Co-Designing for Wellbeing in the Hybrid Smart Workplace

Abstract

This work involves the building occupants of a smart building during a period of hybrid working, with the purpose of co-designing data-rich workplaces that support wellbeing. Through the design of a custom card-kit based on PROWELL Model of Workplace Wellbeing Assessment, this work provides insights from an online 90 min co-design workshop with six building occupants utilizing the card-kit to speculate on the design of data-driven physical interventions that support workplace wellbeing. Transcript data from the video-recorded workshop were thematically analyzed, producing findings namely framing novel socio-technical dimensions for biophilic and biomimetic designs in the built environment. Contributing to discourses on Human-Building Interaction (HBI) research, findings were synthesized into a design agenda and considerations for supporting wellbeing in the hybrid workplace that utilizes physical feedback and passive sensing. Composed under the premise of co-creating smart environments together with their occupants, the proposed agenda highlights areas of critical research interest for HBI, Biophilic Design and Soft Robotics in the built environment.

1. Introduction

The post-COVID-19 hybridity of the workplace is a novel context for Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Building Interaction (HBI) research. The hybrid workplace—namely, the workplace spanning across collocated office and domestic remote working, is largely heterogenous with each workplace employing different practices and tools. Numerous technologies have been developed and employed to assist with hybrid collaboration in the workplace, particularly tools that bring synchronous and asynchronous collaboration together, e.g., enhanced chat tools in Teams videoconferencing software [1,2]. Hybrid meetings provide their own unique challenges and opportunities for research—see for instance works on using double robots for supporting remote presence during hybrid meetings [2,3,4].

However, the experience of the physical dimensions of built environments as well as people’s relationships with data in them has not been particularly explored in the context of developing technologies to support wellbeing in the hybrid workplace. This becomes particularly relevant with the contemporary influx of sensory technologies in the built environment, referring to the rising popularity of the so-called “smart buildings” agenda [5]. Following Buckman et al. [5], smart workplace buildings are essentially data-rich environments that integrate structure, systems, services, and management in order to optimize building performance and occupant experience; being not only automated, but also adaptive and responsive.

The study reported herein takes a novel angle and focuses on the hybrid smart workplace as in the experience of domestic and shared (office) places and data in that context, opening the design space for future research that address wellbeing in both the physical and digital dimension of built environments.

Doing so, this work explores the experience of wellbeing across the shared and domestic workplace, foregrounding building occupants’ thoughts and narratives around place-based interactions to support aspects of wellbeing. This work employs speculative co-design as a research method to explore the design space of physical interactions and the use of data for wellbeing in the built environment, engaging the building occupants into speculating on design possibilities through a purpose-made custom card deck. We conducted a co-design workshop with six participants facilitated through use of a custom card-kit¹ (developed based on PROWELL² model of workplace wellbeing assessment), which explored future possibilities for designing interactive interventions to support wellbeing in hybrid workplaces.

Using the purpose-made card-kit which illustrated physical spaces, interaction affordances, sensory data (including environmental or biometric data), and wellbeing dimensions, the building occupants speculated on how their workplace environments could physically support their wellbeing at the office and at home. The card-kit enabled the building occupants to materialize abstract concepts of wellbeing and data use in the buildings into tangible design concepts, giving them a tool to navigate the design space of architecture-as-display, physical interaction, and ambient feedback in the context of wellbeing in the built environment.

Based on the analysis of the participants’ narratives, this work informs the design space of biophilic design and human-building interactions (HBI), by framing of a design agenda and considerations for fostering human-centered data-rich workplaces for their occupants’ wellbeing, motivated by the following research question:

How do building occupants envision data-driven environments for supporting wellbeing in the hybrid workplace?

This paper offers empirical and methodological contributions to the field of HBI research. First, it makes methodological contributions to design research for the built environment, developing a card-kit that brings wellbeing, data use, and physical interactions together for co-designing future workplaces. Second, it provides empirical insights from the building occupants’ perceptions of and priorities around wellbeing for the hybrid workplace which informs the human-centered design of data-rich workplaces. Third, deriving from the above, we frame a design agenda as a set of considerations for interventions that address physical, ambient and tangible interactions for supporting wellbeing in the shared and domestic workplace, highlighting novel opportunities for biophilic design in the building for work. Based on our findings, our work frames a design space for human-centered workplaces, pointing towards the emerging space of soft robotics and actuated materials for environmental awareness.

1.1. Background

1.1.1. Hybrid Workplace and Research Gaps

Lockdowns initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic have established the home as a permanent workspace for many [6,7,8]. The domestic spaces in which this remote work is conducted are generally limited and congested. The remote home worker is thereby physically based in a highly unregulated and heterogenous domestic space, a space for which separation of work and home is a challenge [8,9,10,11]. Remote workplaces raise challenges for the wellbeing of remote home workers, who feel both isolated and yet constantly connected [6,9,11,12], struggling to keep a balance between domestic- and technology-mediated work and life [13]. Previous HCI studies have outlined some of the key wellbeing issues in the workplace, with a particular emphasis on work stress [14,15], low productivity and motivation [16,17]—leaving, however, the home office broadly unexplored.

The hybrid workplace, combining co-located office-based, and remote domestic working [2,3], has many potential advantages for the wellbeing of workers if managed appropriately (both by manager and workers). There is no unique recipe for hybrid working, with organizations and teams developing their own hybrid work models to suit tailored needs, for instance, prioritizing co-located meetings for synchronous collaboration, and allowing remote working for asynchronous collaboration. Broadly speaking, hybrid meetings [2,3,4,18], the synchronous collaboration between co-located and remote workers, appear to be the most challenging form of hybrid working, with implications for inclusion and social wellbeing of workers [6,8,19]. Beyond hybrid working practices, wellbeing in hybrid workplace, e.g., concerns around environmental wellbeing [8,20,21] and how these translate into hybrid working patterns, remain a relatively unexplored space for HCI research.

1.1.2. HCI/HBI Research for Workplace Wellbeing

Research on wellbeing at the workplace spans across many factors, including environmental wellbeing [22,23], i.e., light, noise, temperature, physical activity [16,24], and ergonomics [25,26], and emotional and cognitive wellbeing [17,27,28], including social interactions and collaborations in the workplace. Bringing the focus to how the data-rich built environment, i.e., the smart buildings for work, can support or inhibit aspects of wellbeing [28,29,30,31], relevant work focuses on the impact of architecture and the physical space on wellbeing and human behavior (often utilizing wearable sensory devices to study those)—see the broader work of Sternberg [32], or Alavi’s Hide and Seek in the workplace [29,33].

