Working Conclusions

 Through this study it appears that there are several different characteristics of workspace that affect employee’s productivity, efficiency, and job satisfaction. Some of these themes appear to be more universal like light quality and some more specific to personality type and individual preference like sharing a workspace or flexibility of work schedule. Lighting quality was mentioned in every interview though some participants placed more emphasis on it than others. Thus far I believe this to be the only evidence of a more universal characteristic of workspace that people feel is important.

Also, an important thing to keep in mind is that a characteristic may be beneficial to one person, and a burden for the next, because there are different advantages and disadvantages associated with each aspect of works environment and workspace design. For example making your own schedule, one person claimed it to be a benefit, another a bit of a drag because there isn’t a clear boundary line between work and home life; when you work at your own pace, located wherever you need to be, your work follows you around. It is easy to see other situations in which these aspects are designated as advantage or disadvantage depending on personality type and preference. In the future I would like to explore these universal and specific characteristics in order to better understand their interactions and relationship with one another as well as how that affects the individual.

“Working on MDI, Maine” has only begun to scratch at the surface of some of these concepts and it is my intention to further explore characteristics of workspace and how that affects an employee’s attitude towards their work. The amount of participants for this study was small and personal. It is my goal to further create work profiles for using a larger audience in a specific setting. Over the course of 10 weeks I will be studying this cross-section more in depth in the greater Seattle area exclusively looking at it from a business perspective. You will be able to find information about this study titled “Workspace and Satisfaction: exploring business in Seattle” soon.

Below is a diagram I created in order to look at separate work-profiles in relationship with another. In this study there was no questionnaire because of the broad approach so all information listed is based off of the interviews. For “Workspace and Satisfaction” at the end of each interview there will be a questionnaire regarding some of these themes so that participants may place their own emphasis within a more structured method. In some ways, “Working on MDI” has served to reveal some of these key factors for the more in depth study and has acted to provide a foundation to build upon.

All themes and characteristics arose specifically from the participants. There were no particular questions asked regarding light quality or any other themes in order to allow participants to tell their own story. This approach was taken in order to create space for the themes and characteristics to arise according to their importance to the individual rather than the interviewer planting their own predictions or starting with leading questions. Generally interviewees want to give you the ‘right’ answer, so in order to collect accurate information it is imperative to remain unrevealing about what answers or themes the interviewer expects to gain from the interview.

In order to look at the relationship between these themes I created a more interactive diagram than the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet allows you to examine the interaction of slightly rigid specifics from the interviews while this one allows you to see the relationship these specifics have within the bigger picture.

 First we discover some key “universal themes” which are things that are important to individuals when they think about a workspace that allows them to work best, to be the most productive and efficient. To build on that we need to find out more about an individual’s personal preferences and what particular aspects of design is important to consider; this is personality reflected from the universal issues which creates their “personality type.” The next most important thing is consistency with the “functionality” of the job or work. So first comes exploring and utilizing positive characteristics in order to design the best workspace, and then it is important to remain true to the functionality of the tasks at hand. This is where ergonomics plays a role. Ergonomics works with the most efficient use of space and layout of tools and in order to create the best space ergonomics needs to be met with the first two issues, being the universal themes of what is important in workspace and then the personality preferences. Together these three aspects have the ability to create the correct design of workspace for an individual or an office building. These ideas can utilized on both a small scale and a large scale because one could use it to design a large corporate building and use some basis of personality type that is consistent with the typical profile of their industry, which is information many companies have available. For example perhaps a large corporation working in technology development would know that certain employees need quieter spaces to be more efficient, like developers and maybe designers need a space that encourages creativity. So you can see that the scalability of this model is great.

*A Note: No model is perfect and can account for all variables. These models represent some of the working conclusions that I have drawn from the project “Working on MDI, Maine.” These models are useful when examining key relationships and specific interactions. As my economic professor says “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”