Focusing in flexible offices

Abstract

Office work is becoming increasingly dynamic, requiring office workers to perform distinct activities rapidly. These activities range from meetings to individual work. Open plan offices (OPO) facilitate workplaces for office workers in a single hall. This causes office workers who perform distinct activities to share the same workspace. These different activities come into conflict with each other, since they produce different sound levels. Furthermore, the open hall of the OPO causes more co-worker interruptions in comparison with offices which are adjusted to occupants performing distinct activities. This thesis collaboration between Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) and the Living Office Design Lab (LODL) of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering TU Delft, explores how to facilitate OPO occupants with distinct activities in achieving focus. Through 5 design interventions, a design guideline for achieving office focus is discovered, consisting of 3 elements. 1) Clustering office occupants based on their workstyle preference, decreases co-worker interruptions. 2) For workstyle-based clustering, office occupants need to communicate one of three workstyle preferences: “focus work”, “team work” or “social work”. “Focus work” workstyle communicates that the users don’t want co-worker interruption. “Team work” workstyle communicates that the occupant allows co-worker interruption, as long as the interruption is work related. “Social work” workstyle communicates that the user allows all interruptions, including non-work-related interruptions. 3) Workstyle preferences need to be communicated to the rest of the office by using indicators. Individual indicators are used for desk-to-desk workstyle preference communication. Zone indicators might enable occupants to find workstyle zones within the office. A set of tools that enables OPO occupants to communicate their workstyle preference, through personal and zone indicators, enables workplace selection based on workstyle preference. By enabling occupants to cluster through workstyle-based workplace selection, conflicting activities and co-worker interruptions are reduced.