A large body of work is concerned with indoor climate in (both conventional or smart) office spaces [34,35], its impact on productivity and wellbeing, and the most appropriate ways to sense, communicate and engage the building occupants in co-shaping it [36,37,38]. Alavi et al. addressed the multidimensional issue of comfort in the workplace through Comfortbox [36]—a sensing physical display of environmental data, engaging the office space occupants in gaining awareness on their embodied comfort. Air quality in the offices has been the focus of recent HCI and HBI research projects [39,40,41,42]; Hilo [42], a predictive system for CO₂ mediated by wearable feedback, notifies the occupants of an office space to open the windows when indoor quality reaches a critical point, given the outdoor pollution is low. The work of Kim and Li [40] addresses ambient light as air quality feedback and its perceivability as eco feedback. Dang et al. [39] explore different forms of ambient air quality notifications for smart rooms, addressing user experiences and expectations of indoor air quality visualizations. In a different approach, other works address environmental and emotional wellbeing and climatic concerns through employing biophilia when designing for the workplace—see [31,43].

Light has been probably the most studied environmental aspect for wellbeing in the workplace [44,45,46,47], including the impact of natural light [44,46] and light pollution [45,47,48], and the most explored medium for ambient feedback in the context of environmental [40], physical [24,49,50], or emotional wellbeing [46,51,52,53]. Many projects are coupling light with feedback to promote movement and physical activity in the workplace [24,49,50]. Light as biofeedback (generated by wearable sensors measuring arousal levels) was used to explore the implications of wellbeing awareness in the workplace—see “MoodLight” [52] or “DeLight” [53], also as a means to create social connectedness [45,51].

Other projects explore the potential of shape changing interfaces—see Leithinger [54,55] and Takashima [56,57] and interactive or actuating materials—see [58,59], to encourage social interactions at the workspace. Based on the notion of affordances, Grønbæk et al. [60,61] explore the potentials of shape changing interfaces to support social interactions in shared informal meetings—see Kirigami table [61]. Broader works addressing the potentials of shape changing interfaces in the workplace recently employ actuating textiles [62], and robotics—see WaddleWalls [63], to enhance safety and privacy, support with collaboration and productivity, and address visual and physical comfort [64,65].

The recent focus on hybrid workplace wellbeing mainly addresses aspects of emotional wellbeing and social wellbeing/collaboration aspects [3,6,9,12,66]—see Fan et al.’s [6] research on subjective wellbeing associated with shifting places of work; they identified four patterned constellations of wellbeing based on burnout, work–life conflict, and job and life satisfaction. Plenty of research on the hybrid focuses on meetings, leaving the discussion on spatial and physical aspects, and environmental considerations for wellbeing broadly unaddressed, hence the motivation of this work. To further contextualize dimensions of wellbeing in the built environment, the next section briefly addresses current relevant frameworks and their application on assessing wellbeing.

1.1.3. Integrated Wellbeing and Models of Wellbeing Assessment

Wellbeing in the built environment and recently, in the hybrid workplace, has been the core work of Esther Sternberg [32], framed under integrative health and its connection to the built environment [67] (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). Integrative health is defined as “healing-oriented medicine that takes into account the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle” and includes seven core domains: sleep; resiliency; environment; movement; relationships; spirituality; nutrition. Sternberg [32] and Engineer et al. [67] connect these seven integrative health domains to the built environment, understanding the built environment and human health in layers (see Figure 1) and unpacking how these layers corelate in forming a holistic approach to wellbeing (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). Moreover, they suggest specific building interventions that enhance and support healthy lifestyles and wellbeing such as access to natural and circadian electrical lighting, views, connections to nature (biophilia), indoor air quality, control of one’s environment, and spatial layout, aiming to guide design professionals in doing interventions to support each of the seven integrated health domains, and health professionals in understanding how elements of the built environment design can support holistic health [67].

In her recent work, Sternberg foregrounds these seven key domains into principles to create a workplace that fosters wellbeing in any place—with direct references to hybrid working. These are, Resilience: reducing noise, avoid working in noisy spots and keep humidity and noise levels in middle range; Movement: creating spaces that encourage physical activity; Sleep: natural light to encourage circadian patterns; Relationships: create opportunities to gather with co-workers; Environment: bring nature indoors and have access to nature outdoors; Nutrition: consume food that helps alertness and focus; and, Spirituality: visiting spaces for calming, recharging and restoring breaks. Some of these aspects have been suggested by broader literature in workplace wellbeing [68,69,70,71] as well as remote workplace wellbeing [6,8,69].

The above research has driven contemporary building design through the development of building standards to assess and evaluate building design. WELL certification has been a leading standard for ensuring wellbeing in the workplace. It consists of ten key concepts (see Figure 4); each of which further develops into criteria for assessing the building’s design and performance. WELL is a performance-based system; assessments involve on-site testing of building performance³. Although considering cognitive and social wellbeing, the primary focus of WELL is the building’s infrastructure and systems performance measurement to inform knowledge on the human health–environment relationships. It can be described as a quantitative, top-down and performance-oriented model, that does not necessarily include mixed research methods, e.g., surveys or qualitative assessment of the experiences of the building occupants.

The PROWELL⁴ model is one of the most comprehensive models for assessing wellbeing in the workplace, and indirectly, the building’s design and capacity to foster wellbeing. It provides a comprehensive list of seven (7) Key health and wellbeing Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the workplace; encompassing three major dimensions of wellbeing: physical—including environmental wellbeing, physical comfort, physical activity, and nourishment; social wellbeing, and mental wellbeing—including emotional and cognitive wellbeing (see Figure 5). PROWELL is essentially an analytics platform, providing practitioners with an online tool to assess wellbeing. It is built on dimensions similar to the key WELL concepts, but it extends beyond building performance to evaluating organizational culture. Although not explicitly framed around the built environment, it is used by researchers for evaluating how the built environment supports or inhibits wellbeing—see relevant research on workplace acoustical planning based on PROWELL application [72], combining on-site assessments, surveys and sensory data. PROWELL wellbeing dimensions served as the basis for designing the card-kit and the co-design activity as will be illustrated in further detail in the next section.

