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D.V. Keyson

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Transformative Action for the Emergence of Shared Futures

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. ...
Conference paper (2023) - Piet Jacobs, Coen Hoogervorst, Agata Rijs, Sander van der Harst, David Keyson
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. ...
Journal article (2023) - Susanne Colenberg, Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Natalia Romero Herrera, David Keyson
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. ...
Journal article (2023) - Jan Willem Hoftijzer, David Keyson
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. ...

Providing Working Adults with a Tool to Reduce their Sedentary Behavior

Book chapter (2022) - M.E. Adar, R. de Bruin, D.V. Keyson
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. ...
Conference paper (2022) - S.E. Colenberg, N.A. Romero Herrera, D.V. Keyson
Background and aim – Lack of privacy is a prominent issue in contemporary offices. This study aimed to identify interior design features that jointly influence satisfaction with privacy and noise in the office workspace, and estimate their predictive power. This knowledge can inform strategic workplace design. Methods – Eight design features were defined that were expected to influence visual, acoustic and physical privacy, noise from other people and acoustic quality, and which would be easy to report for users. Data were collected through an online survey among office workers in the Dutch public sector (N = 323). The joint impact of design features on the experienced privacy and noise was calculated through ordinal regression analysis. Results – The data indicate that small, relatively isolated rooms predict privacy and noise satisfaction better than privacy screens, soft flooring, and visibility control. Workspace soundproofing increases satisfaction with sound privacy and acoustics, but it does not reduce noise annoyance. Originality – This study operationalizes architectural privacy along several dimensions and from a user perspective, and hierarchically relates them to specific workspace satisfaction outcomes, generating actionable insights for workplace designers. Practical and social implications – The study can serve as a source for evidence-based workplace design and management that aims to balance user needs for privacy and quiet against their need for social interaction. Currently, this balance is especially important because hybrid working may increase the need for informal interaction at the office while there still is a need for privacy and quiet spaces. Type of paper – Research paper (full). ...
Conference paper (2022) - S.E. Colenberg, N.A. Romero Herrera, D.V. Keyson
The prolonged working from home during the recent pandemic has increased awareness of the social function of the office: employees missed informal social interaction with co-workers, face-to-face meetings, and spontaneous encounters. If the trend of hybrid working persists, one of the main functions of the physical office will be to support face-to-face interaction and social bonding for increasing well-being, innovation, and organizational commitment. This short paper explores how workplace design could support the social well-being of its users based on established theory in the field of environmental psychology. First, individual social well-being at work and social workplace affordances are defined. Next, workplace affordances for social well-being are deducted from theories on the psychology of space, such as Space syntax theory, Privacy regulation theory, Behavior setting theory, and Place attachment theory. From this analysis, three categories of workplace design features are induced which could support social well-being at work: interaction affordances, privacy affordances, and identity affordances. A conceptual framework is presented that connects social well-being components to these three categories of affordances. This framework can serve as a starting point for the collection of empirical studies, the deduction of specific social affordances from design practice, and the development of design strategies for enhancing social well-being in offices. ...

A design interventionist approach to generate anthropological knowledge

Journal article (2021) - Abhigyan Singh, Natalia Romero Herrera, Hylke W. van Dijk, David V. Keyson, Alex T. Strating
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. ...
Conference paper (2021) - S.E. Colenberg, D.V. Keyson
Background and aim – While remote working is not a new phenomenon, Covid-19 has forced many office workers to work from home for long consecutive periods. Recent research shows that while most of them say they can work productively from home, many feel less connected to their colleagues. This study explores how these experiences may influence employees’ needs towards the office workplace. Methods – Cross-sectional data were used from an online survey among four Dutch public sector organisations conducted between November 2020 and February 2021. These data include perceptions of 567 office workers regarding their workplace, both at home and at the office, and their motivations for working at the office. Results – The survey data show that the main reason to (want to) work at the office has shifted from meeting expectations to the need for informal social interaction. On the other hand, many still need the office for doing concentration work. Although the home workplace feels more comfortable, ultimately it is not rated better than the office workplace. The respondents indicate several shortcomings of their current office regarding support of socializing, belongingness, and privacy. Originality – While in the media different assumptions have been made about consequences of Covid-19 for future office use, few empirical studies have been conducted to substantiate these expectations. Practical implications – This study shows that Covid-19 has increased the need for in-person interaction at the office without decreasing the need for silence, and indicates how offices could better support socializing balanced with concentration work. Type of paper – Short research paper. ...
Journal article (2020) - Susanne Colenberg, Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Natalia Romero Herrera, David Keyson
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. ...

