... is the ancient Chinese art of manipulating and arranging your surroundings to attract positive life energy, or chi, so that it flows smoothly, unblocking any obstructions in your body and environment. Feng Shui evolved from the theory that people are affected for better or worse by their surroundings.

New Space; New Opportunities

As pingVision has moved into its new offices, Laura and I have had that lesson brought home loud and clear.

Here we have a lot of electronics: banks of computers, monitors, scanners, printers, phones, wireless routers, FAX machines, and modems; cables, hubs, wires, switches; speakers and sound systems ... on and on ... and I won't bore the reader with a laundry list, but the elements are like that of any other modern office.

Joni Mitchell in "Big Yellow Taxi, "sang, "don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone," was certainly not singing about moving!

The mountain view of Boulder's Flatirons is spectacular. It is part of the light and space of being at 5300+ feet above sea level, nestled along the Front Range of the Rockies.

The light. The view. The windows. The open spaces. All these contribute to join the exterior with the interior ... a Zen concept.

In classical feng shui there were "lucky" and "unlucky" directions ... sectors ... if you will and arranging a city, or a building, required a practitioner, often a priest, to work out the harmony.

Being modern and Western, and fresh out of Shinto priests, Laura and I have been moving the pieces to make the work flow effective.

Work flow management is time management.

As a cub engineer at DuPont, I became fascinated with cybernetics - the man/machine interface. Simplicity does not mean simple-minded. In fact, brevity takes wit. Churchill is quoted,

I am sorry this letter is so long; I didn't have the time to write a shorter one.

Time management specialist, Charles Hobbs, whose concepts evolved into the Franklin-Covey System, gave a talk some years back. He suggested we look at the "typical" desk - the working surface.

How often do we need the stapler? How prominent is it? One-by-one Hobbs went through the things that are on the desk. Are they vital, or are they a distraction? After all, how many pages does an average worker staple in the post-paper office?

Enzo Ferrari, it is said, kept his desk completely clear ... the deck of an aircraft carrier ... and it is even reported he kept his phone in a drawer. Extreme? Perhaps, but study show that the subconscious mind "sees" everything the eye sees and more. That is, the things the conscious mind does not see, the subconscious mind, does: the coffee cup, the pen, the scissors, the reading glasses. They're there too. Are they "good" feng shui?

The plants, the carved wooden box which is suppose to hold my reading glasses, and maybe the scissors. Is this "good" feng shui?

Surely man does not live by bread alone and the idea of an aircraft carrier deck desk - the sterile office - has little appeal ... especially to a creative design company. A stark environment does not invite. But a cluttered environment, beyond a certain point, can also be distracting.

A place to find things

John Hoyt, time management consultant, once remarked that many people find files and filing systems to be a bore, annoyance, and just about the most unexciting thing imaginable. He concluded with a piece of wisdom,

Files aren't a place to put things; they're a place to find things.

This becomes another element in the cybernetic feng shui of the office. Something may be out of sight, but if it is filed logically, in a snap I can have it in my fingers.

A gentle snow falls outside and reflects vibrant light into the office - connecting the tranquility of the mountains and sky with the fast-paced world of work. The light reflects off the plants that pingVision uses as partitions, rather than the standard corporate flat cubical 3/4-walls. It is a "forest" and not the corporate cubical canyon maze.

Not just light, space, and flow, but also the wonderful smell of coffee greets me as I power up in the morning to read the emails that have come in overnight.

Laura once asked, rhetorically: what message are we sending out if we brew bland coffee instead of flavorful coffee? What are we saving, a quarter per cup?

Feng shui may be ancient - with superstitious underpinnings - but in the modern office, and modern web site a lot can be said for making things smooth, simple, and easy.

And that in my book is what user-friendly truly means.