2. Materials and Methods

We employed co-design to engage the building occupants into speculating design ideas that make data visible in the buildings, to experience data in place and support wellbeing. To support participants towards considering physical manifestations of data and the architecture as a display, we needed to invent ways that engage the participants into the design space and language of physical displays and ambient feedback, e.g., use of light, shape, and color change as data feedback. We therefore designed a card-kit to engage participants in the physical interaction design language, and through co-design, speculated opportunities for feedback to support wellbeing in the buildings for work. The sections below provide details on the study that took place, an overview of co-design as a method of engagement, and a detailed description of the design of the card-kit used for the activity.

2.1. Co-Design, Participatory Research and Speculative Design

Co-design is a collaborative process that brings users and stakeholders together with designers to ideate on designing solutions together to a given design problem [73,74,75,76]. Co-design and Participatory design belong within a participatory research methodological framework, both advocating for the involvement of non-experts in the design process [76]. However, they have different historical roots, emphases, and levels of conceptual precision [76]. In HCI research, Participatory design (PD)⁵ is often used when emphasizing on the democratization of design with its ethical or political dimensions being foregrounded. The key message in PD is that “those affected by technology should have a say in its design” which urges the long-term engagement of participants in the design process through diverse, iterative ways—from problem definition, to envisioning solutions, to critically reflecting upon designs, etc. Co-design⁶, on the other hand, treats participants as equal creative partners. In co-design, participants are treated as co-designers; there is a strong focus on creativity, making and collective ideation rather than power-distribution. Design projects can benefit from co-design sessions in various ways, e.g., it improves the creative process of ideation and highlights perspectives and sensitivities of the users [74,77], which is highly relevant when designing for Human-Centered Smart Buildings and for the purpose of this project.

In co-design, users, experts or stakeholders are invited to participate in the design activities as designers; however, since they often lack the design training, it is important to provide supportive materials to establish a common language between users and designers/researchers or experts from different disciplines, and help them with the design process [74,77,78]. Ideation card decks are a common approach in co-design, used to engage non-experts with the design process [79,80]. Relevant works illustrate the rationale behind designing card-decks as ideation toolkits [79,81] and results when used to facilitate workshops [82]. Card-kits have widespread design focus including: designing for wellbeing⁷ [68,83]; evaluating workplace environments [84] and workplace wellbeing [85]; unpack broader relationships with the built environment in the context of IoT/smart buildings [77,86,87]—see Home Life Insight Cards for instance⁸ [88]; addressing issues including privacy [89] in such environments. Focusing on co-design and ideation cards for IoT as of interest for this work [87], past works include: Cards’n’Dice, a playful method to explore basic IoT principles and create scenarios including sensors and actuators using a loaded dice and a set of cards; IoT Design Deck, designed to support during the whole design process of an IoT product or service from idea generation to creating the first prototype; IoT Design Kit, designed for companies that want to integrate IoT into their business; utilizing strategy canvases and purpose-made cards; KnowCards, which focus on making IoT functionality and interactivity accessible to non-technical minded users; Mapping the IoT, which focuses on the refinement of pre-existing ideas for problem-framing, concept development and evaluation; Tiles IoT Toolkit, which helps non-experts to generate ideas or invent IoT products in a short amount of time.

The above works informed the design of our card-kit around data interactions in the workplace buildings, but they have less or no focus on architecture and built environment as a source of interactivity or with the concept of integrated wellbeing in the workplace. These gaps pointed towards the need to design a new card-kit, to be able to contextualize the problem of human-data interactions and integrate wellbeing in the workplace. In terms of designing cards to prompt towards thinking about the physical interactivity of building elements; a few works on affordances and shape changing interface design toolkits were considered; see broadly the work of Petersen on affordances [90] and shape changing interfaces design; Morphino [91], bioinspired card-based toolkit for designing shape changing interfaces; and Design-Heuristics⁹, a card-kit mostly targeted on industrial design/product design, also addressing affordances and physical manipulation of the lived-in environment as a source of design inspiration. Similarly, these works did not address the workplace or wellbeing, and partly served as a source of inspiration.

In many instances, co-design can include Speculative Design methods [92,93,94], featuring the creation of hypothetical scenarios and artifacts that speculate future possibilities, provoke thought, and stimulate debate about the future [92]. In this work, and in order to investigate feedback strategies within the context of integrated health and wellbeing in the buildings, the building elements, spaces and objects obtain the ability to be highly interactive, which gives this co-design study a highly speculative approach. This was supported by the design of specific ‘Inspiration cards’ which served as speculative prompts to support participants envisioning future technologies and designs, described in the following section.

In summary, we frame this work within a speculative co-design methodology. Participants were engaged as co-designers to speculate interactions that support wellbeing in the hybrid workplace, enabling us to surface their priorities and sensitivities and to extrapolate potential design futures for smart buildings. We positioned participants as creative partners contributing to solution ideation, supported through the provision of design materials (card-kit). However, participants were not treated as co-authors in the development of the research itself, as would be the case in co-creation-oriented or participatory design approaches [76]. Accordingly, our method was deliberately bounded and centered on a single co-design session, avoiding prolonged engagement, participant involvement in problem framing, or post-analytic participation in data interpretation. This can be treated as limitation, without however, undermining the methodological validity of this work.

2.2. The Custom Card-Deck

The purpose of the card-deck was to support co-designing activities with building occupants, providing a design language to prompt them to consider physical and tangible interactions, data and wellbeing dimensions. To do that, the first author designed a card deck with a total of 105 cards. The card deck¹⁰ revolved around four key components: Wellbeing, Sensors, Actions/Interactions and Spaces, including building elements, architectural features and objects in space.

