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Workspace Lab: Planning Participatory Design

Chapter · January 2019

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96071-5_201

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 Workspace Lab:
Planning Participatory Design

Carolina Conceição(&) and Ole Broberg

DTU Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark,

Produktionstorvet 424, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
{casou,obro}@dtu.dk

Abstract. Can a participatory process help planning workspace participatory

design? In this paper, we address this opportunity by presenting a toolkit
developed with this purpose. This toolkit suggests creating a temporary and
hypothetical environment called Workspace Lab, aiming at bringing up design
dialogues into focus and giving insights on how to stage them, while bridging
the gap of merging user involvement with the well-defined design work-
practice. The Workspace Lab toolkit was gradually built during a research
project, including three participatory workshops emphasizing joint exploration
of both format and content by designers, who are the main intended users of this
“laboratory” together with ergonomists, human factors specialists and other
design stakeholders. The result was a flexible material that helps designers
building a participatory process specifically for each project. The Workspace
Lab toolkit contains not only suggestions of participatory methods that can be
used during workspace design, but also brings in possibilities for planning the
whole participatory process while discussing the different possibilities.

Keywords: Participatory ergonomics
Workspace design
User involvement

1 Introduction

Many design practitioners already realize the great source of knowledge users represent
while designing a workspace. However, some resistance seems to still prevent design
practitioners from embracing participatory approaches. By design practitioners, or
designers, we mean architects, design engineers and other professional involved in the
design of workspaces. Designers are concerned that a participatory approach can be time
consuming and affect their grounded practice. It takes time planning a participatory design
process, staging the interventions and activities and preparing the materials to be used.
The concept of participatory design and user involvement is well known and dis-
cussed among researchers [1]. Even if, in practice, workspace design has for long
occurred without users’ participation, depending on the representations designers might
have about what they were designing [2]. In recent years, however, there has been an
increasing desire to encourage new forms of collaboration and knowledge sharing
when it comes to workspace design. Different tools (or objects) can help performing
participatory design processes. Several researchers have studied which kind of objects
can be found in design processes [3] and others have attempted to characterize different

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

S. Bagnara et al. (Eds.): IEA 2018, AISC 824, pp. 1910–1915, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96071-5_201
 Workspace Lab: Planning Participatory Design 1911

objects in relation to how well they function [4]. However, it is also often a challenge to
translate the contributions from users to workspace design that seriously take on board
the employees’ specific work practices as a platform for a desired change.
There is a need for a tool that manages to travel into a well-defined design work-
practice and merge with it. More than just a tool, the notion of a laboratory described
by Binder and Brandt [5] seems to be a better fit for facing this challenge. A laboratory
being a hypothetical environment where users and designers collaboratively explore
possibilities, negotiate solutions and engage in design activities. Design dialogues set
the stage and employees, management and design practitioners are brought together to
explore opportunities on the basis of the professional experience they each represent.
In line with this notion, this paper presents a toolkit developed for planning and
performing participatory workspace design processes. It is aimed to be used and
explored by designers, ergonomists and human factor specialists, and other stakeholders
taking part in the workspace design process: design actors. This toolkit suggests creating
a temporary environment that enables users and other stakeholders to have a design
dialogue and jointly explore a future workspace. This temporary environment is called
Workspace Lab. It supports users, designers and other stakeholders to both reflect on
their current work environment and explore new workspace designs in an open dialogue.

2 Methods

The Workspace Lab toolkit was developed over a three-year research project investi-
gating how to integrate participatory design in architectural and engineering projects
involving major changes at workspaces. It also relied on data from a previous research
project investigating different participatory ergonomic methods for workspace design.
Over these projects, different methods were tested by the authors or the other
researchers involved in the projects. The participatory interventions were analyzed and
compiled into the toolkit in a participatory process in itself.
We developed the toolkit through a participatory prototyping process [6], that is
through a mutual learning process taking place in a cooperative design setting. The idea
of prototyping a toolkit as an open-ended process left room for taking in the design
actors into the process, shaping it while in use. The prototyping was a platform for
participation in itself. The toolkit was developed and tested over three workshop
sections (see Fig. 1) emphasizing joint exploration by architects, consulting engineers
and health & safety consultants. More details on the development process can be found
in Conceição et al. [7].

Fig. 1. Toolkit prototyping sessions

1912 C. Conceição and O. Broberg

3 Results

The Workspace Lab backbone is a series of workshops that feed into each other, where
design games are often used to structure the workshops and ensure a common tangible
output. It helps identifying the appropriate methods to use depending on each project’s
specificities and gives insights on how to translate the contributions from the different
participants to the designers. The Workspace Lab becomes an asset that streamlines the
planning of a participatory process while putting the key themes within user involve-
ment and workspace design on the agenda.
The Workspace Lab toolkit consists of three booklets with different participatory
methods, a game board, a couple of sets of cards as game pieces and a poster with an
overall background and explanation of the idea behind the Workspace Lab. Figure 2
shows the content of the toolkit.

