Office Workspace Research Articles

Stand-Capable Workstations Reduce Occupational Sedentary Time Among Administrative Workers

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS In this study, we found that workers who use stand-biased desks stood more and sat less during their workday compared to workers who use traditional desks. Stand-biased users also experienced significantly less lower back discomfort compared to both traditional and sit-stand workstation users. Based on these findings, we recommend that the use of stand-biased workstations be considered when designing or renovating work office workspaces. The health risks of sedentary behavior are inherent in most office work, but these risks can be alleviated with intentional equipment choices. Using stand-biased desks can encourage workers to move more throughout the workday without their productivity or comfort being disturbed.

Analisa Pencahayaan Alami Ruang Kerja Pada Gedung Perkantoran Dengan Software DIALux Evo 11.1 (Studi Kasus : Gedung Balai Kota, Tebing Tinggi)

Lighting is an important aspect of buildings, especially in office buildings. A office building as a work area requires adequate comfort and fulfils lighting standards so that users can perform their activities smoothly and have good productivity. According to the observations of the Balai Kota Teb ing Tinggi building, there are no other high-rise buildings around the building and the window opens on either side of the building using windows with clear glass but without shading devices resulting in the illumination or distribution of natural lighting leading to the room looks very good. This study aims to analyze the level of natural lighting in the office workspace of Balai Kota Tebing Tinggi whether it has met the lighting standard SNI 6197-2020 or not because the building is a government service center that has already met the requirements of lighting according to the standards that have been in force. The study was conducted using a quantitative method with a simulation approach using the Dialux evo 11.1 software. The results of the study showed that there were some workspaces that did not meet the standard due to the influence of several factors such as the conditions of the sky and the time at the time of the simulation.

UbiSurface: A Robotic Touch Surface for Supporting Mid-air Planar Interactions in Room-Scale VR

Room-scale VR has been considered an alternative to physical office workspaces. For office activities, users frequently require planar input methods, such as typing or handwriting, to quickly record annotations to virtual content. However, current off-the-shelf VR HMD setups rely on mid-air interactions, which can cause arm fatigue and decrease input accuracy. To address this issue, we propose UbiSurface, a robotic touch surface that can automatically reposition itself to physically present a virtual planar input surface (VR whiteboard, VR canvas, etc.) to users and to permit them to achieve accurate and fatigue-less input while walking around a virtual room. We design and implement a prototype of UbiSurface that can dynamically change a canvas-sized touch surface's position, height, and pitch and yaw angles to adapt to virtual surfaces spatially arranged at various locations and angles around a virtual room. We then conduct studies to validate its technical performance and examine how UbiSurface facilitates the user's primary mid-air planar interactions, such as painting and writing in a room-scale VR setup. Our results indicate that this system reduces arm fatigue and increases input accuracy, especially for writing tasks. We then discuss the potential benefits and challenges of robotic touch devices for future room-scale VR setups.

Staffs' physiological responses to irrelevant background speech and mental workload in open-plan bank office workspaces.

Acoustic comfort is one of the most critical challenges in the open-plan workspace. This study was aimed to assess the effect of irrelevant background speech (IBS) and mental workload (MWL) on staffs' physiological parameters in open-plan bank office workspaces. In this study, 109 male cashier staff of the banks were randomly selected. The 30-minute equivalent noise level (LAeq) of the participants was measured in three intervals at the beginning (section A), middle (section B), and end of working hours (section C). The heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV): low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF), and LF/HF of the staff were also recorded in sections A, B, and C. Moreover, staff was asked to rate the MWL using the NASA-Task load. The dominant frequency of the LAeq was 500 Hz, and the LAeq in the frequency range of 250 to 2000 was higher than other frequencies. The LAeq (500 Hz) was 55.82, 69.35, and 69.64 dB(A) in sections A, B, and C, respectively. The results show that the IBS affects staffs' physiological responses so that with increasing in IBS, the HF power decreases. Moreover, with higher MWL, increasing noise exposure, especially IBS, causes more increases in LF power and LF/HF ratio. It seems that the IBS can affect physiological responses and increase staff stress in open-plan bank office workspaces. Moreover, the mental workload can intensify these consequences in these working settings.