Actions/Interactions cards (Figure 6) provide the connection between Sensor cards (sensory data) and Spaces (workspace elements). Heavily influenced by the notion of affordances [90], i.e., the quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses (degrees of freedom) on how it can or should be used. Under this lens, the physical properties of the environment invite building occupants towards certain (inter)actions, which were then translated into cards’ action and interaction concepts in order to guide the design of interactive and adaptive architectures, physical interfaces, and ubiquitous embedded interfaces. The Actions, i.e., how the user manipulates spatial features, and the Interactions, i.e., how the users–environments interact with each other, cards are left open to interpret on how to use, without clarifying if they refer to an imaginative user that acts according to the concepts stated to cause a desired change, or if the environment causes that change on its own. This has been left vague on purpose, with a view to exploring ideas of control, environmental determinism, and anthropomorphism, of (interactive) architecture, i.e., architecture that leads to interactions or actions and becomes the character. The action and interaction cards illustrate color and shape change, different aspects of feedback, materiality, and temporality of data driven feedback; examples of action cards are open, shift, assemble, twist, bend, etc. Examples of interaction cards are changing color, light, material properties, visual, olfactory feedback, etc.

Wellbeing cards (Figure 7) were designed as per PROWELL wellbeing dimensions: physical wellbeing, including physical comfort, environmental wellbeing, physical activity, and nourishment; mental wellbeing, including cognitive and emotional wellbeing; and social wellbeing. Key aspects are mentioned under each of these dimensions; for instance, air quality, light, temperature is under environmental wellbeing, noise under physical comfort, etc.—but without this being a strict classification. Cards were also left blank for participants to edit as they please. Some indication cards were also provided to guide thinking around wellbeing aspects: awareness, improvement control, although these terms were also provided as an indication on the cards.

In terms of the other two card categories, Sensing cards (Figure 8) include different types of passive sensors to prompt thinking of data sources. Apart from the data sources collected, the physical form of the sensor is mentioned, e.g., flat sensors, wearable sensors.

Spaces cards (Figure 9) include sketches of rooms, architectural elements, and objects, with blank cards provided to give the participants the option to sketch their own. The card deck also provides Inspiration cards (Figure 10) which served as diegetic prototypes, illustrating potential future technologies as outcomes of the card deck, to further trigger the participants’ imagination.

Finally, the design of ‘Inspiration cards’ gave this co-design study a strong speculative angle. These cards served as speculative prompts to support participants envisioning and sketching future technologies and novel interactions in 3-dimensional space. The inspiration cards were samples taken from art and architecture projects (e.g., pneumatic, auxetic or origami structures, light displays), interaction design works (e.g., soft sensors), and existing design products in the market (e.g., designer chairs). Their selection was arbitrary, and the card’s use was optional, to just support imagination if the participants had no inspiration when sketching an artifact.

In total, the card deck¹¹ included the following card categories: Wellbeing, Spaces, Sensors and Data, Actions and Interactions, and Inspiration Cards. The use of cards by the participants was supported by the researcher as facilitator and the provision of additional templates to place the cards (as described in the following section).

2.3. Study Description

“Co-designing for wellbeing in the hybrid workplace” was a co-design workshop (90 min) with six participants, occupants of the same smart workplace building.

Participants were introduced to the PROWELL model (5 min), the custom card-kit described above and how to use the cards (5 min) through a MIRO board. They were left to explore the card categories, spaces, sensing, wellbeing and action/interaction cards—on their own and choose some that resonate with them following the card deck rules (10’). The rules included selecting 1–2 wellbeing cards, 1–2 sensor cards, 1–3 spaces cards, and 2–5 action cards. Then participants were requested to individually form a scenario of a speculative interactive experience in the workplace using their cards at a dedicated canvas space, and use post it and notes to make it as clear as possible to the rest of the participants (15 min). Then, the participants were divided into groups of two and were asked to choose one of their scenarios and collaborate to develop it further for another 10 min. After a short break (5 min), they were then given 20 min to work in groups to produce a design concept of the interactive experience described in their group stories¹². The inspiration cards were also openly available to them for inspiration, but were not allowed to actively use it in their scenarios and designs. They were asked to sketch, use images, illustrations, and annotations supported by Post-it notes to co-create their designs on a dedicated canvas. In the final 20 min, participants talked about their individual and group scenarios and their design concepts (see Figure 11).

The co-design study was conducted remotely during May 2021, using MIRO (https://miro.com/) and Zoom (https://www.zoom.com). Ethical approval to conduct the study was obtained in April 2021, approved by Newcastle University Ethics Committee. The study was designed and facilitated by the first author and was video recorded and transcribed using Otter.ai (https://otter.ai/).

Figure 11. Example of a card-deck arrangement featuring a scenario (above) and a sketch (below) by P01 and P06¹³.

Figure 11. Example of a card-deck arrangement featuring a scenario (above) and a sketch (below) by P01 and P06¹³.

2.4. Participants

Participants (see

Table 1. Participant demographics and IDs.

Participant Number	Expertise	Gender	Age	Ethnicity
P01	Computer Scientist	M	<30	White (Western Europe)
P02	HCI/Behavioral Scientist	M	30–40	White (Western Europe)
P03	HCI/Digital Democracy	M	30–40	White (British)
P04	HCI/Education	F	>40	Asian (West Asia)
P05	HCI	F	<30	Asian (East Asia)
P06	HCI	F	<30	White (Western Europe)

) were recruited from occupants of a smart office building; all working in the same workplace pre-pandemic, remotely during the pandemic, and currently returning in hybrid mode for the time being. Most of them had relevant knowledge in computer science/information technology and HCI/interaction design disciplines, but none identified themselves as knowledgeable on IoT, interactive architecture and/or tangible computing.

2.5. Data Analysis

Textual data from the MIRO boards (e.g., sticky notes) were exported in csv format and combined with the transcripts of the video recordings to be coded (qualitatively analyzed) together. The visual data (MIRO canvases containing cards and the sketches produced) were exported as images in jpg format for analysis, following an annotated portfolio-style approach of coding and visually analyzing the images [95,96]. In the first round of analysis, textual data (sticky notes + transcripts) and visual data (MIRO canvases with cards, sketches) were coded separately. At a second round, we reviewed and clustered the codes of both textual and visual data together. We then conducted an inductive thematic analysis based on the whole coded dataset, whereby themes emerged from the data itself, resulting in the high-level themes described in the following section.

3. Results

The co-design workshop highlighted the need for enhancing nature in the built environment, illustrated in all nine participants’ scenarios where plantings were present. All nine participants’ scenarios (six individual stories, and three group stories) involved a reference to bringing nature to the workplace, e.g., “adding plants to the environment that we are working in, some at desk and some in the building […] can generate a better collective mood, give a better space to spend time in, and have a break from the routine in front of the screen. (P01)”. This is a key finding about the importance of presence of nature in the shared and remote workplace, with participants linking nature to different aspects of environmental and physical, emotional and social wellbeing.

