Designing offices well. This project aims to describe, quantify and analyse the impact of workspace design on workers’ satisfaction, productivity and health. The Australian market is the fastest adopter of Activity-Based Working (ABW) in the world and impacts arising from this workspace typology on workers will be significant now and in the next decade. This project will develop benchmarking for ABW offices, techniques for monitoring cognitive performance in situ, and design guidelines for healt ....Designing offices well. This project aims to describe, quantify and analyse the impact of workspace design on workers’ satisfaction, productivity and health. The Australian market is the fastest adopter of Activity-Based Working (ABW) in the world and impacts arising from this workspace typology on workers will be significant now and in the next decade. This project will develop benchmarking for ABW offices, techniques for monitoring cognitive performance in situ, and design guidelines for health promotion. By shifting attention to design features that actually perform well, this project will provide the empirical basis needed to transform the way workspaces are designed now and in the future. It will therefore lead to greater productivity in and among workplaces.Read moreRead less
Solving the problem of speech distraction in open-plan offices. The project aims to better understand how irrelevant speech in open-plan offices affects the occupants’ cognitive performance and creates annoyance leading to a loss of productivity. Over 97% of Australian office workers are located in open-plan offices. Without internal walls, open-plan offices are designed to make people interact more frequently, therefore be more collaborative and productive. Yet there is a high level of dissatis ....Solving the problem of speech distraction in open-plan offices. The project aims to better understand how irrelevant speech in open-plan offices affects the occupants’ cognitive performance and creates annoyance leading to a loss of productivity. Over 97% of Australian office workers are located in open-plan offices. Without internal walls, open-plan offices are designed to make people interact more frequently, therefore be more collaborative and productive. Yet there is a high level of dissatisfaction with open-plan layout because of frequent distraction by background speech from co-workers, which has been shown to significantly decrease work performance and productivity. The intended outcomes of the project are the development of powerful new tools to measure, model and predict the degree of speech distraction at work, enabling the establishment of new international standards that will increase work performance and productivity.Read moreRead less