A novel and computationally efficient subgrid technique for modeling scattering and Doppler effects of rough dynamic sea surfaces using the finite-difference time-domain method

Over the last decade, the improvements in computational performance that multiprocessing, solid-state hard drives, and fast memories have brought to desktop workstations have made modeling and simulation methods that were previously inaccessible into the office workspace. These methods were previously restricted to large servers or computer clusters because of their demanding computation and large memory requirements when applied to underwater acoustic simulation scenarios. One such method is the Finite-difference Time-domain (FDTD) technique. The FDTD method is a discrete numeric model that provides the full pressure wave solution solved directly in the time domain. This makes it an ideal model for investigating scattering and Doppler effects of boundaries with complex geometries and motion. A fully developed sea surface generated using the Pierson–Moskowitz wavenumber spectra meets these criteria. A novel subgrid technique has been developed to improve the accuracy of signals scattered from fully developed sea surfaces. This method remains computationally efficient because the subgrid is applied only along the rough sea surface as it varies over time. The FDTD subgrid method has been applied to simulations that investigate the “frozen” sea surface assumption that is utilized by other traditional models that incorporate boundary motion.

Automated Multimodal Stress Detection in Computer Office Workspace

Nowadays, changes in the conditions and nature of the workplace make it imperative to create unobtrusive systems for the automatic detection of occupational stress, which can be feasibly addressed through the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and advances in data analysis. This paper presents the development of a multimodal automated stress detection system in an office environment that utilizes measurements derived from individuals’ interactions with the computer and its peripheral units. In our analysis, behavioral parameters of computer keyboard and mouse dynamics are combined with physiological parameters recorded by sensors embedded in a custom-made smart computer mouse device. To validate the system, we designed and implemented an experimental protocol simulating an office environment and included the most known work stressors. We applied known classifiers and different data labeling methods to the physiological and behavioral parameters extracted from the collected data, resulting in high-performance metrics. The feature-level fusion analysis of physiological and behavioral parameters successfully detected stress with an accuracy of 90.06% and F1 score of 0.90. The decision-level fusion analysis, combining the features extracted from both the computer mouse and keyboard, showed an average accuracy of 66% and an average F1 score of 0.56.

Labelled Indoor Point Cloud Dataset for BIM Related Applications

BIM (building information modelling) has gained wider acceptance in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry. Conversion from 3D point cloud data to vector BIM data remains a challenging and labour-intensive process, but particularly relevant during various stages of a project lifecycle. While the challenges associated with processing very large 3D point cloud datasets are widely known, there is a pressing need for intelligent geometric feature extraction and reconstruction algorithms for automated point cloud processing. Compared to outdoor scene reconstruction, indoor scenes are challenging since they usually contain high amounts of clutter. This dataset comprises the indoor point cloud obtained by scanning four different rooms (including a hallway): two office workspaces, a workshop, and a laboratory including a water tank. The scanned space is located at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. The dataset is fully labelled, containing major structural elements like walls, floor, ceiling, windows, and doors, as well as furniture, movable objects, clutter, and scanning noise. The dataset also contains an as-built BIM that can be used as a reference, making it suitable for being used in Scan-to-BIM and Scan-vs-BIM applications. For demonstration purposes, a Scan-vs-BIM change detection application is described, detailing each of the main data processing steps.

Users’ window preferences and motivations of shading control: Influence of cultural characteristics