In six scenarios, nature was linked to social wellbeing, i.e., nature providing cues to social connectedness or to prompt towards seeking social interactions, emotional wellbeing, i.e., having a restorative capacity, restoring from stress, and physical activity, i.e., prompting people to move or go out. In six scenarios, nature has directly linked with environmental wellbeing and improving indoor climate of the workplace, with indirect references to air quality aspects. Furthermore, the ways that the participants envisioned these environments to respond to support wellbeing raised interesting considerations around social and participatory dimensions of biophilic design.

Following a thematic analysis, key themes as they evolved throughout the participant’s stories are discussed below.

3.1. Augmenting Nature and Human Intervention

Throughout seven scenarios, participants presented different versions of ‘instrumented’ nature—having sensing and actuating capacity—envisioning biophilic environments that enriched to enhance human-nature relationships and human wellness.

An interesting theme emerged around the use of sensors for supporting plant care and the need for human intervention in that matter. Amongst the scenarios, two were positioned in the opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of human–plant interactions. Naming it as “active but calm” workplace, P04’s scenario envisioned sensory-enriched plants can be automatically taken care of regardless of if their occupants are there or not (to better accommodate hybrid working patterns) “… plants supported with embedded sensors that respond to temperature, humidity, etc., and water according to their needs (P04)”. In its most basic form, sensory-rich plants would support automated care for them without the need for any human intervention, while maintaining a healthy micro-climate in the office.

On the other end, some participants thought of the human–plant relationships as mutually beneficial and therefore, important to emphasize upon. Instead of plants that are being cared for autonomously, P01 and P06 thought that sensory-rich plants could instead raise awareness on their needs, prompting people to care for them (see Figure 12). Caring for office plans could provide a meaningful break from work while building a collective spirit for the much-needed hybrid workplace. They further envisioned gamified digital twins that coordinate remote and co-located workers in caring for the plants.

“[…] you have reminders to just go take a walk and care about the plants […] These plants exist also in virtual reality, so that you can actually have the same plant in real life as tokens to your virtual space. […] If you see a plant (belonging to anyone) which is going to die, you can give it water and your name will be written and get rewarded (tokens) virtually […] You will also have access to information about the plant species, about the owner, and all the kind of environmental conditions which are needed for that plan to grow well. There are sensors placed in the plants which are going to help you knowing if water is enough, if light is too much, etc. (P01)”

P01 and P06 group scenario and sketch.

P01’s scenario further touched upon biophilia as well as nutrition, suggesting horticulture for the office–edible instrumented plants such as spices and an IoT system that organizes a community of building occupants in caring for them.

In their scenario, P06 and P01 connect nature in the buildings with healthy breaks from work and, indirectly, physical activity and movement in the buildings. Their scenario provides an interesting social dimension in the design and maintenance of biophilic environments by the building occupants. P01 and P06 envisioned a virtual and physical natural environment and a hybrid (shared and remote) community of building occupants that cares for and maintains it. Their scenario addressed elements of gamification to foster engagement, environmental sensors to guide plants’ care and visual feedback mechanisms, they referred to screen and wearable notifications.

Finally, some participants thought the sensors and actuations as ‘nature-experience enhancing’. In their view, sensors could make nature’s presence more prominent in the workplace, making sure that the building occupants notice it and take the most out of it, experiencing with their senses, including their smell.

“The idea of augmenting nature with actuation: putting a ventilator behind the plants in the office that would activate specific moments based on data and create some movements around the plants, have ambient movement created and get the smell of the plant… a green wall that can move (in the same way) and create a sense of motions with plants. (P02).”

What P02 brings to the fore is that augmenting nature could support experiencing it with senses beyond vision. Although not directly discussing aspects of air quality improvement associated with bringing nature in, P02 viewed air flow as an important aspect of environmental wellbeing and potentially a mechanism to experience nature with the rest of our senses. P02’s scenario utilizes air flow to produce feedback such as ambient movement, natural smell and imitate the feeling of being outdoors.

3.2. Active and Social Dimensions of Biophilic Design

P02 and P03 scenario evolved around biophilic environments that respond to the lack of physical activity through ambient movement, visual and olfactory feedback. P02 imagined that instrumented plants, an interior green wall with embedded technology to be able to actuate based on ventilator fans, will move and smell to provide feedback when limited physical activity is detected, producing a calm yet activating effect that hopefully prompts people to move (see Figure 13).

P02 also referred to identifying high stress from motion and heart-rate sensors, using the same intervention as a stress restorative technique, indirectly linking stress with lack of activity, and physical activity as stress-restoring.

P03’s scenario also involved physical activity and social connectedness, with more references to the hybrid workplace as it is “important (for wellbeing) to increase connection with the external world and the others around you even if you are not located in the same space”. P03 envisioned that the environment can nudge people get out and get together through a projection system that utilizes doors and windows surfaces, turning them into views of the nearby parks when there is very little physical activity (detected through motion sensors) or increased stress (detected through physiological sensors) in the workplace. P03 did not elaborate on how the stress can be detected; but similarly to P02, they speculated that a combination of activity and physiological data can provide insights on stress. “Windows/doors in office have movement sensors that will monitor activity; if there is no physical movement for some time or physiological sensors note an increase in stress in the office, it will activate a door art installation. On activation, the doors and windows will project a memory of a favorite place/event that you are fond of. At times that little physical activity is detected in the office, projections will be activated on the door…. The projections/visualizations act as prompts to encourage workers to explore surroundings… (P03)”.

In their group scenario, P02 and P03 utilize the projection idea, i.e., bringing nature into the buildings as a projection, utilizing architectural elements as calm nature displays (see Figure 14). The display starts when too little physical activity is detected in the office building, prompting people to go outdoors and get social. For P02 and P03, nature and green space indirectly support social interactions. P02 and P03 referred to motion sensors, abandoning the use of physiological data as potentially threatening privacy. Their sketch provides interesting avenues towards further investigating materiality, transparency and projection techniques in using architecture as display. In their sketch, they pointed towards using windows and walls as calm displays, describing that images of nature are slowly appearing and disappearing in the background. Their scenario provides interesting avenues for biomimetic design interventions, pointing towards further exploring projection as temporal feedback together with architectural features, materiality, color change, and transparency.

