> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://londoncoworkingassembly.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why coworking is measuring the wrong kind of friction (and what Amanda Perry’s terrible Tuesday tells us about sensory hell) - URL: https://londoncoworkingassembly.com/why-coworking-is-measuring-the-wrong-kind-of-friction-and-what-amanda-perrys-terrible-tuesday-tells-us-about-sensory-hell/ - Published: 2026-09-05T12:39:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-05T12:39:11.000Z - Author: Bernie ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/e2/04e24a6d-0f19-480e-9343-94e8a44a3f2c/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2972.jpeg) Amanda Perry walked into a coworking space in May, sat down at the one table her day pass entitled her to use, and discovered that while the booking was frictionless, the reality of the room was impossible. She found herself surrounded by people shouting on calls and eating food at their desks with nowhere else to go, an experience she described to her LinkedIn audience as "hell," a sentiment that was met with [157 comments](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amandaperryuk%5Fim-working-from-a-co-work-space-today-and-activity-7463165827530395648-k7g-?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fdesktop&rcm=ACoAAAF8VlIBOlHiOyMYD8sgvsdQKH6ZNindd1Q) from people who have lived through the same sensory exclusion. > "Why in 2026 when 55% of business owners identify as neurodivergent are we still working in spaces that are sensory hell for us," she asked, and the answer is buried in the arithmetic of the industry's own reports. The Spacebring report we’ve been tracking audited 231 flexible workspace locations across fifteen UK cities and found that 52.8% of operators still cannot take an online payment without a manual email back, leading to their first strategic imperative: eradicate booking friction. But as Amanda’s Tuesday proves, a frictionless checkout is a hollow victory if the room on the other side of the door was built for a median brain that no longer exists in a workforce where sensory overload is a commercial barrier, not a minor inconvenience. ## The Arithmetic of Sensory Hell I have spent a decade in spaces that looked perfect but felt impossible before I understood that acoustic design was the reason I couldn't concentrate, a realization that finally clicked when I sat inside one of David O’Coimin’s Nook pods at Creative Works in E17\. David has been a fixture in this community for years, and while there are many ways to solve for sound, his work on sensory recovery is the reason I can find focus in a high-ceilinged factory floor when my ADHD and dyslexia are grinding against the open-plan noise. This isn't just about a specific piece of furniture; it is about the "relational infrastructure" that Tilley and the team at AKOU have been measuring while the rest of the industry was busy counting footfall. If we want people to stay, we have to stop seeing them as units on a spreadsheet and start building environments where a person can actually retreat for twenty minutes to recover their capacity. Neuroplaces runs from the 15th to the 17th of September at Protein Studios in Shoreditch as the UK's first exhibition and conference built entirely around neuroinclusive design. David will be there, alongside Luisa Pereira Pires from the Neurodiversity Architecture Network, making the case that awareness of sensory standards like PAS 6463 is just the beginning. Do not go looking for a checklist; go and find out what it actually costs to build a space where people like Amanda (and me) can function. [Register for Neuroplaces — part of Shoreditch Design Week](https://shoreditchdesignweek.com/neuroplaces?ref=londoncoworkingassembly.com) ## Small Towns and Limited Capacity Karen Tait’s energy bills at The Residence in Bishop's Stortford have tripled in four years, a pressure that makes the operational glitches—the breakfast delivery that never arrived or the fridge that tripped the electrics—feel like a weight the spreadsheets don't account for. When she shared her "Worst Tuesday" recently, twenty-five people came back with solidarity rather than sympathy, echoing Suzanne Murdock’s observation from The Hub Newry that people rarely stay in a workspace because of the desk itself. Kofi Oppong told us on the podcast that the traditional pathways for employability are shifting, pushing millions into independent work at a time when the cost of living is grinding and the infrastructure for support is largely invisible. Hannah Mojica turned six pop-up shops in Eastbourne into a network and two thousand people showed up for DigiFest, an event that doesn't fit into any council column but changed the town regardless. Jon Alexander argues that the "Four Ps" of marketing train us to see people as units to be moved, but asking what you are trying to do here that is big enough to need other people gets you somewhere the occupancy numbers cannot reach. The industry talks about target audiences, but that language will never tell you why Karen’s community showed up on her worst day, or why a Nook pod works for my brain when the open floor does not. Thank you to Roland Stanley, Nimrod Vardi, Vibushan Thirukumar, Shabad Chawla, Thilo Utke, David O'Coimin and Hector Kolonas for funding this work. The London Coworking Assembly is [100% reader-funded](https://londoncoworkingassembly.com/fund-the-work/). It keeps the Coworking Values Podcast free, funds the Coworking Citizenship research, and ensures we can keep telling the stories that the reports are still struggling to name.