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home / programmes / research associates / 2004 / harriet and suzi
Harriet Harriss and Suzi Winstanley / Architecture & Interiors
capture it: knowledge interactions and the flexible older worker
By 2020, half of the working population in the European Union will be over 50. What will this profound shift in age balance mean for our workplaces in the future?
The trend towards greater numbers of older people remaining in the workforce for longer is being driven by rapid demographic change, shortfalls in pension funds and a stronger management focus on retaining and utilising knowledge and experience built up over time within organisations.
But the challenge of an ageing workforce seeking to contribute in more flexible ways has significant design implications. Will our workplaces and work practices be agile enough to respond to the growing numbers of people with valuable expertise to pass on?
Intellectual capital
An international research project was set up in the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre to look at this issue, led by RCA architecture graduates Harriet Harriss and Suzi Winstanley. The study's title - Capture It - is in recognition of the status of knowledge as a new intellectual capital that requires a shared emotional experience to be exchanged.
The project has drawn on the experience of Japan, where ageing workforce trends are especially pronounced, through a collaboration with a research team from the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University under the direction of RCA graduate Yasuyuki Hirai.
Industry partners in the study are global furniture company Steelcase, innovation firm IDEO and architects DEGW. Steelcase Director of Workplace Futures Europe, Terry West, explains: "It's not simply about accommo-dating older people in the workplace. It's about being inclusive, about recognising that older generations may have different ways of processing, thinking and perceiving."
Phase one: cinematic mapping
The research began with a literature and media review. The impact of the ageing demographic on the architecture of the workplace was mapped cinematically and a short film was produced. This innovative approach directed the study to focus on the exchange of knowledge as a key driver of change.
Phase two: user probes
In the second phase of the project, the research associates worked with a user group of six individual flexible older workers and with four cross-generational groups based in work organisations in the UK and Japan. A series of playful, interactive user probes were created to elicit personal responses and generate qualitative findings about the knowledge interactions of older workers.
'Tea-time hijack', for example, encouraged participants to answer questions on their tea cups; a 'knowledge city map' invited individuals to indicate their favourite places to work in the city; and 'knowledge blossom', based on observance of Japanese rituals, gathered input from office workers in a delicate, poetic way. A video diary-making kit was also issued to key individuals.
Phase three: key findings
Phase three of the project distilled the results of the user probes and referenced them against the assumptions made in the cinematic mapping of phase one. Eight key findings emerged which describe the desires and needs of older people in relation to the workplace of the future.
First, flexible older workers will demand more choice and control in terms of how, when and where they work. Second, they will be increasingly curious and committed to learning, often mixing work and personal projects. Third, they will require more space and time for reflection, in recognition that flexibility can be inherently stressful because of the lack of live/work separation.
Fourth, they will look to multi-sensory work environments, especially green spaces, to support their learning and reflection; and fifth, they will increasingly recognise a fundamental relationship between tactile materials and the cognitive ability to access knowledge.
Older workers will want access to and separation from ubiquitous new technology as their lives demand. They will also require triggers in the environment to facilitate narrative and memory, in recognition of the inevitable degenerative effects of ageing on the senses. Finally, older workers will crave connection to people of all ages - they will not want to be cocooned with their peers.
Phase four: design interventions
In the fourth phase of the project, the findings of the user research were interpreted in a series of design interventions on a real site in Bermondsey, based on a derive of the district. These proposals encompass a building to focus on individual work, an interior for sharing knowledge between people of diverse ages, a series of street furniture for reflection, a shopping bag to trade knowledge across different disciplines and a digitally-enhanced 'acoustic flower' for the ever curious to learn more, all linked together by a physical route and data system to manifest a distributed and multi-layered narrative network.
Innovative applications
The body of design work includes four site-specific interventions to illustrate a scenario in which an organisation is sharing knowledge across two local sites, linked by spaces to connect and reflect. Innovative spatial applications of new technologies and materials both inform and express the findings of the research.
Thus the project responds in a practical way to the future needs of the older flexible worker seeking to work across a series of networked spaces as the boundaries of the office and city are increasingly blurred. Using real stories, film, illustration and user interaction, it demonstrates and posits new design thinking to support the older worker in building and sharing knowledge.
The study will now go into a second year to prototype and test some of the key spatial concepts, having established, in the words of DEGW director of research Andrew Harrison, "a platform to be a real voice on the subject of the design needs of an ageing workforce."
The intention is to translate research insights directly onto a nodal site in a south London borough. The design will manifest as a hybrid and multi-layered narrative system across the borough, using real stories, real-time film and considered architectural interventions to demonstrate the potential for new design thinking to support the older worker in building and sharing knowledge.