3.3. Reflecting on Data Collection and Sharing: Health, Automation and Privacy

In the co-design workshop, different perspectives on data collection for wellbeing were surfaced. The use of environmental data was present in most of the scenarios—see P01, P02, P03, P04, P05, combined with the presence of plants used to sustain a healthy micro-climate for the plants in the office. The use of environmental data was broadly met with zero concerns over privacy.

In four scenarios, the use of motion data was present as a way to assess stress levels and lack of physical activity. “I had the idea how to do this, based on a motion sensor, based on whether you do not move much or are stressed out…. there is this knowledge about frequency range of physical activity and heart rate, for example, frequency of movements, but it could also be taking this down to heart rate variability (P02)”. Although participants seemed to be somewhat concerned about the collection and use of health data to assess wellbeing in the workplace, they still chose to speculate on potential applications. In P02 and P03 group scenario, they chose to consider less privacy threatening personal data such as motion and physical activity data, and only potentially aggregated heart rate data to assess emotional wellbeing of the room.

Three participants appeared with no privacy concerns, envisioning the targeted use of physiological data to assess and restore wellbeing in highly automated environments that take initiatives for their occupants. P06’s scenario focused on assessing emotional wellbeing and fatigue through passive sensing; a highly automated restorative environment that utilizes light and auditory feedback to restore its occupants “my initial idea was about mood awareness and how to actually know when you are tired…. I was thinking about embedding sensors in a keyboard and mouse, and it would be measuring heart rate and respiratory rate to assess fatigue… when the system detects that the individual is tired or disengaged, light can be adjusted or music can be switched on… the mouse can vibrate.” “P04’s scenario suggests that all physiological signals collected through wearable bands should be collected in real time and analyzed to provide with reminders suggestions on when/how long to have a break and what to eat during work “keep track of your body status, blood pressure, temperature, sweat levels, drinking and eating schedules and movement (P04).” including the design of furniture that “would enhance my posture and reminds me to move… (P04)”. P05 similarly moves within the same direction, envisioning a space that monitors everything with limited privacy considerations. “… I have sensors that tell me AQ, temperature, humidity, and physical activity (P05)” but it is also able to detect the distances between people on screen. P05 indirectly envisions an indoor localization system where all the building occupants’ real time locations are known and the distances between them can be dynamically calculated. According to P05, this “people-distances” data can be displayed on a big screen and provide visual color-coding to notify other users of how empty or full the space is and how far other users of the same space are located. “Particularly during the pandemic we need this data. All this will be showed on a screen in public, so I can easily see that and I also want to share the data collected. (P05)”.

These scenarios, if implemented as they were described, would have profound pitfalls in terms of the building occupants’ privacy, and profound technical limitations. However, some of the ideas discussed could be potentially valuable if considered in aggregate, i.e., analyzing mass of data within the buildings but avoiding framing specific individuals. The above scenarios also illustrate diverse views on public data sharing in the workplace, highlighting the importance of data awareness through visual displays. In their group scenario, P04 and P05 suggest that the visual representation of key environmental, physiological, and physical data in the workplace can provide avenues to the building occupants to assess their wellbeing (see Figure 15). Environmental, physiological and activity data were presented in three distinct groups, following a green-blue-red color scale which provides an aggregated measure of environmental, emotional, and physical wellbeing for the workplace.

4. Discussion

This work focuses on co-designing future interactions for the hybrid workplace, addressing wellbeing, physical space, and data in that context. Designing technology for the built environment inevitably involves rethinking of architecture as an interactive experience, relationships with data and affordances of the physical space. Bringing those aspects together through designing a card-kit, this work contributes methodologically to the design of data-rich environments for supporting wellbeing in the hybrid workplace, addressing wellbeing both in the physical and digital dimensions of such environments. Moreover, it provides empirical findings from a co-design session using the card-kit, showcasing preliminary results that can inform relevant future work on the design of data-rich environments, contributing to discourses around Interactive Architecture and Human-Building Interaction (HB) research.

Below, these empirical findings are summarized and discussed in the context of past literature under the following sections: Section 4.1 discusses novel directions for biophilic design and Section 4.2 discusses participants’ views on data collection and use in the hybrid workplace. In Section 4.3, key design observations are summarized in conversation with related work, drawing implications for design and framing potential future design directions.

4.1. Novel Directions for Biophilic and Biomimetic Design for the (Hybrid) Workplace

The hybrid workplace is highly customizable, but as a result, very heterogenous, and its suitability as a workplace often heavily depends on the building occupants’ dedicated initiative [8]. The findings highlight the need for biophilic design in both the domestic and the shared workplace, supporting workers with feedback interventions to gain awareness and control over diverse aspects of their environment and their wellbeing. The results particularly highlight the importance of feedback for environmental aspects, including air quality [40,42,97,98], social interaction, e.g., see works that utilize feedback to bring collective rhythmicity in the shared workplace or connect remote workers [51,52,99], and physical activity, e.g., see work by Fortmann and Pereira et al. on displays for mitigating sedentary behavior in the workplace [24,49,50,100].

Contributing to such past literature, our findings further highlight the need for enhancing nature in the built environment while re-thinking its social and physical dimensions, illustrated in all participants’ scenarios where plantings were present. Plants and nature were viewed by participants as contributing to wellbeing in many levels, as participants connected them to different aspects of wellbeing utilizing diverse feedback systems. In P08’s scenario as an element to enhance environmental, physical and emotional wellbeing, providing an activating effect through visual and olfactory feedback when too little physical activity is detected. In P02 and P03’s group scenario nature is also linked to social wellbeing, where nature as projection provides an opportunity for social connectedness. In their scenario, nature is brought in as a projection on building’s surfaces, activated when too little physical activity is present. In P04’s scenario, plants are mentioned in the context of improving air quality and environmental wellbeing. In their group scenario, P05 and P04 mention nature in the context of environmental wellbeing. In P01’s scenario, and in P01 and P06 group scenario, plants are linked with social wellbeing and physical nourishment, providing a space, both physical and virtual to interact with others while caring for them. P01 and P06 rethink the human–nature relationship in an active manner, plants are not placed in the periphery but are key in instrumenting social relationships in the workplace, creating communities of people that care for them—even remotely.

