SSO User Insight Toolbox for employees’ health, well-being and productivity

Abstract

Users have significant impacts on building energy consumption and can interact with indoor environments. Identifying user needs, behaviour, and preference is crucial for the design of both new and the renovation of existing buildings. Offices are important since people spend on average one-third of their life at work. It also accounted for a larger share of the energy use and the floor area of non-residential buildings in Europe. Moreover, more ambitious regulations and the increasing popularity of voluntary building certification schemes require the construction of more energy-efficient buildings, but in reality, a ‘performance gap’ is often observed. Therefore, deep insights in user perceptions and experiences can provide the knowledge basis for developing a new generation of office buildings that provide a healthier and more productive indoor environment guided by a user-centric approach. In  his article, we will introduce the web-based application of the Questionnaire and Diary Apps and a Virtual Reality (VR) design tool developed to support the interactive co-creation session with users and designers.

Publication
REHVA Journal
Quan Jin
Quan Jin
Senior researcher

Quan Jin is Senior Researcher in the research group Sustainable Building at the Division of Building Technology, and in the Area of advance Energy. She conducts research on indoor environmental quality from multiple disciplinary perspectives, and their impact on building energy efficiency and occupant health and comfort. The goal is to create tools and knowledge to improve human well-being and productivity in sustainable buildings while minimizing the energy consumption.

Holger Wallbaum
Holger Wallbaum
Full Professor, Vice-Head of Department and Vice-Dean for Research

Holger is a Full Professor in sustainable building at the Division of Building Technology, research group Sustainable Building, and in the Area of advance Building Futures. Holger works within sustainable building on concepts, tools and strategies to enhance the sustainability performance of construction materials, building products, buildings as well as entire cities.

Melina Forooraghi
Researcher - Institutet för stressmedicin (ISM)

Melina’s research focuses on the relationship between health and the built environment, drawing on a health approach called salutogenesis. More specifically, her research addresses how office design can promote employee health and wellbeing, by studying factors of the built environment that makes us healthy rather than those leading to disease and illness.