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Executive Summary
This report describes a two day Workshop on "Workspaces in the Information
Age," jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the
IEEE, and held at the Xerox Document University in Leesburg, Virginia in
October 1996. It brought together experts in communications, information
technology, building systems, and facilities planning. The charter was to
explore the critical emerging issues in the interplay between how people
work and where they work. Advances in information and communications technologies,
combined with new developments in flexible building systems, offer the potential
to radically change the nature of the workplace. The workshop's goal was
to formulate an innovative and interdisciplinary research agenda that is
documented in this report.
The workshop recommendations identify research opportunities that span
information technology, physical spaces, and work effectiveness for both
the individual and the group:
- Create a Publicly Accessible Repository of Existing Knowledge about
Workspace Effectiveness. This will help create an interdisciplinary
research community that builds on this shared knowledge of existing productivity
studies and building analyses.
- Perform Rigorous Human Centered Design Studies and Experiments.
We must quantitatively understand the contributions to worker and group
productivity that is due to information technology and the quality of physical
spaces.
- Investigate the Interplay of Building and Information Technologies.
Information technology can simplify the delivery of building services while
building facilities can simplify the deployment of computers and communications
in the workplace.
- Develop Testbeds to Demonstrate the Technologies for Flexible People-Oriented
Workspaces. These will contribute to understand the interplay of information
and building technologies, while showcasing the best capabilities they
can enable.
- Develop Strategies that Encourage a Focus on Life-Cycle Rather than
First Cost. The technology for flexible, high quality workspaces are
often difficult to justify on a first cost basis. Incentives are necessary
to shift building owners' perspective from first cost to the full life-cycle.
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Last Updated by Randy H. Katz, 22 January 1997