Keep calm and carry on: exploring the social determinants of indoor environment quality

Snow, Stephen, Soska, Anna, Chatterjee, Shre Kumar and schraefel, m.c. (2016) Keep calm and carry on: exploring the social determinants of indoor environment quality. In CHI EA '16 Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1476-1482 . (doi:10.1145/2851581.2892490).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Poor Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) in office environments leads to worker discomfort and lost productivity. This paper provides a unique perspective into the specifically social determinants of IEQ in naturally ventilated offices and our work toward designing technology that might improve it. Based on 15 qualitative interviews we explore the rituals, practices and negotiations involved in opening windows and thermostat adjustment. We find that a wish to maintain status quo results in workers putting up with discomfort with IEQ factors well before requesting a change. In closing, we introduce our future design work aimed at drawing attention to existing office practices and encouraging a broader participation in negotiations around IEQ factors in the workplace.

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