Techno-Working Space
An office is a space where the user co-develops through the enactment of semiotic components within an environment (physical and digital environments), and the environments constructed by the organization are a direct representation of the organization's culture and essence of community.
Workplace as a Symbolic Object
Creating a methodological process of empirical data serves as a benchmark approach to understand the post-COVID phenomenon for the evolving representation and significance of the workplace.
For modeling techno-working spaces, the workplace is modelled as two forms of environments, physical and virtual (i.e., digital systems). At the heart of this research, the design process and analysis is within the paradox of reality and hyperreality, this is significant for uncovering boundaries that are closed, and lack transparency with other systems within an environment, albeit physical and/or virtual.
Evoking more transparency within the borders of the various spaces and subcultures for an organization's workplace(s) will allow for translation processes to be more efficient, empathetic, informative, innovative, and strengthen the community and culture of the organization.
Designer-Artifact-User (DAU) System
Designer
The role of the designer is to create an artifact that can be integrated to perform a desirable function for a user.
Artifact
The artifact, within a techno-working space, includes active devices, which the user directly interacts with, and passive devices that are designed to relay data to other artifacts.
User
A user is someone who engages, interacts with technology within the space.
Phase One: Ideation
The process begins with deep discussions with members from the relevant team of stakeholders to acquire insight not only about specifics related to the office, but about the feelings, actions, and conventions related to the team’s systems and processes. This step is significant for semiotic scaffolding for two reasons: 1) this incorporates cultural memory, such as hearing past stories and situations that members from the team have experienced; 2) the discourse with the team will help identify symbol relations for imputative value (a subject’s perception and action of a symbol).
Design Process
Phase Four: Translation
This phase is vital for the project to aggregate all data and theoretical modeling and description from the prior phases. The packaged data will then function as the mechanism to construct an apparatus to effectively model the meaning-making processes of the organization’s portfolio of workplaces. The designed apparatus contains the key characteristics on how to model the semiotic components for the environments (physical and digital) of a workplace.
Phase Two: Implementation
It is important to understand how implementations and changes from the organizational level have impacted the positive work experience. Inclusivity is an essential aspect to properly obtain feedback from users that contain variables of demographics, job titles, and employment duration to appropriately ensure that transparency evokes the wholeness of subjective experiences into the design process.
Phase Three: Intentionality
Measuring the unexpected outcomes that emerged in relation to meaning-making processes of the workplace allows for the integration of non-linear, unexpected emergent outcomes (intentionality) into the ongoing design process. Intentionality is a vital aspect of the design process, as this is the important for constructing channels for user feedback, identifying any cyclical versus linear trajectories regarding the users’ perceived attraction of the workplace and positive work experience, and identifying the emergent boundaries within the organizational processes that deter from transparency, empathy, inclusivity, and community.
Example Research Questions
1. What processes are used to model the culture of the workplace?
2. Are there any strategies for factoring into the workplace meaning related to the systems of organization’s culture, local culture, and pop culture?
3. How is technology (productivity and leisure) modeled for the office space?
4. What are the methods for receiving feedback about the worker's perception of their office space?
5. How is the cyclical pattern of user productivity modeled and what are the key contributors?
6. How can we ensure that the company values, mission, and community can flourish and go beyond the expectations that we have in the present?
7. What are the resources available for users to understand how they can enhance their experience by coming into the office?