Window shading control is motivated by many reasons. Very few studies consider the influence of non-physical factors that underpin occupant motives for shading control. A candidate reason that concerned this study was cultural differences. Diverging values, beliefs and norms can lead to different design considerations for building architecture to accommodate users’ expectations. This can also influence a wider array of window functions, e.g., daylight access, thermal comfort, natural ventilation, privacy and view out. We investigated the influence of cultural differences in this context. An online survey was administered to collect responses from Arab and non-Arab population groups from across the globe. We compared how occupants would prioritise different window functions in their typical workspaces to better meet their needs across these two groups. The analyses showed that Arab respondents prioritised privacy more than non-Arab respondents. The importance placed on privacy was consistently larger for the Arab group when they worked from their own residential home (r = −0.36), rather than at their office workspace (r = −0.16). Shading control for daylight access was a highly prioritised motive for both groups, which was also equally weighted as the most important reason for both opening and closing window shades with no statistical difference (r = -0.10) found between both groups. Thermal comfort was deemed more important by the Arab respondents, although this may have been caused by climate factors. The study highlights how culture has important implications on window preferences and shading control, which can be influential in the context of design considerations to accommodate user needs.

PERAN TATA LETAK RUANG KANTOR DALAM MENINGKATKAN EFEKTIVITAS KOMUNIKASI GURU

A good work environment is an environment that is able to create a clean and comfortable atmosphere. To create a work environment that needs to be organized. The arrangement of office workspaces in schools is very important. The existence of an office layout affects the effectiveness of carrying out activities in the office, including creating smooth communication between employees to avoid misunderstandings. This study uses descriptive qualitative research methods through interviews, observation and documentation with the aim of knowing the role of office space layout in increasing the effectiveness of teacher communication at SDN Sidoagung 3. The results of the study show that the layout of the office space plays a role in increasing the effectiveness of teacher communication at SDN Sidoagung 3. Even though it has limited land, SDN Sidoagung 3 tries to create good communication between fellow teachers and the school principal by setting up circular tables providing space in the middle of the room and providing a special room for counseling.

Work from Home: Lessons Learned and Implications for Post-pandemic Workspaces

The experience of working from home (WFH) has evolved due to the COVID-19 response. A concurrent mixed-methods approach was used to assess the experiences and needs of WFH during COVID-19 pandemic across eight countries. Input concerning office workspace modifications was also explored. Participants (n = 82) were from Asia, Europe, and North America. Participants were working from home more and indicated they were somewhat satisfied with WFH and saw no change in productivity. The most common experience was feeling distracted while others experienced focus or calmness. Most participants were challenged by the lack of appropriate furniture and equipment, as well as being distracted by technology and communication. Participants most frequently used dedicated workspaces and outdoor views. They preferred workspaces with natural light, neutral colours, and natural ventilation. Participants reported better thermal comfort and air quality when compared to their pre-pandemic office but less access to necessary equipment, collaboration, and communication. WFH during the pandemic challenged how people worked and shifted their experience of home interiority. The key outcomes show support for hybrid work options as well as design strategies offered for accommodating home offices in the future.

Influence of the Aestheticized Work Environment on Managerial Life in Sri Lanka’s Corporate Sector

In this paper, I examine how the lives of managerial workers are being affected by the rapid aestheticization processes that are happening in contemporary work organizations. Using the photo-elicitation technique as the primary data generation and analysis method, fieldwork was conducted in the factory and office spaces of a well-established manufacturing company in Sri Lanka. The study’s findings show that workplace aestheticization affects managerial workers in the organization differently: in the factory environment, where the nature of work is monotonous and stressful, an aestheticized work environment affects managerial life positively. In such a work context, aestheticization becomes a means of ‘seduction’, which draws managers away from the tediousness of factory life. Yet, in the office workspace, experiencing aesthetics or becoming involved in practices that generate aesthetic pleasure creates a sense of ‘shame’ in managerial workers, as such an association is considered as deviating from the ‘appropriate behavior’ expected of a manager. In conclusion, I argue that aestheticization has a dual effect on managerial life—which is imbued not only with managerial workers’ assumptions about the role of a ‘Manager’ but also with the spatial and contextual dimensions at work.

