This article presents a novel approach—Ontological Future Making—that prioritizes transformative action. Rather than considering distant possibilities and consequences of futures, this approach engages with the negotiation of futures in the present. It is based on a review of existing work from the field of design anthropology. The article describes three steps of Ontological Future Making: to understand the future orientations of actors involved, engage with the immediate tensions that arise from their negotiation, and transform the ontological conditions that constrain future possibilities. We illustrate the approach with empirical data from a local energy transition project in Amsterdam Southeast. In this empirical account, we describe the future orientations of project partners and local residents and identify tensions related to extractive research and disciplinary differences. We describe the actions taken to address these tensions and describe our collaboration with residents to establish a local energy community. We characterize this initiative as transformative action as it served to enable shared futures for the project. We discuss the implications of these findings, arguing that future making should be more direct, political, and relational.

An indoor Climate Label was developed for office buildings. To determine subjective comfort levels one time per year a survey is carried out under all office occupants. The goal of our study was to develop a method which could continuously gather comfort feedback from office occupants, requiring a minimal level of perceived effort and minimal distraction. During the summer of 2022 a pilot study in an existing Dutch office building was conducted. User feedback was gathered via two methods, self-standing vote boxes and QR codes placed on tables in the office rooms. Both methods were compared to use of a yearly web-based survey list. Based on the analysis of the results gathered, the vote boxes led to a relatively high response rate as compared to use of the QR codes. This was most likely due to the ease of giving feedback using the vote boxes as compared to the QR codes. Data from the vote box, as compared to results obtained using the yearly survey, yielded similar average perceived comfort levels. Scores from the vote box, tended to be more extreme in terms of positive or negative votes, as compared to data collected using the yearly survey.

The rise of remote working has highlighted the importance of office spaces that support employees’ social well-being. However, there is a lack of explicit knowledge on how to design such spaces. In order to address this gap, this study explored the strategies employed by practitioners in designing social office spaces. In-depth interviews with fifteen experienced interior designers were analysed using means-end chain theory. This revealed the designers’ common aim to encourage informal social interactions through creating attractive, spacious, recognisable, and spatially integrated breakout spaces. Additionally, communicating group identity, promoting visibility, and offering a cosy atmosphere aimed to foster a sense of connectedness among employees. These findings not only enable more deliberate design decisions but also serve as valuable insights for less experienced designers. Moreover, the framework of design components, affordances and design objectives that emerged from this study can enhance communication between designers and stakeholders involved in office projects.

Today's global context of mass-produced items has resulted in an increasing 'distance', or alienation, between people and the origins of the items they buy and use: an unhealthy human-product relationship. This observation permits the search for an alternative interpretation of well-being: a transformation that would support resilience and self sufficiency, and a better human product relationship or 'a new partnership', as advocated by various scholars. In this paper, this new partnership is considered through supporting 'Do-It-Yourself' (DIY) product design: a scenario in which professional designers facilitate laypersons to design for themselves. Anticipating (1) the designer's responsibility, and (2) the layperson's innate desire to create, this paper introduces a 'Design for DIY' framework method to help bridge the knowledge gap between the product designer and the layperson. The initial starting points of this study, complemented by a range of 'Design for DIY' studies, and an exploration of existing design frameworks and design models, resulted in the design of a 'Design-for-DIY' framework. This paper concludes with recommendations for the testing and further development of the Design-for-DIY framework.

This paper presents a user-centered design project examining how to reduce the long-term sedentary behavior of desk-based working adults by motivating them to utilize their sit-stand desks to make more transitions between sitting and standing. The project involved a range of design techniques and research methods to look deeper into the practices and habits of working adults and better understand why this lack of sit-stand desk use occurs and how it can be changed. Combining the findings of the different research techniques led to an innovative design strategy consisting of 5 key considerations to reduce the sedentary behavior of working adults: (1) reminders of when to alter between sitting & standing; (2) social support; (3) awareness of effects on body & mind; (4) education on sit-stand desk benefits & proper use; (5) control over sit/stand transitions The results of these considerations were applied in a final concept call BMDesk.

