Visiting Schipol Airport in Amsterdam is nearly always a positive experience. The well thought through zones where people can get a little work done before they’re airborne definitely make time spent at Schipol more pleasant.
The airport physically supports people working with comfortable chairs and work surfaces and plentiful electrical outlets, as well as free wi-fi. Work zone design also recognizes the cognitive needs of traveling workers.
The Schipol work zones give people the flexibility to work as they want to, allowing them to select a workspace that corresponds to the task at hand, their mood, and their personality, or all three. This sort of control reduces stress and enhances performance. People working can face others working or passers-by, for example. They can make eye contact with people they know or not, as desired. Introverts, who do a better job processing sensory inputs than extraverts, and can therefore be cognitively overloaded by too much togetherness while they work, can even isolate themselves completely from others, in single person work pods, with relative privacy. There are lounge chairs conveniently located near work desks, for people who prefer to work while reclining, or perhaps to drift from working to snoozing.
Wood with visible grain is often used as a finish in the work zones, and, as David Fell’s dissertation has shown, seeing wood grain de-stresses us. Lowering the stress levels of people working in an airport is generally a good thing. There are also curved lines and contours in the work zones, and those have been linked to feeling comfortable, also. Plants are distributed throughout the space and plants in a work area are a very good thing.
The work zones at Schipol effectively and efficiently support traveling professionals; they recognize and respect the physical and cognitive needs of the people that use them.