| dc.description.abstract | Background for Master’s Thesis Research
Most of the workspace inhabited by people today were developed in and according to work
needs in a time when the pace and character of changes in work were much less pronounced than
they are today (McGregor & Then, 1991). Innovative thinking in office design is once again
changing the way we think about our workspace, on a level not experienced since the end of the
nineteenth century. Duffy (1997) states that the way people work in their offices are changing
rapidly and that these changes will affect the conventions upon which office design and real
estate practice have been based for decades.
New technology enables people to work from almost anywhere at any time. Office design
therefore plays an important role and should encourage and support the new ways of working
Tanis and Duffy (2008, cited in Grech & Walter, 2008) asserted that the benefits of office design
were measurable, by putting office design into the general context of business. They made the
distinction between efficiency and effectiveness to office design, making it possible to measure
the business benefits of design features that save money and add value.
In order to create functional workplaces for the future, which not only anticipates, but take full
advantage of all the changes that are taking place, it is important to have the right methods and
tools for evaluation of workplaces. With such an evaluation it is possible to identify challenges in
the workplace design that can be improved in order to develop workplaces that better supports
the users in their daily work task (Duffy, 1997).
The goal of this thesis was to decide on a method within building evaluation that is suitable for
workplaces and can be used for improvement and further development of workplace design for
the future. With Telenor as a pilot study in this thesis, the purpose was to adapt and adjust a
workplace evaluation method to fit the purpose of evaluation of the Telenor Workplace Model in
order to make it standardized for future use. The aim of this master’s thesis was therefore to
ratify to what degree building evaluation can contribute in further development and improvement
of open plan workplace design in an organization.
Research and Development Process
The research initiated with an existing survey developed to evaluate offices in a post occupancy
phase on a detailed and analytical level. An early edition of this survey has already been used by
Telenor Real Estate in their projects to evaluate the usability of their workplace model.
Telenor serves the pilot study in this thesis and the purpose of this thesis was to adapt the
previous mentioned survey to fit the purpose of projects in Telenor Real Estate. Telenor Real
Estate has developed a Telenor Workplace Model, and wants this to be applied to every Telenor
Building on a long term basis. In order to do so it is important for Telenor Real Estate to collect
data that can be used to visualize the effects of such an application to the decision makers for
every building. To collect this data they need a standardized method with tools easily operated
and analyzed. As the Head of Workplace Management mentioned in the interview, it is important
that everything is automated so that it is simple to send out, collect and analyze the evaluation
results.
In order to get a deep understanding of the different aspects of background and purpose for
workplace evaluation, it was considered necessary to collect information and opinions from
different people involved in an evaluation. This researcher has identified three perspectives in
development of an evaluation method that needs to be considered; the developer, the user and
the participants. Telenor wanted a shorter survey focusing more on functional space and quality
in order to quickly analyze the workplace quality for use in benchmarks or pre-, and post
reconstruction comparisons, it was crucial to eliminate all questions considered sensitive and less
important for the workplace function purpose
The method developed in this thesis was tested in a pilot study at Telenor’s premises in Budapest
in form of a newly developed Survey on Workplace Quality and the Usability Walkthrough found
in USE-Tool. The usability of the survey was evaluated through a focus group at Telenor
Budapest in order to assess if the method achieved the objectives stated in the research question
of this thesis.
Thesis Conclusion
The method developed in this research is best suited to be used as an evaluation tool for open
plan offices, but can also be used in other types of workplaces for the same purpose. The pilot
study in this research is performed in a flexible, non-territorial workplace, but most of the
questions in the survey tool can also be used for a workplace with cell office structure.
USE-Tool, which was evaluated to be a well suited method to serve the purpose of this thesis, is
a thorough evaluation method for usability containing several steps with tools to make qualitative
assessments of a building. However, it does not provide a tool to collect quantitative data. As
mentioned by the Head of Workplace Management at Telenor Real Estate, it was important for
an evaluation method to provide statistical results that could be presented to the decision makers
in a reconstruction or development project. Another impotent goal of the evaluation was to
retrieve data for benchmark. Statistical data is often preferred by people in business as it is a good
and easy way to visualize results and to benchmark.
The researcher will therefore suggest that The Survey of Workplace Quality can be used as a
supplement to applications of USE-Tool in order to collect the quantitative data need for
benchmarks and presentation purposes.
A post occupancy evaluation involves a systematic evaluation of opinions, from the perspective
of the users of a building, and assesses how well a building matches the users' needs (Preiser et al,
1988). As several of the presented evaluation methods state the importance of the user’s
assessments of their workplace when evaluating the improvements of its design, one can
conclude that a workplace evaluation achieves its purpose. | nb_NO |