Bringing nature in the built environment has been the prime concerns of biomimicry and biophilia design [31,43,101,102,103], with biomimicry being the primary study of transfer of natural processes into the artificial world, whereas biophilia the study of the interaction between humans and nature [43,102]. The above scenarios strongly point towards novel directions for biophilic design in the context of workplace wellbeing in intersection with the interaction design. Beyond the obvious request of bringing more plants in the office, the analysis of the scenarios unpacks what nature symbolizes in terms of social and emotional dimensions of wellbeing for the participants, providing new insights on how the synergy of technology and biophilia can support these dimensions. For our participants, nature appears to be restorative but also alerting, i.e., motivating alertness directly linked with emotional wellbeing, it prompts towards increasing physical activity, moving more in the workplace or outside and provides a setting for social interactions to take place, either in the context of creating more appealing environments, or for the purpose of creating communities that nurture care for nature, linking nature with social wellbeing, and to interpersonal interaction. Bringing technology in, their scenarios illustrate novel sensing and feedback mechanisms within/with nature—such as utilizing nature as projection or the sensory enrichment of plants, both showcasing directions for future design research in the intersection of interaction design and the natural world.

The analysis of participants’ scenarios further leads to framing directions for biophilic interaction design, focusing on the embedding of sensors and the integration of physical/tangible feedback to support human–data relationships. In all scenarios plants appeared to be instrumented, utilizing environmental sensors to monitor their needs and provide feedback to the building occupants to care for them collectively, this extending to using IoT to connect to a virtual plant “self” to engage hybrid workers in P01 and P06 scenario. Participants mostly refer to the green color as the key positive aspect of bringing nature in the workplace and indirectly on improvements in microclimate, using phrases such as ‘calm’, ‘pleasant’, ‘activating’ to describe such spaces (see P01, P02, P04’s scenarios). Beyond plantings, participants discussed projections of greenery on doors and windows, turning architectural elements into calming displays, e.g., see WindowWall [58] or a room with the fake view [104], which provides interesting avenues for further exploring materiality, light, and projection for supporting social and physical wellbeing. Contributing to projects that utilize walls in offices to turn them into window-to-nature displays [58,104], our work further suggests the potential of developing such displays in ways that support physical activity and social interaction.

Moreover, participants indirectly referred to air quality improvement as a key consideration behind bringing nature into the office, including air flow (see P02’s, P04’s and P05’s scenarios). P02 takes that further into discussing ambient feedback using plantings, mentioning leaves and plants movement, air flow and smell as feedback, thinking nature’s instrumentation in the context of actuation and not only sensing. P02’s scenario points towards considering air flow and smell for air quality feedback, which could involve shape changing, pneumatic actuation, e.g., utilizing air to foster actuation and olfactory actuation. Very few past projects exploring air quality awareness have included pneumatics or auxetics, for instance see the work of Tobias Becker’s Breathing Skins Project; however, and what is highlighted here is the opportunity to explore the design space of soft robotics [105,106,107] further, focusing on air flow and smell as ways of providing air quality feedback. Utilizing soft sensors and actuators, passive data processing and the diversity of smart materials and meta materials (all broadly linked with soft robotics agenda [105,106,107]); biomimetic feedback can be used in passive technologies for user awareness and control of domestic micro-climate [97,108]. Thermochromics applied on desk-used objects or window blinders or curtains for instance [109,110] can be used as a passive and calm display to illustrate deteriorating air quality without dominating attention or requiring a constant checking of one’s smartphone or screen. A relevant project that explored interior elements such as air quality displays is Shutters [97], illustrating potentials of room dividers to act as physical displays for air quality data, utilizing the use of SMA wires. Finally, reflecting on past projects and speculating on design futures, there is evidence that embodiment [111] can support awareness when designing for biophilic spaces. Focusing on air quality, slow and passive environmental responses driven by biomimetic mechanisms such as pneumatic elements [107,112] could provide indications of air quality aspects and breathing patterns, encouraging a more “embodied” and “socially connected” approach to experiencing and acting on the micro-climate [41]. Such mechanisms could be further explored in the context of air quality awareness in the shared and domestic workplace.

4.2. Data Collection and Use in the Hybrid Workplace—Views and Perspectives

The workshop has provided broader insights into data collection and data-driven feedback for wellbeing in the shared and remote workplace. Participants’ views on data collection in the built environment suggest the following:

• The prioritization of environmental data—see scenarios by P02, P03, P01, P04, and P05 where air quality, humidity, and temperature are mentioned in the context of enhancing environmental wellbeing and foster plant growth in the buildings, also mentioned in context of air quality awareness by P01, and broader wellbeing considerations by P05 and P06.
• Use of occupancy data, in scenarios that address social wellbeing complementary to biophilia (P02, P03, P01, P05), broadly seen as privacy friendly data.
• Use of movement and physical activity data (P02, P03, P04) with caution. Such data carry double connotation; many participants’ scenarios pointing towards the use of such data to promote physical activity in the workplace, on the other hand, results from workshop 01 suggest that sharing such data should be done with caution and using it publicly is not favored (P05, P06).
• Use of physiological data collected through wearables is mentioned in some scenarios as a way to assess emotional wellbeing (P02, P04, P06), though privacy concerns emphasize personal use only, or in aggregated manner (P04 and P05).

Apart from data collection and privacy considerations, the co-design activity highlighted views on data sharing in the workplace. P04 and P05 group scenario viewed aggregated data sharing as a way to support wellbeing awareness in the workplace. In their group scenario, they suggest that the visual representation of key environmental, physiological, and physical data in the workplace can provide avenues to building occupants to assess their wellbeing. Such interventions have difficulties in materialization with regard to privacy, i.e., assessing group emotional wellbeing from physiological sensors has its privacy challenges [113,114,115], but the underlying idea of surfacing aggregated data together for awareness purposes and to foster building occupants’ own interpretation of wellbeing can be a meaningful direction. Moreover, what is indirectly suggested in the ability to have data accessibility and awareness and the ability to make associations between environmental data and indoor climate, and physiological and physical data and associated wellbeing, i.e., physical activity, fatigue and mood. Linking embodied experiences of one’s own wellbeing and environmental aspects through data representations can foster group awareness and deeper understanding of how these two aspects correlate.