a conceptual model and research strategy

Conference paper (2020) - S.E. Colenberg, N.A. Romero Herrera, D.V. Keyson
Purpose: The covid-19 pandemic has increased awareness of office workers’ need for real-life social interaction, connectedness and belongingness at work. The purpose of this paper is to present a way to study this important, but still under-examined, social dimension of employee well-being in relation to workplace design. A conceptual model outlines how the physical work environment might support or inhibit perception and behaviour related to social well-being of individual office workers. A research strategy is presented to develop a framework for guiding the design of workplaces. Theory: Several well-being theories consider relatedness a basic human need. Fulfilling this need requires satisfying social interactions, leading to positive relationships and feelings of belonging. Spatial characteristics could encourage or discourage social interaction by influencing natural movement, visibility and privacy. In the workplace social interaction can be a support as well as a burden, depending on, for instance, privacy preferences and work activities. Therefore, the conceptual model presented here includes spatial characteristics encouraging or discouraging social interaction as well as the employee’s perception, behaviour, personal and situational factors. Methodology: First, workplace design and social well-being are defined and their relationship is depicted in a conceptual model. Subsequently, a mixed-methods approach is proposed to develop this model into a framework of relationships between specific workplace design elements and components of users’ social well-being. The proposed research strategy starts with an exploratory phase of additional literature study, analysis of case-study data, and pilot studies to identify parameters and try out methods. The subsequent phase of main data collection and analysis includes (a) a large-scale quantitative study using statistic modeling to identify significant relationships between outcome and predictor variables, and (b) a series of field experiments applying empirical research through design for studying ways to manipulate key predictors of social well-being using design interventions. The third phase synthesises the findings and translates them into a framework to guide workplace designers and other stakeholders. Findings: The model states that workplace design influences social well-being through actual and perceived affordances and behaviour, influenced by organizational and personal factors. Therefore it is acknowledged that measures for both the actual and the perceived work environment need to be developed. Similarly, measurement of both actual and perceived social interaction adds value to the insight in the relationship between workplace design and social wellbeing. Collecting data in real-life settings in contemporary offices will enhance the internal and external validity of the framework. Originality/value: The concept of social well-being at work has not yet been well defined and studied in a comprehensive and systematic way, nor has it entirely been connected to actual and perceived characteristics of the physical work environment. This paper makes a start with unravelling the complex relationship between workplace design, social interaction and social well-being, and offers a framework and practical suggestions for further research. ...

A context-embedded comfort assessment in indoor environmental quality investigations

The energy and building research community acknowledges the importance of including occupants' wellbeing in the evaluation of building energy performance. Particularly in office buildings, occupants' comfort assessment is not yet a common practice, partially due to the shortcomings of the comfort assessment activities. Contextual factors such as the organizational culture, occupants' personality traits and emotional states, and the building and research measurement infrastructures do interact with occupants' motivation to report and influence their actual reporting behaviour. By means of an in situ mixed method approach combining real-world research and user-centric methods, this study investigates the impact of a reporting-based comfort assessment. Two buildings, representing different organizational cultures, were selected to study the influence of reporting behaviour on comfort assessment. The buildings were equipped with innovative indoor climate monitoring and in situ comfort reporting infrastructure and 2-week field studies were conducted in both buildings. By discussing results from these studies, this paper contributes to the development of building research methodologies of indoor climate and comfort assessment by providing practical experience in embedding comfort reporting behaviour in the analysis of comfort assessment. A contextual typology of reporting behaviour is introduced and its implications regarding the reliability and validity of comfort reporting techniques are discussed. ...