Cognitive performance, creativity and stress levels of neurotypical young adults under different white noise levels

Noise is often considered a distractor; however recent studies suggest that sub-attentive individuals or individuals diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can benefit from white noise to enhance their cognitive performance. Research regarding the effect of white noise on neurotypical adults presents mixed results, thus the implications of white noise on the neurotypical population remain unclear. Thus, this study investigates the effect of 2 white noise conditions, white noise level at 45 dB and white noise level at 65 dB, on the cognitive performance, creativity, and stress levels of neurotypical young adults in a private office space. These conditions are compared to a baseline condition where participants are exposed to the office ambient noise. Our findings showed that the white noise level at 45 dB resulted in better cognitive performance in terms of sustained attention, accuracy, and speed of performance as well as enhanced creativity and lower stress levels. On the other hand, the 65 dB white noise condition led to improved working memory but higher stress levels, which leads to the conclusion that different tasks might require different noise levels for optimal performance. These results lay the foundation for the integration of white noise into office workspaces as a tool to enhance office workers’ performance.

A computational framework for supporting architectural education of spaces’ furnishing design

Self-learning is receiving great attention internationally in different fields, along with the best utilization of different computational applications or methods. This paper introduces a novel computational approach for supporting Architectural Design Education (ADE) in its early stages; a computational implementation through MATLAB has been developed to conduct the proposed processes. As a scope, spaces’ furnishing design has been selected to demonstrate the proposed computational approach and implementation, while office workspaces have been selected as a representative case. However, the proposed approach provides and enhances ADE through three main concepts: (a) generating design alternatives for different cases of furnishing spaces, (b) providing accurate and flexible evaluations to students’/designers’ works with different levels, and (c) tracking students based on their defaults and relevant sensitive modifications. Different applications of the proposed approach have been generated, analyzed, and validated.

Balancing daylight in office spaces with respect to the indoor thermal environment through optimization of light shelves design parameters in the tropics

The study aims to investigate the preferred daylighting availability ranges for the best visual and thermal comfort in office workspace through optimal modifications light-shelve parameters, grounded on parametric design and optimization, with a focus on its visual and thermal indices. To identify the final optimal solutions, single and multi-optimization scenarios were used. The findings revealed that optimizing for a single objective might obstruct the attainment of other goals. In other words, the first scenario, optimization only for daylight availability, results in an increase in temperature. While optimizing for indoor thermal performance solely, none of the preset daylight availability acceptance requirements were met. However, multi-objective optimization solutions were the final optimal solutions nearest to the ideal. Final optimum solutions of the best design parameters of light shelves can improve the total average of daylight availability by 56.25%, 50.63%, 57.50% and 71.88%, and the indoor thermal performance was improved by decreasing the average temperature for thermal environmental performance indicators by 4.15%, 3.27%, 3.17% and 4.76%, respectively, in March, June, September and December. The study concludes that daylighting levels of 500 lux to1300 lux provide the best range of optimal daylighting for visual and thermal comfort indicators for office spaces in the tropics.

Contextualizing founder identity in coworking spaces

ABSTRACT Coworking spaces – which combine an office workspace with a social space – enable collaboration, creativity and knowledge exchange, and offer opportunities to develop social and professional networks for users. Using a multilevel approach, we integrate data from two sources – at the level of the coworking space (N = 57) and the entrepreneur (N = 317) – and apply SEM to test our hypotheses. Our study finds that innovation-based narratives generated by coworking space providers significantly influence new venture growth for entrepreneurs within the space. The results also show that the alignment between the entrepreneur’s identity and the perceived social structure of a coworking space (the immediate entrepreneurial space) positively influences new venture growth. Taken together, we propose an extension to the founder identity literature by integrating psychological and sociological theories of identity to explain how the reciprocal relationship between context and identity is critical to new venture performance.

How to improve the ergonomics of the workplace

The article presents the experience of Schneider Electric in modernizing the office workspace in order to create more ergonomic workplaces. Several approaches to optimizing control elements are considered, the amount of errors, to increase the reaction speed in the event of non-standard situations, as well as to make the interface more intuitive and easier for the operator.

