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EMBRACING CHANGE: HOW THE INTEGRATION OF SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY HELPS CREATE A HEALTHIER WORKPLACE by Melissa Marsh, Founder and CEO, PLASTARC and Brian Coogan, Director, Digital Services, Ethos Engineering
Brian Coogan Melissa Marsh
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here’s no denying it—new, innovative workplaces across the world are challenging our understanding of what the office can do and redefining contemporary work in the process. An emergent design philosophy, called human-centered design, is creating workplaces that can accommodate the fluctuating needs of individuals, teams, and entire organizations on a day-to-day basis and doing away with homogeneous, unchanging offices. Inspired by precedents set in retail, leisure, hospitality and science, which use feedback systems to create responsive systems, the human-cenPAGE 10 | OCTOBER ‘23
tered approach applies User Experience (UX) methodologies to various contexts, including the workplace. By equipping buildings with the correct technology foundation that can intelligently monitor and adapt to meet the workforce’s diverse expectations, human-centered design ensures that the users of a building—and therefore, the organization itself—can thrive everyday, no matter the context. It’s no coincidence that this design philosophy is gaining momentum right as hybrid work becomes the predominant paradigm for offices. In a world where workspace occupancy