The Workspace Design approach: How users and ... - ResearchGate

The Workspace Design approach: How users and OHS consultants can transform
design scripts
Ole Broberg
Technical University of Denmark
DTU Management Engineering
ob@ipl.dtu.dk
Abstract
The Danish Workspace Design (WSD) research program is aimed to develop and trial a
potential new concept for ergonomists and other workplace consultants who are to engage in
socio-technical design processes. The objective of this paper is to report on the trial of the
workspace design concept in a case involving the design and implementation of a new mixing
technology in an industrial plant. The case showed how the WSD concept can contribute to an
engineering design process. The WSD team took the role as workspace designer and by the
participatory workshops achieved an impact on the technology project. It was possible to
transform the script which the design engineers were sticking to in the early phases of the
design process.
Keywords: Participatory design; workplace design; ergonomics; action research
Topics: Design and usability

1. Introduction
The Danish Workspace Design (WSD) research program is aimed to develop and trial a
potential new concept for ergonomists and occupational health service (OHS) consultants
who are to engage in socio-technical design processes. The trial of the workspace design
concept included a case involving the design and implementation of a new mixing technology
in an industrial plant. The case showed how the WSD concept can contribute to an
engineering design process. The WSD team took the role as workspace designer and by
participatory workshops and methods achieved an impact on the technology project.
The objective of this paper is to discuss how the WSD workshop sessions contributed to the
design of a new production line in the mixing plant which was very different from the design
engineers’ first outline? The concept of “script” from the actor-network theory seems to be a
relevant option to build on in such an analysis. This concept is based on a distinction between
the projected user and the real user, and thus that the designer is working with different
representations of the user.
2. Methods
The test of the Workspace Design (WSD) concept took place in three case companies. In this
paper I report an analysis of an industrial manufacturing case in which a company was to
implement a new mixing technology in their production line. The WSD team consisted of
three researchers from the Technical University of Denmark, two consultants from the Danish
Technological Institute, two researchers from the Centre for Design Research, and two OHS
consultants from the OHS unit that normally served the industrial manufacturer.
This team tried to take the role as workspace designer in relation to the technological change
process. In this way a potential new role of the OHS consultant was developed in a mutual
learning process. The idea was that the activities planned and completed in this group could
be the job of the OHS consultants in their future consultancy tasks for companies.
3. Case: New mixing technology in a production line
The company is manufacturing so-called socks for the renovation of piping, especially
sewage piping. The key process at the company is the impregnation of socks with chemical
mixtures that allow the socks to harden up when installed in piping. The mixing of chemicals
into different prescriptions takes place in batch processes located in the mixing plant. The
production system implicates much manual handling of barrels and bags by the 4-5 operators.
Exposures to vapours and dust are also part of a work environment which is considered to be
problematic by all parties involved in the company.
The company engaged two external design engineers as consultants to the project. They first
worked on a project replacing the current batch technology with new batch technology.
During their work, however, they identified a German machine supplier who was able to
develop continuous working machinery for the mixing process. It was subsequently decided
that they should opt for this solution, and the two design engineers drew up a requirements
specification for such machinery. The new production system would be a closed system with
automatic inflow of raw materials, thereby improving some aspects of the work environment
considerably.
At the time of the WSD intervention the new mixing machine was specified and ordered. The
design engineers had made two proposals for the layout in the empty production hall where
the new machinery was to be installed. Both proposals were based on an optimization of the

