Architecture by the Numbers
Using Probability and Statistics
to Improve Your Workplaces
Intelligent Building Design, Inc.
Organizational Office Space in
2020 – Let Probability & Statistics
be Your Guide
Workplace procurement and upkeep are significant capital investments for organizations. For
your organization, the decisions you must make about workplaces have many long-term
implications for the organization. Employees, work processes, resource needs, customer and
client proximities, real estate markets, and local infrastructures are all considerations that go into
making these decisions (Brill, Weidemann, & BOSTI Associates, 2001; Horgen, Joroff, Porter,
& Schön, 1999). All these factors make these decisions complicated to evaluate. It takes
knowing the questions to ask, data needed to answer them, and the best inferential statistical
approach for evaluating all of these factors to make the right decision for your organization. At
Intelligent Building Design, we have the knowledge and resources you need to make these
workplace decisions in a way that will move your organization successfully into the future. Let
us help move your organization into its bright future.
In the cases we present below, you will see a range of projects completed by Architects and
architectural researchers that use statistics to help clients like you understand the choices you are
making when investing in the buildings and spaces your organization needs. Their analyses will
include space user responses to environmental factors, workplace enhancement of innovation,
identification of available workforce for workplace location selection, evaluating where
employees should work, and the trends and benefits in geolocating workers. Each case provides
us the opportunity to present a different way probability and statistics can be used in the
corporate real estate field and discusses the optimal way to present these analyses for their best
use in your decision-making processes.
Literature
Brill, M., Weidemann, S. & BOSTI Associates (2001). Disproving widespread myths about
workplace design. Jasper, IN: Kimball International.
Horgen, T. H., Joroff, M. L., Porter, W. L. & Schön, D. A. (1999). Excellence by design:
Transforming workplace and work practice. NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
What is the purpose of this section? This section needs to:
• Speak to potential clients/customers - Address what they care about (go look at
the marketing materials of large organizations in your field. How do they speak to
clients? What to they indicate is important? Cite these sources.)
• Connect the things being analyzed by your articles to what clients in the field care
about. This may involve looking at industry publications.
Continued next page
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
2
•
•
•
Continued
Connect the things your articles discuss together professionally and organize them
logically.
Promote the value of probability and statistics analyses as stand-alone services or
elements of other client services.
Demonstrate professional competence in your attention to details: Make the graphics
consistent, use clear professional language, and run a grammar and spelling check
before you finish your document.
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
3
Case 1
Occupant Assessment of Indoor Environmental
Quality as Influenced by Workspace Enclosure
By Sally Messer
This case study reviews the article Workspace
satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off
in open-plan offices by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de
Dear
Study Objective
This study examines an available dataset to understand
the role of workspace enclosure in the interpretation of
privacy and the ability of coworkers to communicate.
Figure 1: Open Office with no Partitions
Data
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC
BY
The data used for the analyses was from the Center for
the Built Environment at the University of California. It is part of a Post-Occupancy Evaluation
database they established in 2000 to collect data from various building types. The data analyzed
in this study are from the data collected in the office building category, which included 42,764
respondents from 303 office buildings in the United States (U.S.). The organizing data in this
study is the level of workspace enclosure, which was collected in the five categories shown in
Table 1.
Table 1: Types of Spaces Data was Collected On
Category
Enclosed Private Office
Enclosed Shared Office
Cubicles with High Partitions
Cubicles with Low Partitions
Open office with no or Limited Partitions
Additional Detail
Five feet high or taller
Lower than five feet
Demographic data on gender,
Figure 3: Enclosed Shared Office Figure 4: Cubicle with High Partitions
age,
and
work
category
was
collected
but
not
used
in
this
analysis.
The
hadEthospace
accesscubicles
to
Source: Arium, Workplace Trends
Source: Knoll, Shared Private Office
Source:
Heroresearchers
Office Systems used
Figure 2: Enclosed Office
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
4
The questionnaire collected data on 15 specific environmental quality factors in the following
overarching categories: thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, acoustic quality, office layout,
office furnishings, cleanliness and maintenance, and overall satisfaction. The researchers had
access to the questions asked to collect the data and included those questions in the article. Their
access to the questions enabled them to be sure that the survey was unbiased. The confidence in
this questionnaire is added to by is use by the LEED building certification program.
Study Analysis Approach
The researchers used three different types of inferential statistical analyses to examine employee
workplace satisfaction data for four workspace enclosure types. Use of inferential statistical
analyses enabled the researchers to project these data onto the likely workplace satisfaction for
all U.S. workplaces. The researchers examined three questions critical for design and real estate
decisions: 1) does the type of workspace enclosure influence user satisfaction; 2) are
dissatisfaction with certain IEQ factors more important than others for user workspace
satisfaction in various workplace enclosure types; 3) how much does the dissatisfaction or
satisfaction with particular IEQs impact users’ satisfaction with various workplace enclosure
types.
