Office Agents.

The Office Agents are a set of artefacts placed on the employee’s desk, which capture data about the office environment. Air quality, sound level, light exposure, productivity, and physical activity level are measured to provide office workers with bossy feedback on their environment. Trying to engage the office employee in a negotiating with the Office Agents based on the office ecosystem, a reflection on their environment was tried to provoke. To open up the debate on sensors in the office environment and stakes around office vitality from the viewpoint of the employees.

In smart buildings, nearly every part of the office environment is assessed and adjusted by sensors, as the advancement of technology has provided new insights on the importance of the office environment on our health. In the FITT project, the objective is to develop sensing technology to improve the vitality of the office employee.

 

Office employees barely have access to this data or are involved in the use of this data, as they often are not even able to control their physical environment. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what data would be meaningful for the office employees? Are they actually bothered by it, or are they glad to leave this responsibility in someone else’s hands?

To question this office environment, Speculative and Critical Design (SCD) and Objects with Intent (OwI) were used to design artefacts that can stimulate debate around sensing in the office, as in the FITT project, the stance is that sensing technology should be effortlessly and invisible for the employee. In addition, SCD also allows ignoring the conformity of design in the office, opening up the freedom to physicalize and build artefacts that do not follow the established constructs. By using constructs as “ambiguity” which impels people to interpret the relationship themselves, and the “aesthetics of use” which uses interactivity made possible by computing to seek more nuanced cooperation with objects, the Office Agents were conceptualized.

 

Using the Objects with Intent theory, it was possible to attribute characteristics to objects utilized to elicit responses regarding the relation with the environment to discover an understanding of the objects and their relation with the context. By understanding their relation, the objects were given a character by using thing-centred design, which was embodied in their shape. Lastly, the exact feedback loops of the agents were constructed using microinteractions.