piping in the new facility, as the length of the pipes could be a critical factor due to a risk of
hardening up of raw materials in the pipes.
4. The WSD intervention
The intervention by the WSD team was organized as two collaborative events, each consisting
of two workshops. Each workshop had a duration of approximately three hours. The events
were design games (Horgen et al., 1999; Johansson et al., 2002; Brandt & Messeter, 2004)
aimed at staging the meeting between the production management, two consulting design
engineers and three employees of the mixing plant. The design game format was aimed at
facilitating a collaborative design process between these actors. In the first event the
workshops were focusing on the layout of the new plant in which the new mixing machine
was to be installed. In the second event the two workshops were organized as use scenarios,
aiming at simulating work processes and ergonomics in the new plant.
4.1 The layout design game
The first event was a layout design game which took place in a meeting room in the company.
The WSD team had produced game boards and gaming pieces. During the two workshops, the
participants were sitting around a game board placed in the middle of the table. The game
board was a sketch of the floor plan of the existing mixing plant and the adjacent hall in
which the new mixing machine was to be placed. Coloured cardboard pieces represented
different artefacts in the plant. A WSD team member was designated as game master, and he
instructed the participants that the purpose of the design game was to set up a collaborative
design process on the layout of the new mixing plant. He also stressed that the workshop was
a sort of a ‘laboratory’ in which participants had the opportunity to explore different layout
possibilities.
In the first workshop the game board was based on the design engineers’ proposal for layout.
This layout was printed to the game board and was not moveable. The coloured gaming
pieces represented different issues in relation to workplace design, work tasks, and
equipment. They were filled in by the participants during the game. In this way, all the
participants could make enquiries to the design engineers’ proposal and this procedure
resulted in a number of possible solution proposals to identified problems. At the end of the
workshop homework was scheduled to the second workshop. The design engineers should
check up on some machine features, the production manager and the OHS coordinator should
investigate into regulations on fire and chemicals. Finally, the production manager suggested
that the operators should work on a new proposal for layout.
The second workshop started with reports from the production manager and the design
engineers on their homework. Next, the operators presented their layout proposal step-by-step
at a game board with moveable gaming pieces, each representing machines and equipment.
During the game they explained their reasons and ideas and a collaborative design process
started up. In the end, the game board was representing a layout including many of the
operators’ proposals, but during the collaborative design process other things had been
changed.
In short, the outcome of the layout design game was a proposal for the layout of the new
mixing plant which was quite different from the two proposals originally made by the two
consulting design engineers. Especially, the work practice experience and ideas brought in by
the employees had a profound influence on the new proposal for layout and also included
important aspects of ergonomics. The employees were able to highlight things which had not

een considered by the design engineers. Support functions such as maintenance and storage
had not been considered by the design engineers. Such facilities were part of the new lay out
design. The physical product of the layout design game was the game board with a floor plan
on which the cardboard pieces illustrating the machine and other artefacts were placed in new
ways.
4.2 The use scenario workshops
In the second collaborative event a use scenario was set up by the WSD team. The idea was to
explore more closely the ergonomics and future work practice related to the operation of the
new mixing machine in the surroundings designed during the layout workshops. This was
done by simulating future work processes through scenarios taking place in the empty hall
designated for the new mixing plant. The WSD team produced two artefacts to facilitate the
use scenario. The first was a 1:20 scale model of the new plant with movable representations
of machines and devices. The second was the placement of tape markers on the floor,
representing the machines and new walls in the empty hall according to the results of the
layout game. The scale model was placed on a table in the empty hall, and the use scenarios
started out by having the participants standing around the model. At the same time, it was
possible to move around in the new mixing plant by looking at the tape markers on the
flooring. Two different kinds of use scenarios were applied by the WSD team. In both cases
the participants were the production management, the two consulting design engineers, and
three employees from the mixing plant. A WSD team member was game master.
At the first use scenario the production manager and the employees were asked by the WSD
game master to go through the process of what would be expected to be a normal production
scenario with the new machine. By doing so they were pointing to the scale model. Then the
WSD team had prepared incident cards on which realistic production incidents were
described. These events had been identified through interviews with employees and
production management and were based on experience acquired from the operation of the
existing mixing plant. An example is the following instruction: “You have started the weekly
cleaning process. Suddenly you spot a leaky valve. Approximately five litres of fluid have
spilled out on the floor, and it is still leaking. It smells like an organic solvent. What do you
do?” The idea was to open up for a collaborative inquiry of how actual production events
could be handled at the new mixing plant with a machine based on new principles. The
employees took turns taking a card, and together the employees discussed how they would
deal with this event in the new facility. The other participants joined the open reflection by
answering questions or putting forward their points of view. WSD team members
continuously registered the identified potential problems and ideas to solve them on flip
charts. During this session, the production manager made an ‘on-the-spot’ design decision
because he realized that a vacuum tank had to be moved from one room to another.
Afterwards the flip charts were systematized by the WSD team in a document and handed out
to all participants. All items from the flip charts were placed in three categories: Hall layout,
the technical system, and work procedures. Items requiring further investigation were
registered too and persons to be responsible for the homework were appointed.
The second use scenario took place in the same setting as the first with the same participants.
Now the work environment and ergonomics in the new mixing plant were to be investigated
with the aim of being proactive. The workshop was staged by the WSD team with the
following scenario: “The new plant has now been running for two years, and today the OHS
consultant comes for a visit to carry out a workplace assessment“. A workplace assessment is

