Informal-chat tracker to design the perfect office

摘要

Next month, New Scientist moves to a new HQ. Will the layout of our new offices foster encounters that create Innovative ideas? Only time will tell. One way of finding out would have been to observe how colleagues actually move around and interact and then design the office around that. A method that uses body-worn sensors to do this could one day provide a useful way of testing different interior layouts to maximise interactions. "It's well understood that in creative work environments spontaneous interactions can't be programmed," says Phil Bernstein at Yale University. "But they are important and can be encouraged by the architecture." So Cecilia Mascolo and colleagues at the University of Cambridge used wearable, wireless sensors to automatically work out how well the layout of common areas in a building - receptions, cafes, kitchens and breakout spaces - encourage this kind of behaviour.