Technology

Technology is changing the way people communicate.  From co-workers to customers, to friends and families, everywhere we go we are connected.  In this connected world, how do you manage your mobile employees and continue to provide great spaces?

Adaptable Spaces and Their Impact on Learning

Research reveals the divide between what is known about the learning experience and the spaces built to support them. This has prompted exploration of new types of spaces. The goal is to understand the role of adaptable spaces in supporting the learning experience. Just as important is an examination of the impact technologies, pedagogies, and, yes, furniture has on these spaces.

Beyond Four Walls and a Door:
Understanding Privacy in the Office

If you ask people who work in offices whether they need privacy to do their jobs, most of them will say yes. Ask them whether they currently have enough privacy, and many of them will say no. In a study of people working in both fixed-wall offices and open plan environments, about 50 percent said their space “provides all the privacy I need to get my work done.”

Bright Idea: Personal Control for Office Lighting

Providing light for the workplace has always been at the top of the list for those who build and manage offices. However, they have tended to focus on the effects lighting has on a building’s performance, often at the expense of the people who work there. The cause of this focus has been the rising costs of real estate and energy.

Engaging Students: Using Space as a Tool to Connect with Millennials

Though there is more demographic diversity than ever before in the makeup of college students, Millennials represent the majority at over 60 percent. They will be part of the higher education landscape for the next decade. Their unique characteristics are causing them to collide with how learning is implemented in the classroom.

New Directions in Call Center Design

Today’s call centers have evolved to become sophisticated, high-tech showcases of service, support, and sales. Meanwhile, the look and layout of call centers is changing to keep up with the new demands being placed on them.

On the Move: How Mobile Employees Are Changing the Workplace

The New Yorker published a cartoon about the changing workplace nearly 20 years ago that was not only funny but also visionary. An incoming employee, briefcase in hand, is being given a heads- up about his new office environment by a worker wearing a pair of pants covered with pockets. “You don’t get an office,” the new employee is told. “You get cargo pants.”

Patient Rooms: A Changing Scene of Healing

The hospital is still the place where patients and their families, caregivers, and administrators come together for the common purpose of restoring a patient to good health. The issues each of these parties face all come into sharp focus in the patient room. It is there that the delivery of care is undergoing more change than at any other point in history.

Set Them Free: How Alternative Work Styles Can Be A Good Fit

According to a 2005 report from IDC, a global market intelligence provider, the worldwide mobile office population will increase from 425.1 million in 2004 to 543.1 million in 2009.2 Asia Pacific and Japan are expected to experience the most growth (5.5 and 8 percent, respectively). Meanwhile, Western Europe’s mobile worker population is expected to increase 1.5 percent, and the U.S.’s 2.7 percent.

The Evolving Nature of Working at Home

More and more people are getting to work without going to work. Instead of commuting to a corporate workspace, they’re staying at home in their own space. Instead of separating their work lives from their home lives, they’re blending them, or trying to. Instead of thinking of work as a place where they go, they’re seeing it as something they do.

The Outlook for Learning — Views on the Future

Opinions vary on how higher education deals with change. Faced with diminishing resources, advancing technology and increasing enrollments, colleges and universities continually attempt to find a balance between innovation and tradition to remain relevant and current in a rapidly evolving world.

The Siren Song of Multitasking

Personal technology has become so ubiquitous that it seems unnecessary to quote statistics about the growth of cell phone use (every minute another 1,000 users are added to the 2.4 billion existing users), the global growth rate of Internet use(200 percent between 2000 and 2006), or how many e-mail messages and instant messages compete for our attention every day (an estimated 62 billion and 14 billion, respectively).