A Graham-lead team at the Center for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley, reviewed 20 years of data collected by the Center; their findings are available without charge at the web address noted below. The CBE researchers report that, “One of the most widely used online POE [post-occupancy evaluation] tools is the Center for the Built Environment’s Occupant Survey. We analyzed data collected from this tool over the last two decades (>90,000 respondents from ~900 buildings) to summarize the database and evaluate the survey structure. 68% of the respondents are satisfied with their workspace. People are most satisfied with spaces’ ease of interaction (75% satisfied), amount of light (74%) and the cleanliness (71%), and most dissatisfied with sound privacy (54% dissatisfied), temperature (39%) and noise level (34%)…Roughly two-fifths of building occupants felt the acoustic quality and thermal comfort were responsible for interfering with their ability to complete their work, and one quarter of respondents indicated the office layout was creating interference.”
Lindsay Graham, Thomas Parkinson, and Stefano Schiavon. 2020. “Where Do We Go Now? Lessons Learned from 20 Years of CBE’s Occupant Survey.” Center for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8k20v82j
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.