William L. Porter

The agile workplace

Workplace agility is emerging as the highest priority for the providers of workplace services and infrastructure. ‘Agility’ means continuously improving work and the infrastructure that enables it. An agile workplace is one that is constantly transforming, adjusting and responding to organisational learning. Agility requires a dynamic relationship between work and the workplace and the tools of work. In that relationship the workplace becomes an integral part of work itself ‐ enabling work, shaping it and being shaped by it. This paper focuses on defining workplace agility and discusses the triggers that prompt agile workplace making. Strategies for creating agile workplaces are discussed and the idea of ‘rehearsing’ change is introduced. This paper is excerpted from ‘The Agile Workplace’, which introduces the business and technology forces that drive and enable agile work. The report includes chapters about change management, organisational responsibilities and performance metrics.

Notes on the inner logic of designing: Two thought-experiments

Abstract In this article the author attempts to get at the underlying logic of designing in two case studies: one a competition design (not built) for Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, and the other, part of a completed building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The article first introduces the ideas of the ‘logic’ of designing, and of ‘replication’ and then goes on to present and analyse the two cases. After each there is discussion of the implications for book-keeping design, pointing toward descriptions that the designer may find usefully embedded in a computer assistant.

Innovation in design: strategies for designing together

Innovation in design is becoming increasingly important as businesses see the limits of cost reduction strategies for improving productivity, profit, and growth.To create innovation in design we will show that designing in skilled practice has an inner logic: a structure that allows it to be understood as a kind of reasoning, a form of inquiry, but that also includes and depends upon the designers appreciative judgments.Through the use of a research technique called Design Games and a real-life problem situation, participants will explore designing with a variety of tools, techniques and methods. Participants will reflect, analyze, and evaluate their work with others and by doing so will learn how their designs can become more communicative, efficient, and foster innovation through out the design process.The Space Planning and Organizational Research Group (http://destec.mit.edu/sporg/info/) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the User Centered Design Group at Danfoss have provided research and material for this tutorial.

Forming the Research and Development Workplace: Documents as the Glue in the Process Design

Documents are a powerful resource for constructing and negotiating social space. John Seely Brown suggests that the social life of the document is not widely recognized, and that seeing documents as a means of making and maintaining social groups, not just as a means of delivering information, makes it easier to understand the utility and success of new forms of documents1. The paper investigates how establishing documentation of a situation can help understand issues of importance in a work group and can be instrumental in constructing a new work place and work processes which focus on integration of effort. Our focus will be on how joint use of documents can support collaborative processes in a way which sparks innovation. Through an example from a case study, the paper addresses how the study of best work practices and the documentation of different viewpoints about communicative spaces gradually shaped the vocabulary for design requirements for a new work place.2 The result was a work place which fostered innovation, creativity, and learning, and which simultaneously was itself the most effective marketplace for new technology.