Methodological Issues in Conducting Post-Occupancy Evaluations to Support Design Decisions

Abstract

Of late, there has been an upsurge in interest among design firms and healthcare orga- nizations in conducting post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) from a physical design perspec- tive. Among the designer audience, there seems to be more questions than answers at this juncture, although POE as an evaluation method is not new. While less explicitly stated, there seems to be a fun- damental recurring question: how can POE data be used to inform design decision making? In this article we attempt to address some important issues pertaining to designing and conducting POEs that can respond to the expectations of the designer audience.The first issue pertains to nomenclature. The class of evaluation methods commonly known as post- occupancy evaluation emerged in the 1960s (Pre- iser, 2001). As the name suggests, the evaluation was expected to be conducted post-occupancy, or after occupancy of a facility. The objective was to conduct an evaluation of a newly built or renovat- ed setting to identify any mismatch between the original design intent and the environment actu- ally delivered, so that rectifications can be made (if feasible) to obtain a better match. These evaluations varied on a scale that ranged from purely technical evaluation of facilities to evaluation of the organi- zational functions accommodated in a built facil- ity, and all combinations thereof. It is important to note that technical POEs are not the same as commissioning. The scope of technical POEs is wider, and such evaluations are conducted after a facility is occupied for some time, to allow for the occupants and processes to fully adjust to the new environment before any evaluation can take place. Over the succeeding decades, the scope and nature of POEs have expanded, with accompanying sug- gestions for new nomenclature to reflect the change in scope and content, such as building performance evaluation (BPE) and universal design evaluation (UDE) proposed by Preiser (2001).From a designer's perspective, the evolutions over the past decades have not changed the funda- mental question: how can POE data be used to inform design decision making? Also over the past decades, many experts and thought leaders have propounded their opinions on how best to address this issue (Kernohan, Gray, Daish, & Joiner, 1992; Zimring, 2001). This article is not intended to either critique or ignore these opinions. The con- tent of this article is purely a personal perspective of the authors on how best to position POEs (we are using the acronym POE to stand for all ver- sions that have emerged since the 1960s, for the sake of convenience) to inform design decision making.The second, and more important, issue to consider is the audience of any facility evaluation. Multiple stakeholders can and are interested in evaluation data. Such stakeholder groups could include own- ers, senior management, facility managers, port- folio managers, mid-level management, designers, researchers, to name just a few. Perhaps, a common misconception about POEs is that the data gener- ated in any POE addresses the expectations of any and all stakeholder groups. To begin our discussion on this topic, the above misconception represents the crux of the problem leading to the question so often posed by the designer stakeholder. Typically, data generated in a study are designed specifical- ly for a target audience group. So, why are POEs apparently not addressing the needs of the designer audience?The Designer AudienceTo address that question, let's start with the type of information that can help design decision making. Facility designers (implicitly or explicitly) hypoth- esize associations between data from two different domains: the physical design and outcomes of func- tions conducted in a facility, including affective responses by end users. By default, these include technical issues (such as building systems and phys- ical components) and planning issues involving lay- out, adjacencies, and other attributes. …