The EnviroMapper Toolkit: an Input Physicalisation that Captures the Situated Experience of Environmental Comfort in Offices

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of capturing situated, personal experiences of environmental comfort in office settings by introducing the EnviroMapper Toolkit, an input physicalisation that records moments and locations of comfort or discomfort. Through two in-the-wild studies with 14 participants, the authors demonstrate rich, location-based artefacts and show that domain experts can interpret the data without being present during construction. The work details an iterative design process from low- to high-fidelity prototypes, outlines the encoding rules and mapping workflow, and presents findings on appropriation strategies and interpretation challenges. Overall, the study shows that while the toolkit yields nuanced, actionable data, there are trade-offs between data richness, cognitive load, and social privacy, informing design considerations for future input physicalisation approaches in organizational settings.

Abstract

The environmental comfort in offices is traditionally captured by surveying an entire workforce simultaneously, which yet fails to capture the situatedness of the different personal experiences. To address this limitation, we developed the EnviroMapper Toolkit, a data physicalisation toolkit that allows individual office workers to record their personal experiences of environmental comfort by mapping the actual moments and locations these occurred. By analysing two in-the-wild studies in existing open-plan office environments (N=14), we demonstrate how this toolkit acts like a situated input visualisation that can be interpreted by domain experts who were not present during its construction. This study therefore offers four key contributions: (1) the iterative design process of the physicalisation toolkit; (2) its preliminary deployment in two real-world office contexts; (3) the decoding of the resulting artefacts by domain experts; and (4) design considerations to support future input physicalisation and visualisation constructions that capture and synthesise data from multiple individuals.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: The high-fidelity prototype of the EnviroMapper Toolkit featured: (a) a components box containing red, blue and green pins engraved with time markers, blocks to specify the type of environmental aspect represented and rings of varying diameter and height to indicate intensity and duration; (b) printed floor plans; (c) an instruction sheet; (d) the box cover consisting of a cork board to secure the plan with thumb tacks; (e) a booklet with examples of situated experiences per environmental aspect; and (f) a printed attendance table for tracking participation.
• Figure 2: Appropriating the EnviroMapper by adapting the encoding rules: (a) multiple rings representing repeated events, varying intensities or combined environmental aspects; (b) pins placed on the border of the plan to signify environmental aspects outside the depicted area; and (c) diverse interpretations of environmental aspects (e.g. social interaction for crowded office, acoustics for moving to another space for meeting and air quality for musty smell).
• Figure 3: By visually representing the situated experiences mapped by 8 office workers from office A, we are able to synthesise that: (a) acoustic distractions mainly originate around the desks of other co-workers, while positive interactions are experienced at one's own desk; (b) the individual approaches and frequencies for mapping experience and intensity reveal insights into office workers' personalities; (c) the most frequently mapped environmental aspects are acoustics, social interaction and temperature, and they are mapped in relation to their duration, intensity and type. A similar synthesis for office B appears in Appendix Figure \ref{['fig:heatmap-appendix']}.
• Figure 4: We developed and tested low-fidelity prototypes: (a) timetable prototype featuring a grid sheet, colourful arrows and a legend categorising environmental aspects by symbols and colours; (b) abstract representation prototype utilizing a 3D foam model with upright sticks of various colours and heights to represent different environmental aspects; (c) detailed plan prototype consisting of a floor plan with pins placed at specific locations to indicate environmental aspects.
• Figure 5: The mid-fidelity prototype did not account for environmental crafting or experience intensity at this point, therefore it relied on the following components: (a) printed office plan on a foamboard; (b) flow chart and 3D-printed components to represent a situated experience: red and green pins (no blue pins) to indicate environmental demands and resources as well as rings to represent the duration; and (c) example of several situated experiences. (d) A flow chart of the encoding rules was added to help users navigate the physicalisation construction process. (e) The physical artefact constructed during an informal evaluation by a family member in an open-plan office environment.