The first question was if users in various workspace enclosure types responses to different IEQ
factors were different. The researchers evaluated the percent of users in each space type
dissatisfied with a particular IEQ factor against the mean satisfaction score. While some findings
were expected, such as private office satisfaction being the highest across all factors, other
findings were surprising, such as sound privacy rating lower in cubicle spaces than in fully open
offices.
The second question evaluated the relative role of user dissatisfaction with each IEQ factor in the
satisfaction with the different workspace enclosure types. Through the use of multiple regression
analyses the researcher quantitatively evaluated the strength of the relationships between each of
the 15 IEQ factors satisfaction ratings and overall workplace satisfaction to determine from this
sample set if we can say one or more of the IEQ factors correlate to the overall workplace
satisfaction and what is the strength of predictive value of the individual IEQ factors on
workplace satisfaction for different enclosure types. Sound privacy, visual privacy, and
temperature dissatisfaction respectively proved to have the strongest relationship to
dissatisfaction. This evaluation provides designers and researchers with a tool for understanding
which of these factors deserve the most focused design consideration and investment if the
desired outcome is high workplace satisfaction.
The third question assessed the positive and negative impacts of each IEQ factor on overall
satisfaction with different workspaces. In this case, multiple regression analyses using
generalized categories of satisfied, neutral, or dissatisfied (called dummy variables) were run.
Then each IEQ factor was run against overall satisfaction ratings to evaluate how much
satisfaction or dissatisfaction with each category impacted overall user satisfaction with
workspace enclosure types. The satisfaction/dissatisfaction rating for the amount of space has the
most impact on users’ satisfaction ratings of their overall workspaces for all types of
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
5
enclosures. However, the remaining IEQs that were most significantly related to overall
workplace satisfaction ratings varied by enclosure type.
What is so valuable about these analyses is twofold; first, we can infer these outcomes as having
validity for workspace use throughout the U.S., and second, with a smaller data set from an
organization or industry, we can check for any statistical variation specific to your organization.
Evaluation of the Study and the Study Presentation
Presentation Text
The researchers wrote much of the study in language that is accessible to practitioners. However,
the data analyses are not clear enough for non-statisticians to understand. The analyses would be
understandable for a wider audience if the researchers described each of the three statistical
methods they used in more detail.
Presentation Graphics
This article incorporates several types of graphics to assist in the presentation of the material,
including tables, bar graphs, and a radar graph. The researchers included well-organized tables,
focusing on a specific point, using consistently aligned columns and clearly presented table
headers to make them easy to read. The bar graphs are less easy to read as they contain
substantial information crammed into a small layout. What they are trying to accomplish would
have better accomplished in a 3-D bar chart or by switching the axes of this graph and expanding
it to a full page. Some of the tables and bar charts are not located on the same page on which
they are discussed. This separation can make them inconvenient to locate and create confusion
for readers. Even when challenging to read or find, the graphics are all helpful in understanding
the data and findings.
Contribution
This document makes use of a publicly available database to evaluate what makes U.S. workers
satisfied or not with the workspaces provided for them. Earlier research by Shujahat and
colleagues (2018) documented that increases in knowledge worker workplace satisfaction,
increases knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and innovation. As this research documents
what IEQ factors are most connected to overall workplace satisfaction, it provides valuable
insight into the most important investments to make when developing your workplaces.
Literature
Brill, M., Weidemann, S. & BOSTI Associates (2001). Disproving widespread myths about
workplace design. Jasper, IN: Kimball International.
Frost, J. (n.d.) How to interpret p-values and coefficients in regression analysis. Statistics By
Jim: Making Statistics Intuitive. Retrieved from
https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/interpret-coefficients-p-values-regression/
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
6
Horgen, T. H., Joroff, M. L., Porter, W. L. & Schön, D. A. (1999). Excellence by design:
Transforming workplace and work practice. NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Kim, J. & de Dear, R. (2013). Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in
open-plan offices. Journal of Environmental Psychology 36 18-26. doi:
10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.06.007
Rumsey, D. J. (2011). Statistics for dummies (2nd ed.) Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.
Shujahat, M., Ali, B., Nawaz, F., Durst, S., & Kianto, A. (2018). Translating the impact of
knowledge management into knowledge-based innovation: The neglected and mediating
role of knowledge-worker satisfaction. Human Factors and Ergonomics in
Manufacturing and Services Industries 28(4) 200-212. doi: 10.1002/hfm.20735
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
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Case #
There will be one case completed by each student on their own. However, after
writing them the group should edit them for tonally and grammatically aligned.
Title the Describes the Specific Topic
By
Name of Student writer
Graphics may be incorporated IF they
support of enhance what you are saying.