An anthropological perspective on local energy sharing and trading

Journal article (2018) - Abhigyan Singh, Alex T. Strating, N. A. Romero Herrera, Debotosh Mahato, David V. Keyson, Hylke W. van Dijk
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. ...
Journal article (2018) - Natalia Romero Herrera, Juan Jiménez García, David Keyson, Paul Havinga
Shorter hospitalisation is a strategy that healthcare services have adopted to solve the problem of high demand for hospitalisation under conditions of insufficient resources. Early discharge demands patients to self-manage their recovery at home, while recovery is still perceived a clinician’s responsibility. This often results in an extra emotional and psychological load on patients. Due to the lack of measurements to include the emotional and psychological state of a patient in the home context, clinicians often oversee these issues in the evaluation of patients' recovery during hospital visits. This paper outlines the development of esther 1.0, an electronic tool based on Experience Sampling Method, that encourages senior patients of Total Hip Replacement (THR) to self-report their experiences related to their perceived physical and emotional state during the first weeks of recovery at home. This paper describes the emotional assessment of a THR patient and reflects on the value of this knowledge to develop professional support beyond the clinical recovery. ...
Good indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in classrooms is an essential requirement to ensure children’s comfort and learning performance. However, although in most studies the current situation of the IEQ in classrooms has been investigated, few or no studies have been focused on the way to ameliorate it. Recently, some researchers managed to utilize local control to improve local environment quality, but most of these studies have been focused on offices instead of classrooms. Existing knowledge about how to apply local control of IEQ in the classroom is very limited. This paper presents a summary of knowledge in both fields of IEQ in classrooms and local control. In addition, some issues will be discussed and new problems will be proposed. All of these discussions will illuminate the direction for further research on how to use local control to improve the IEQ in classrooms to facilitate childrens’ health and performance. ...
Conference paper (2017) - David V. Keyson, Marcus de Hoogh
Indoor comfort was earlier viewed as driven exclusively by the physics of the body’s heat exchange with its immediate thermal environment. There is now widespread recognition that a person’s thermal comfort and adaptation level, including behavioral aspects, physiological and psychological processes, including sense of control, influence comfort [1]. A stronger emphasis has been given not only to psychological parameters and their impact on satisfaction and productivity, but also to possibilities of energy saving in buildings while maintaining a high comfort standard [2]. A field study was conducted to consider the relationship between localized comfort control capabilities and self-reporting behavior. A significant effect was found for subjects’ frequency of self-reporting in relation to heating control behavior. ...

How to optimize IEQ in classrooms while achieving energy efficient goals?

Conference paper (2017) - Muxi Lei, Stanley Kurvers, David Keyson, P.M. Bluyssen
A good indoor environment in classrooms is important because school children spend a significant amount of their time at schools and children are more susceptible than adults. It is also clear that a school indoor environment can affect the wellbeing and performance of students but a comfortable and healthy school indoor environment consumes energy. In the last decades, indoor environment optimization and energy efficient measures have been introduced to reduce this problem. However, although those standards are met, the IEQ as experienced by occupants is still not acceptable. Also, even with the implementation of energy efficient measures, energy consumption keeps rising while health seems to decrease. Based on a review of literature, this paper identifies the causes for the discrepancies and future directions of research are proposed. It is concluded that future research should focus on holistic assessment of IEQ factors and take into account students’ needs and influence. ...
Book chapter (2017) - David Keyson, C. Baedeker
As technology has advanced so has the future role of living labs evolved. With the increased availability of wireless monitoring technologies including climate and activity sensors as well as self-reporting tools, the capability to convert virtually every house or building into a living lab has become a reality. ICT enables now the connectivity and merging of data sets across multiple living labs and monitored homes, providing a unique infrastructure for accelerating the adoption and marketing of innovations focused on sustainable living. The LivingLab approach is gaining more and more importance as a mechanism to study and shape sustainable behavior from the public and private perspective. ...
Book chapter (2017) - David Keyson, Natalia Romero Herrera
In this chapter several aspects in the design of home energy feedback are discussed along with the presentation of energy feedback design examples. The examples include the Ampul interface that was tested in the SusLab Concept House. Ampul was designed to enable users to maximize the use of available solar energy. A second example referenced is an aquarium metaphor in which plant, water and fish qualities are coupled to energy consumption and climate sensor data, which was developed as a demonstration and thirdly Powercord is described as an interface able to translate energy consumption into auditory sounds. ...
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. ...