IMPACT OF INTERNAL SHADING CONTROLS ON EFFICIENT DAYLIGHTING IN HOME-OFFICE WORKSPACES IN TROPICAL CLIMATES

Home office workspaces have significantly grown in residential sectors throughout the world. Nowadays, many people worldwide are forced to work from their housing units due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the existing residential buildings were only designed for living activities, not for desk-related tasks. This is more critical in tropical regions with the overabundance of indoor daylight and lack of external shadings on existing buildings. Despite the limitations for modifying the external facades, interior retrofit plays a major role in improving visual environments. Daylighting performances of various configurations, including internal shading devices, interior surfaces, and window films, were experimented with the Radiance-IES program. A field measurement of daylight was conducted in a home office room under the Malaysian tropical sky to validate the simulated results. This research proved that the existing residential buildings in the tropical climates had poor daylighting performance where the mean indoor illuminance could be over 10,000 lx. The combination of a light shelf, a partial blind, and the tinted window film could effectively 85% alleviate the excessive indoor daylight level. This configuration recorded a significant improvement in Useful Daylight Zone (around 300%), and Daylight Glare Probability was considerably reduced from 0.46 to 0.34.

Office Worker Perspective on an Artificial Intelligence Workstation: A Qualitative Study

Abstract Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. This study explored office workers' perspectives on including artificial intelligence (AI) in their office workspace. Following an iterative analysis of six focus-group interviews with a total of 45 participants, three constructs emerged. Rich discussions demonstrated how acceptability of an AI workstation is complex and affected by the person, context, and their occupations. Primary Author and Speaker: Yoko E. Fukumura Contributing Authors: Julie McLaughlin Gray, Gale Lucas, Burcin Becerik-Gerber, and Shawn C. Roll

Sensitivity analysis linked to multi-objective optimization for adjustments of light-shelves design parameters in response to visual comfort and thermal energy performance

This research aims to introduce an optimized office workspace that meets both optimum daylight availability and thermal energy performance. To achieve this, the first step was developed through a parametric model using Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino. Afterwards, the daylight and energy plug-ins of Honeybee and Ladybug were employed to evaluate daylight and thermal energy performance in the second step and finally, the optimization method was applied using Octopus plug-in. The optimization processes were carried out under two scenarios to find the final optimized solutions. Before running the optimization, Sensitivity analysis was performed to comprehensively analyse the relationship between design variables and the three objective functions metrics of visual comfort and thermal energy performance. For the first scenario, single-objective optimization, and the second scenario is multi-objective optimization. The metrics of Useful Daylight Illuminance, Daylight Glare Probability, and Energy Use Intensity to evaluate the thermal energy performance, were compared to find the best optimum solutions. The last step was compared for each of these optimized solutions and selecting the final optimum solution. However, multi-objective optimization solutions of objective functions were the final optimal solutions nearest to the ideal. The final optimum solutions of the best design parameters of light-shelf can improve the total average of useful daylight illuminance by 62.50% 56.25% 57.50%, and 68.13% and thermal energy performance by +1.15% −4.62%, −6.81% and −3.05% in March, June, September, and March respectively, compared to the single-objective solutions of light-shelf parameters. While daylight glare probability slightly increased by +1.88% and +3.13% in March and December, respectively.

Multi-dimensions optimization for optimum modifications of light-shelves parameters for daylighting and energy efficiency

The greatest role in the building design is to optimize the use of natural daylight harvests to ensure human comfort and energy usage. This research aims to introduce an optimized office workspace that meets both daylight availability and energy efficiency. Honeybee and Ladybug plugins for grasshopper parametric software is utilized to simulate daylight and energy where multi-objective genetic optimization using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithms method is explored with octopus plugin, which is able to provide the best overall solution as a trade-off for multiple and conflicting design objectives simultaneously. The optimization focused on single-objective which shows major differences between daylight availability and energy efficiency while optimization for multi-objective together proved to be an efficient tool to research the trade-offs between the two contradictory objectives. The final best optimum balanced solutions can improve the sDA300/50% by decreasing with an average of −11.88%, −2.34%, −5.94%, and −20.78%, while the UDI300-2000 lx increased with an average by 39.39%, 29.23%, 46.17%, and 19.40%. The energy efficiency is slightly increased by + 1.33%, −0.61%, + 1.33%, and + 1.29%, in March, June, September, and December, respectively, compared to the reference model.