Most of the participants referred to data to support and not replace human decision-making [41,116], envisioning scenarios whereby data provide awareness to the building occupants about different aspects of wellbeing so that they can act themselves. Some scenarios illustrate tensions between AI-driven space that automatically restore wellbeing (see P04, P06), and human-driven spaces where data is used for awareness purposes only (see P01, P02, P03) with the broader consensus leaning towards data for user-driven workspaces.

4.3. Framing Design Implications/Future Design Directions

Contributing to Human Building Interaction (HBI) [117,118,119] research, findings are summarized under a framing of a physical design agenda to support the wellbeing of the shared and domestic workplace.

Moreover, this work extends the discussion on the design of potential interventions to support wellbeing through biomimetic and biophilic design. Findings concern biomimetic design and novel actuations involving (or imitating) living organisms, spanning physical and visual feedback, ambient movement, and olfactory feedback.

Beyond restorative spaces and environmental wellbeing, biophilia is highly associated with social wellbeing and collaborative aspects, which prompts towards considering collaborative dimensions when designing for feedback for wellbeing in the buildings. Aside from supporting biophilia, findings suggest that further engaging with biomimicry as a design principle is a source of inspiration. This extends to the choice of materials and sensing-actuating mechanisms to produce feedback, as well as the use of nature-inspired metaphors to communicate information.

As a note, there are many aspects of air quality experience and management unaddressed by current research on the workplace [39,40,41,42]. Much of the research on air quality is limited to CO₂, leaving the experience of humidity and air flow aside. Design research can focus on developing ambient and physical feedback that surfaces different aspects of air quality, both addressing users’ embodied experiences and creating meaningful experiences based on sensory readings. Physical representations of air quality feedback that are closer to the embodied experience of aspects of air quality could deepen awareness of one’s body and environment, and how these two aspects relate to each other.

Finally, data collection considerations highlight minor privacy concerns over the use of environmental and occupancy data, frame the use of physical activity and motion data with caution, and prioritize active data collection with regard to emotional wellbeing.

To summarize, key design considerations for feedback systems to support wellbeing include:

• Emphasis on physical and tangible design dimensions of awareness technology, with the purpose of bringing latent environmental aspects into the experience such as smell of nature or air flow.
• Exploring collective and collaborative aspects of technology, creating communities of users to support and care for nature and wellbeing in the built environment across the shared and domestic workplace, potentially utilizing gamification elements.
• Exploring active dimensions of biophilic design, i.e., how physical activity and movement in the workplace can be encouraged through biophilic/biomimetic design.

The above directions on biophilic and biomimetic design can guide the development of human–building interactions for wellbeing and environmental awareness in the shared and domestic workplace. Engaging with the emerging Soft Robotics and Actuating Materials agenda [105,106] can bring biomimetic and biophilic design mechanisms into HCI research [120,121,122,123]. Examples of soft robotics applications are pneumatic systems [106,112,124,125], Smart Memory Alloy polymers [109,126] and Thermochromic systems [127,128]. The application of such mechanisms for wellbeing and data awareness should address broader findings on aspects of control, data accessibility and useability, and scale of interventions in the buildings, meaning that the intervention should be customizable from the building occupants both in the physical, e.g., translated to modularity and portability, and digital, e.g., ability to control data sources’ dimensions.

As a response to the above three design directions, we prototyped and evaluated ANONYMOUS, which is comprehensively reported elsewhere [cite Anonymised]. Anonymized is a customizable, large-scale physical intervention that responds to air quality data in the context of providing awareness on climate and supporting environmental wellbeing in the workplace following principles of biomimetic design.

5. Limitations

We acknowledge that this work has multiple limitations. The card-kit was developed on the premise on visually bringing PROWELL wellbeing categories together with physical interaction affordances, which we believe is methodologically novel (hence justifying a methodological contribution); however, this work only presents preliminary findings using the card-kit, and the card-kit needs to be further evaluated with teams of experts (e.g., architects, interior designers, furniture designers, environmental consultants) before its further use and development. Regarding our reflections on how participants engaged with the card-kit and the impact of the card-kit in the design process, including considerations on potential biases, values and assumptions, in support of its methodological contribution; we have collected some observations which are indirectly mentioned in the findings. Participants showed preference on using specific cards as mentioned in the findings—e.g., “bring nature” card, and have further emphasized on improving air quality in many scenarios, which is potentially driven by COVID-19 concerns due to the timing that this research took place. Given the design of the card-kit being heavily abstract, i.e., relying on words to describe actions/interactions and sensors, and minimalistic illustrations to prompt considering spatial features, and loyal to broad PROWELL Wellbeing categories; we feel there was little space for misunderstandings and that the participants interpreted well the content of the cards. However, some wellbeing cards relevant to emotional and social wellbeing might need dedicated evaluation with participants, since they represent more abstract wellbeing concepts such as social connectedness or mood awareness, and might be benefited by re-wording or further simplification. Wellbeing, Spaces and Sensors cards had empty cards to engage participants in making their own. A few participants made their own cards and used them in their scenarios, which suggests it was an easy, straightforward process. Participants did not use any Ideation cards (speculative prompts), which suggests that they might have been difficult to understand, and require dedicated evaluation.

Further limitations of the co-design study design include the sampling of participants and the limited number of co-design sessions, resulting in a potentially idiographic and non-representative data set, which impacts finding’s generalizability.

6. Conclusions

This work addresses the wellbeing experiences of building occupants while working from home during a period of hybrid working and provides insights on their views on data collection and use for wellbeing purposes in the shared and domestic workplace. Through a co-design activity, we highlight key findings such as the importance of enhancing utilization and awareness of data or wellbeing and novel dimensions for biophilic and biomimetic design. Contributing to discourses on HBI [119,120,121] research, these findings led to a framing of a physical design agenda and considerations to support the wellbeing in the shared and domestic workplace, designing ambient and physical feedback that supports embodied and environmental awareness through passive sensing. The proposed agenda is composed under the premise of co-creating smart environments together with their occupants and not for their occupants, this is useful to guide future interventions in the context of hybrid workplaces and highlights areas of critical research interest for HBI and Soft Robotics [107,108] in the built environment. Future work will expand by responding to key findings and materializing this design agenda, developing working prototypes around and evaluating the experience of these interventions with the building occupants.