Fig. 2. Workspace Lab toolkit

3.1 What Is in the Workspace Lab Toolkit?

The booklets are the core of the toolkit and they aim at giving ideas and inspiration on
methods and activities that can be part of the participatory process. Each booklet is
theme-based across the user involvement process in workspace design. The first
booklet is about learning more on the existing workspaces similar to the ones being
designed, it is about preparing designers and giving employees the opportunity to
reflect on their existing workspaces before meeting on a design workshop. The second
booklet argues for using a series of design workshops, it presents different formats that
set the framework for a design dialogue during each workshop. The third booklet
focuses on how designers can deal with the material that comes out of the different
activities and how they may design their own design games. Table 1 presents a list with
all methods covered in the booklets and their key elements.
In each booklet, there is not a list of methods with systematic instructions on how to
use them. Instead, what can be found in each booklet is inspiration based on how each
method was used in other projects and what was the outcome. For each method, there is
the main purpose behind it and some trigger questions to help design actors understand
the importance behind using such a method. Furthermore, there are also pictures and an
 Workspace Lab: Planning Participatory Design 1913

Table 1. List of methods

Booklet Method Key element
1 How we see you Sharing pictures and building collages
People at work Dialogue walk- Conversations on the spot
through
Workbook Selecting and commenting on photos
Two-by-two leaflet Discussing work in pairs
Photo safari Taking advantage of “new eyes”
2 Floorplan dialogues Using metaphors to unpack the design
Workshop dialogues Concept design Diagramming possibilities
games
Layout game Making visions concrete
Tabletop simulations Taking a helicopter perspective on work
flow
Enacted scenarios Acting out everyday situations
3 Designing games Formatting the dialogues
Design Facilitating dialogues Throwing and claiming ideas
transformations Making themes Creating keywords based on dialogues
Adding layers Introducing zoning

overall description of how the method was used in a project and which problems it
helped solving.
The cards and the game board aim at making the use of the toolkit a participatory
and interactive activity in itself, making it a kind of “portable Lab”. The playing cards
have different functions in the “game” of planning a participatory process. Principle
cards have headlines and a corresponding image taken from the booklets; they high-
light elements from the spreads to be used when planning and discussing how to
involve the users. Direction cards have arrows that remind the participants to move
forward and question in which way: “who?” needs to be involved, “what?” should be
done, “when?” it should be done, and “how?” to do it. Method cards bring a sum-up of
the different methods presented in the booklets for user involvement, giving practical
elements for preparing and carrying out the different activities, such as: time needed for
preparation, time to carry out the activity, number of participants per group partici-
pating and materials needed.
The game board consists of a grid format with a surface that makes it possible to
write on it with a dry erase pen and erase it as many times as needed. It aims at
providing a space for the dialogue: a place you can keep the cards on for a while or just
take pictures to remember afterwards.

3.2 How to Use the Workspace Lab Toolkit?

The aim with the Workspace Lab toolkit is that it becomes an asset that streamlines the
planning of a participatory process while putting the key themes within user
involvement and workspace design on the agenda. We see it as an open source, where
1914 C. Conceição and O. Broberg

participants can use it in different ways and new methods and inspiring ideas can
always be added. During its development, however, we had a main structure in mind to
make use of the full potential we see in the toolkit: something dynamic that can be
changed over the process but still keeping a defined frame.
Ideally, design actors, or participants in the participatory workspace design plan-
ning, should have the time to get acquainted with the material and/or have a super-user
working as a facilitator of the planning process. This process can happen in small
groups of two to four participants and it starts by each choosing three or four principle
cards, which they feel are relevant to think about in relation to their project. Then they
place the cards one by one on the game board, explaining their choice and relating the
cards to each other. After the first discussion round, participants may use more prin-
ciple cards if they feel the need to put more into play, choosing the ones they find
relevant to the discussion on planning their project and building up on the cards already
on the game board. When many cards are chosen, grouping them in themes can make it
easier to have references to the projects aims or other issues.
When all the cards found relevant are placed and grouped in the game board,
participants are then invited to look for the headlines of these cards inside the booklets,
where they can read more about the method behind that principle and how it was used
in a project. With more information behind the principles of the cards, participants can
then decide which methods to use in their own project and start planning how to set up
the participatory process.
At this stage, participants can look for the equivalent method cards to get a more
practical insight on what is needed and how that method can be applied. Participants
can also decide to place arrows that help them focusing their planning. The cards
questioning “who?”, for example, can make participants consider what type of user
they are dealing with or which other stakeholders should be involved in the partici-
patory process. Or cards questioning “what?” can help making a to-do list of what
needs to be done in different moments of the project. Figure 3 shows the game boar
after a planning section.

Fig. 3. Workspace Lab toolkit in use

 Workspace Lab: Planning Participatory Design 1915

When a participatory planning section is over, it is a good idea for participants to

take pictures of the game board, to help them remembering the principles behind the
choice of methods and all issues discussed during the planning. Methods cards can also
be kept to help putting in practice the activities, but participants can also decide to
make their own versions and adaptations of the methods to best fit their needs.

4 Conclusions

Ergonomists and/or human factors specialists are often facilitators when it comes to
user involvement and participatory design. However, that may not always be the case.
The aim of the toolkit developed is to empower and help designers and other design
stakeholders to implement and maintain a dialogue-oriented and participatory process
for new construction and major renovations of workspaces, even if they have not the
experience in doing so. The Workspace Lab toolkit brings up design dialogues into
focus and gives insights on how to stage them, leaving a degree of freedom to adapt the
participatory process to each project and aiming at bridging the gap of merging user
involvement with the well-defined design work practice.

References
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sur la Pratique de l’Ergonomie, Bordeaux
3. Ewenstein B, Whyte J (2009) Knowledge practices in design: the role of visual
representations as ‘epistemic objects’. Organ Stud 30(1):7–30
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of boundary objects. Appl Ergon 42:464–472
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prototyping. CoDesign 4(1):19–30
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