Reduce Interferences in an Office Environment

Reduce Interferences in an Office Environment

Huizinga, G.C.A.

Van Heur, R.J.H.G. (mentor)
Wormgoor, R. (mentor)
Van Beuningen, R. (mentor)
Van Boxtel, D. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Integrated Product Design

2015-12-18

During this last half year this thesis was executed in order to obtain a clear and scientific underpinned exploration of what interferences in an office environment are and how they can be reduced. As a result of combining the performed literature study, internal analysis, and external analysis a new product proposal is developed: the Bay A historical overview indicated that the only stable factor in office environments is change. Furniture, office related technological advancements and office plans change rapidly. The New Working (TNW) does not have a fixed definition. Over years different parties gave multiple interpretations to TNW. Flexibility and autonomy in time, place and information distribution for individuals and companies is what is most overlapping in all opinions. Flexibility and autonomy are key to obtain Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) in an organization, which results in more satisfaction and happiness on the work floor. As a consequence of OCB employees obtain higher productivity and is therefor beneficial to every company. Unfortunately a blueprint to obtain OCB is not available, because every organization and individual is different. The Activity Based Office (ABO) is one of the most recent developments in the arrangements of offices. It aims to divide the offices in different activities that are practiced on the work floor. Research showed that ABO stimulated productivity and employee well-being, however implementing ABO must be carried out carefully. This thesis is executed in cooperation with Lande Productie Schijndel (LPS). LPS is a well-known production facility famous for their high quality furniture. The company mainly manufactures products for internal brands like Lande and Artifort. Lande’s focus is to provide creative office solutions and will therefor undertake the position as main stakeholder in this report. LPS is the main production facility and houses the Lande Group headquarter. The Lande Group includes multiple brands. All with different core values to serve a considerable large part of the furniture sector. Lande belongs to one of the 3 largest office furniture brands that can offer a complete furniture proposal for the customer. The portfolio analysis indicated that Lande acquires a wide-ranged portfolio. However, products that enhance interferences in an office environment are absent. Besides, Lande is known for their tailor-made solutions, in-house development, and distinguishable playful designs. Office visits and qualitative interviews administered what the actual problems were in offices. Again, acoustics was indicated as one of the main instigators for disturbance. The visits also showed that good execution and communication between all stakeholders before implementing new office arrangements is key for success. By conducting a brainstorm session activities in an office are segmented. Tasks performed in an office environment are divided in 5 types of tasks: focus, collaboration, communication, work specific and non work related. Every organization and profession acquires a different balanced mix of those activities. The office is a place that must facilitate all activities practiced by the organization. Teleworking, or homeworking tears apart the communication and collaboration tasks, which is not convenient for every organization. The threshold for communicating increases, resulting in internal communication decrease. Moreover, it makes unintentional encounters impossible. Locating the interference source activities next to each other can solve lots of initial problems. Focus tasks can be executed without being intervened. Acoustics is pointed out to be the main instigator for interferences in an office environment. This is partly due to that acoustics unites different kinds of aspects. Research shows that speech intelligibility is one of the greatest factors to be disturbed. When individuals can trace back the words, or sentences, they are engaged to withdraw focus. The Bay aims for reducing outgoing interferences generated by communication activities. The acoustical panels inside the module absorb direct sound waves that would initially reach other office users. Placing panels inside the model could evoke an enclosed feeling for the users inside. An experiment is conducted to obtain of the optimal level of enclosure to guarantee fewer distractions in the office outside the model. The Bay is developed until the stage of pre-production. In order to switch to production, certain components have to be optimized and therefor deserve another design iteration. With the ever-increasing line of basis needs, acoustics is likely to become standard in the near future.

interference
office
furniture
acoustics
OCB
TNW
Activity Based Working

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0acd7908-e591-4f11-822d-0846d2906d24

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Huizinga, G.C.A.