The literature on Design Anthropology (DA) is skewed towards discussion exploring anthropology's potential for design. In contrast, discourse on how design can contribute to anthropology is somewhat limited. This article proposes an ‘Anthropology through Design’ (AtD) approach by reflecting on a study on the emergent phenomenon of ‘energy exchange’. The AtD approach aims to generate anthropological knowledge of an emergent sociocultural phenomenon through the use of a design intervention. This article describes four intertwined tracks—Framing, Design Intervening, Ethnographic Particular Understanding, and Anthropological General Understanding—of our AtD process. The proposed AtD approach takes a strategic step in relocating ‘design’ from being an object of anthropology to becoming an instrument for doing anthropology.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to aid conceptualization of social well-being at work by identifying its components in a contemporary office context, so adequate measures can be developed to monitor social well-being and to assess the impact of interventions in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach: This study used existing interview data from recent post-occupancy evaluations of two large activity-based flexible offices in the Dutch public sector. Data-driven concept mapping of 182 different employees' statements on social aspects of well-being was used to find communalities in their perceptions. Findings: From the data 14 key concepts emerged referring to employees' social needs, reactions to (anti-)social behaviour of others and perceived social affordances of the work environment. Contrary to established theory, social well-being appeared to be a context-bound phenomenon, including components of both short-term hedonic and long-term eudaimonic well-being. Research limitations/implications: The findings serve as an inductive source for the further development of adequate measures of social well-being at work. Limitations concern the specific (cultural) setting of the cases and the use of existing data. Practical implications: Preliminary suggestions for fostering social well-being include change management, participatory design, being alert of the identified risks of activity-based offices and supporting privacy regulation, identity marking and a sense of community, as well as a diversity of informal face-to-face interactions balanced with quiet spaces. Originality/value: This article contributes to the conceptualization of social well-being in contemporary offices by discussing established social well-being theory and analysing real-world data, using a method novel to management research.

Within the areas of distributed, off-grid, and decentralized energy, there is a growing interest in local energy exchanges. A crucial component of an energy exchange is a return provided by an energy-receiver to an energy-giver for the energy provided. The existing energy literature on such returns is primarily limited to monetary returns and lacks a critical discussion on the different types of monetary and non-monetary returns possible and variation in people’ preferences for these. Based on an ethnographic ‘research intervention’ study conducted at two off-grid villages in rural India for 11 months, this article presents a sociocultural understanding of returns. The article presents a classification of returns consisting of three types, i.e., in-cash, in-kind and intangible, and proposes a conceptual model of ‘returns-continuum.’ The article showcases how people's preference for a type of return varies with the nature of their social relationships with each other and suggests that configuring a return is not merely an economic act but a complex sociocultural process. Finally, the article recommends to energy researchers and practitioners to enable diversity in returns, to acknowledge dynamics of social relations in returns, to interconnect energy economy with the local in-kind economy, and to engage with ethnographic approaches.

This chapter presents an approach for organising research and innovation in the Living Lab context, where context research instruments, as well as conceptualised, developed and tested prototypes are integrated in one hardware and software platform (BOCS platform). The BOCS platform allows collecting of sensor and building management data, self-reporting of subjective information by users and providing feedback to users through a variety of channels. By this, the platform supports iterative cycles of context researching, co-creating, implementing and testing of solutions. The initial goal for the use of the platform is to enable creation of solutions aiding office occupants in improving their comfort while reducing building energy use. This goal is attained by enabling iterative identification and a gradual build-up of in-depth understanding of involved social practices, and incremental introduction and evaluation of ways to support the change of these social practices through monitoring, self reporting and feedback in office environments. The chapter outlines the organisation of the proposed process in detail. The approach is further positively evaluated based on the outcomes of a preliminary case study. It is finally suggested that in the future the approach may be applied to other Living Lab situations where complex challenges are faced and fast results are expected.