles are powerful.

The Executive Directors and/or senior staff from each organization meet regularly to explore Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) as it relates to their workplace. These meetings have exceeded our expectations in terms of the level of participation and investment by the organizations, and the power of peer insight. Participants have been willing to be vulnerable and transparent as they collectively explore strategies to better engage with their staff and to improve their workplaces.

Some quick wins can improve the workplace right away.

One of our initial assumptions was that organizations would be investing in changes that might take a considerable amount of time to implement. In our Learning Circle meetings and sessions with staff, we have discovered that SEE has helped generate ideas that the organizations have been able to implement immediately. Even small changes such as improving the physical work environment with walking meetings or helping staff feel more appreciated by developing a birthday calendar can create more supportive environments for bringing out the best in overworked staff.

Our thanks to the nonprofits participating in this work with us: Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, Colorado Nonprofit Association, Community Resource Center, Community Shares of Colorado, The Gathering Place, Spark the Change Colorado (formerly Metro Volunteers), The Park People, Playworks, and Youth Employment Academy. You can read more about what SEE helped them achieve here.