This case study reviews the article [article title] by
[article author(s) name(s)]
Source of graphic
Study Objective
In a short paragraph describe what the article you are reviewing is trying to show, and at an
overview level how it will accomplish this
Data
In this section you want to frame data used for the analysis so that the reader understands
what data was used and how it was collected. In a paragraph form, describe what you know
about your data:
• What is the data used for the analysis? (data set size, demographics, categories of
information, etc.)
• Where did it come from?
• What was the method of data collection? (i.e. if it is survey data, do you know the
questions?) When was the data collected? (Was the data collected live/or not, random,
demographically representative, etc.?)
Study Analysis Approach
In this section you will describe in plain language the methodological approach that was used
to complete the analysis included in the study. Name the method of analysis and describe
why its use was appropriate is being used. (Many studies will include statistical methods that
go beyond the ones are studying this semester, do some research focusing on source that will
help you understand what a particular method can do. Cite any sources you reference). If
there is more than one analysis method address all the methods used. Describe the most
important findings
Evaluation of the Study and the Study Presentation
Document Text
In this section you will analyze who the document is written to and why you say so. Could
this study be understood by practitioners or the public? How would this influence the
distribution of the findings of the work? Do you think this is important? Do you think it would
be better written differently in terms of tone and language? Why? What would that
accomplish?
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
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Document Graphics
This section reviews the graphics used as part of the document. You should be answering
questions such (but not limited to): Are the graphics clear and easy to read? How could they
be improved if they are not? Are the graphics appropriately and completely labeled Are the
graphics clearly called part of the document they support? Are the graphics located on the
same page or an adjacent page to the text they support? If there are multiple graphics types,
you should be addressing all types of graphics in the document
Contribution
In this part of the document you will summarize your thoughts on the document and the value
of this type of analysis to potential clients. In this section you may go out and look for what
organizations are writing about this topic for their clients in documents such as white papers
and marketing materials
Literature
A list of cited sources is included here using APA formatting. Include the article you are
reviewing as one of the sources.
Using Probability & Statistics to Improve Your Workplaces
9
1. Where the introduction to your document is to be included have a least two
bullet-points that address 1) what your document was able to accomplish with
statistical analysis, and 2) why this specific analysis is important in the
process/area it is addressing. (Hint: for this second part your document should
have discussed this if it is well written. However, you may want to find a few
]other resources that confirm this).
2. A draft of your document review, see the attached Exemple. Title your review and
have your name as the author (your byline). This review should include the
following sections:
o
The article you are reviewing and the authors of the article.
o
Study Objective - what is this document/study trying to accomplish
o
Study Summary - what did the study find
o
Data - what type of data was used, how was it collected, what do you know
about the data
o
Study Analysis Approach - what kind of statistical approach(es) were used in
the study. Many studies will use statistical processes that are more advanced
than the ones we have studied this semester. Search for a description of the
method used, so you can describe what is it and why it was useful for this
problem. Why was the approach used and what did it find.
o
Study Analysis Approach
▪
Presentation text - discuss how this article was presented. Is it written in a
way that only someone knowledgeable about the topic and method would
understand? Is it written in a way that others in the field would
understand? Is it written in a way where a practicing professional could
read it and apply it? Is it written in a way where a member of the public
(in particular one who might be affected by the thing being discussed.)
▪
Presentation graphics - discuss the types of graphics used in the article and
the effectiveness of each. Review the file uploaded about Critiquing
Graphics
o
Contribution - this should be your summary of the quality of the article and
its ability to contribute to your field
Critiquing Graphics in a Document
When you are critiquing graphics used in a document, you should see the following:
All Graphics
• All the graphics used need to be relevant and specific to the issue being discussed.
• All the graphics used need to enhance the message being conveyed.
• All graphics used must easy to read. While color may be used, they should read if printed in
black and white.
• All graphics must be identified (Figure for images or graphs or Table for tables), numbered,
and have a title. Figures are identified below figure and a table’s identification goes above
the table. (i.e. Figure 4: Steel Failure Points)
• Graphics should be reference in the text of the document and be located near that reference
(ideally on the same page.)
• All graphics not produced by the author(s) of an article must have a citation.
• Can you envision a way any of the graphics might have been more effective (i.e., a different
image, a different graph or table layout, a different graph type)?
Graphs
• Graphs should be readable as a stand-alone item.
• All elements of the graph must be identified in the most direct way possible. Only where
necessary provide a key (e.g. line types on a line graph) Missing labels or difficult to identify
elements will make graphs less likely to be read.
• Within an article published in black and white, keep graphs focused on a point or idea.
When there is too much information, the most important elements maybe lost. (people that
focus on data visualization may overcome this with very well-designed graphics.)
Tables
• Table element must have headers that stand out clearly so that all elements are identified.
• Tables should be focused with limited data being presented with each.
• Table data should be organized to support the message of the document.
Images
• All images should be focused and clear.
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