a systematic mapping of the work environment and measures and is mandatory according to
Danish law.
The OHS consultant was then taken on a walk-through of the new plant by the employees.
This was done by moving around the tape markings at the floor and looking at the 3 D scale
model. During the tour, the OHS consultant asked a lot of specific questions on work
procedures, workplace design, equipment and personal protections. All participants reflected
openly upon these questions, and potential problems and ideas for solutions were registered
by the WSD team, and afterwards were systematized in a document and handed out to the
participants. This time, the items were categorized by rooms at the new mixing plant, e.g. the
control room, the mixing room, the chemicals storage room.
Based on the two use scenario sessions, the production manager made several changes to the
requirements specifications for the new facility. A vacuum tank was moved from one room to
another. The machine supplier was asked to modify a detail in the machine allowing for
mixing additives when the machine is operating. In an evaluation of the workshops he stated:
I am sure we have saved a lot of resources by doing it in this way. Otherwise we would have
to make changes afterwards. The OHS consultant stated: Overall, it was a really good
session. It was fantastic effective to envisage the future production system and the work in it.
The workers were much more engaged, maybe because they were expected to contribute.
5. Transforming the script
How did the WSD workshop sessions contribute to the design of a new production line in the
mixing plant? The trial of the WSD concept may be seen as an intervention in a technology
design project to promote more humanistic technology (Badham et al., 2001; Garrety &
Badham, 2004). Actor-network theory (ANT) offers a framework for understanding the
manner in which new socio-technical objects come to be built or assembled. ANT focuses on
technology in the making (Latour, 1987). In this framework technology design projects are
understood as a process of changing networks of social and technical relations. The role of
technology designers are discussed by introducing the concept of “script” (Akrich, 1992).
When engineers are designing a machine or a production system they make hypothesis about
the context in which the machine or system is to be used. They define users and prescribe how
users associate with the technology. As stated by Akrich:
A large part of the work of innovators is that of “inscribing” this vision of (or prediction
about) the world in the technical content of the new object. I will call the end product of
this work a “script” or a “scenario”. (Akrich, 1992, p. 208)
In this specific case, however, the practise of the WSD concept implied that the real users
were involved in inscribing their visions of the new production line in the script. The two
design engineers were under way with a script which was not very specific about the users of
the new production facility. They were mostly concerned with optimizing the piping, and
hence the work of the operators was not articulated. The engineers were designing the
technical system and leaving the work tasks unidentified. The layout design games, and later
on the use scenarios, became a reframing of the design object in the engineering design
process, hence developing a “stronger” script setting up more explicit the relationships
between the new machine and the operators. Bringing in the work practices of the operators
and their reflections on conduct in the new system enlarged the design object to include a
redesign of the new production facility, work procedures, equipment, cleaning, maintenance

and a number of work environment features. This contrasted to the original work of the design
engineers, which primarily focused on piping and layout of the technical components.
The use scenarios explored the new production system as a result of the design process in the
layout game workshops. The set-up of the scenarios was a mixture of two main media for
simulation (Daniellou, 2006): Experimental simulation based on a prototype and a narrative
simulation where participants built up an oral account of feasible ways of carrying out the
future tasks. The use scenario with incidence cards proved to be a collaborative inquiry of the
characteristics of the new production system adding to the script. Playing the scenarios
revealed the difference between the employees’ tasks and their conduct (Daniellou, 2005).
The employees were not talking and reflecting about their formal tasks. They were talking
about the difficulties they could foresee in the new production system and were thinking
aloud about how to deal with these problems. By reflecting on the feasibility of conduct, a lot
of factors were identified, factors that the design engineers and the production manager had
not considered in the design of the new system.
6. Conclusion
How could the WSD workshops contribute to the process of transforming a script? Instead of
working with representations of users, the designers were collaborating with the actual future
operators of the facility in the WSD workshops. Seen from a social learning perspective, the
workshops contributed to set up a temporary learning space in which the daily power
relations, expert roles and decision-making processes receded. The WSD team set up the rules
for the workshops which all participants were to stick to. By the design games the WSD team
facilitated the meeting and initiated mutual learning processes between these actors. The game
board and the pieces, the scale model and the tape markings in the production hall were
operating as appropriate ‘boundary objects’ (Wenger, 2000), allowing usable connections
between different work practices. The workshop rules and these artefacts enabled multiple
practices to initiate a collaborative design process because the artefacts could be
comprehended and interpreted by all participants. The abstract term of “learning space” even
became very tangible when we experienced the power of setting up the use scenarios in the
actual production hall. An operator stated: It is really a good idea to bring people from
different departments together in a room with sufficient time to discuss design and layout indepth.
And the icing of the cake was to be situated in the actual production hall instead of a
meeting room. The design engineers, one of them a little bit reluctantly, also recognized the
effect of the workshops. One of them stated: The starting point was to optimize the piping.
Quite other things are now in focus, and the facility will look very different than designed
from the beginning.
Acknowledgements
The Workspace Design research program is partially funded by the Danish Work
Environment Research Fund.

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