Sharing Contextual Information Environment Supporting Professional Teams   Akihiro Kishimoto Kokuyo Co., Ltd A team of professionals, whose total effect exceeds the sum of its parts. What kind of space can support their workstyle? The advance of informational technology has removed spatial and temporal restrictions and the structural shift towards digital economy has deconstructed traditional corporate organizations. In such a milieu, the individual members of a project team formed for a variety of missions must work towards a common goal in spite of their diverse backgrounds, and effectively combine different skills to lend themselves to achievements. In this article, how to design a space which serve as the homebase for such teams is proposed. Changing Work Process and Role of Space In a situation where the shift to digital economy has changed the corporate organizational structure into a more flexible one, office workers are being broadly categorized into three types; the management team, which leads the entire organization by presenting business visions and strategies, the professionals with high degrees of knowledge and expertise, who, with flexibly defined roles, collaborate with each other to execute projects, and the support team, which is a group of highly skilled specialists and provides a wide array of support services. (Fig. 1) In addition to such a change in work role, outsourcing and alliance now widely used in various fields have pushed workers beyond the boundaries of their respective companies. In near future many project teams will be formed flexibly across the boundaries of existing organizations and the work process of professional teams will become more ad-hoc. On the other hand, the role of office spaces for professionals is changing, since communication channels such as the flow of people and papers, which has long governed the organizational proximity and circulation planning in office designs, is going through a tremendous change. Along with the advance of information and communication technology, some dialogues will change from face-to-face ones to those exchanged via networks, and workers' working time and place will diversify. In other words, opportunities for "encounters and interactions" will diminish. Furthermore, as mentioned above, organizations will become more fluid, consisting of more diverse human resources, and project teams will be formed across organizational boundaries, so that it will be less frequent that a group of workers share time and space for a long period of time. Then, the organizational adjacency, the basis for traditional blocking and circulation planning, will be estranged from the structure of communication channels used in the work process. (Fig. 2) Consequently it is now difficult for team members to naturally share diverse contexts they accumulated by informal interactions, sharing time and place. In such a situation, it will be required to create a new environment which will support ad-hoc behaviors and relationships of professional teams in a business environment changing faster than ever before. (Fig. 1) (Fig. 2) Workstyle of Professional Team In order to find out what environment is suitable to support future professional teams, let's take a more concrete look at how their workstyle will change. Generally speaking, many professional teams work in such a way that autonomous "solo work" and collaborative "group work" are intricately mixed. Therefore, it is necessary for the workplace to be able to flexibly cater to the needs of supporting both solo work and group work. In most cases, the workplace for solo work can be dispersed more easily than that for group work, so that the bases for solo work will be much more spread out than now. However, this does not mean that the central office will be diminished, because throughout the phases from group formation to team activities, sharing information and contexts plays an important role, and much of this sharing is dependent on multiple communications through informal channels. (Fig. 3) This will become an ever more important element in choosing the workplace, as there will be more opportunities for forming teams across the boundaries of organizations as mentioned above. Fig. 4 shows the result of a small-scale survey of various professionals in Japan (researchers, designers, consultants, etc.). Here again, we can see that there is an awareness that on the assumption that non-regimental work will increase, the workplaces will be more decentralized and the spaces within the central office will be more shared, so that there will be more group work and interactions at the central office. In other words, we can interpret that the respondents attach importance to the central office, thinking it is vital for team members to "gather" at their base for group work. Certainly it is indispensable for team members to share diverse information and its contexts if the team, which, unlike conventional fixed organizations capable of sharing contexts through various daily activities, is formed flexibly across the boundaries of organizations, is to develop a collaborative relationship within a short period of time and achieve a high performance. In an environment which supports such a professional team, providing a space for collaborative work where team members can share time and place is as important as allocating each member a space for individual work where he or she can work freely according to his or her distinct style or needs. (Fig. 3) (Fig. 4) Environment Facilitating Context Sharing In order for the base for teamwork to support both individuals and team creativity synergistically, it must simultaneously support two different kinds of work, solo work and group work in a balanced way. If professionals who are autonomous and come from diverse backgrounds are to be supported in their individual creative processes, a mechanism should be implemented to allow individual workers to select their own ways of working. For this purpose, the user should be able to customize space configurations or select the space meeting custom needs. On the other hand, it will be important to back up informal information exchanges at various levels in order to support the creative process of the team. Desirably the spaces should be configured to activate communications and promote mutual understanding among members through various channels such as synchronous conversations and discussions, asynchronous exchanging and sharing of information, and communication of background information such as daily behavioral patterns and personal inclinations. If we are to visualize such a space, an example would be a semitransparent display space suggestive of daily activities and capable of visually presenting diverse kinds of information. Mixing these elements in a space results in an activities setting for multiple tasks where a rich variation of options are provided, while workers are allowed to switch freely between solo work and group work. (Fig. 5) In such a setting, the boundary between spaces is expected to be seamless both visually and behaviorally, so as to promote workers to move across settings smoothly and selectively and avoid interfering the connectivity and continuity of actions. At the same time, for the purpose of supporting workers to selectively move to a setting suitable to a particular work, it is important to install an infrastructure for introducing a tool system portable and interchangeable. By meeting these spatial requirements, it will expectedly become possible to build an environment which will support team members to share situational contexts and engage in flexible and timely interactions and group work, while supporting each team member to select a space optimum for his or her own workstyle and pursue solo work. (Fig. 5) Mechanism of Adaptable Spaces The base for professional teams whose arrangements change flexibly must have not only a variation of spaces capable of coping with the diversity of activities but an adaptability to meet the needs which change either on each occasion or as time goes by. Different projects have a different duration and each team has a different size. Even within a course of a project, the size of the team and the work process vary at different phases. Naturally work tools and information technology will invariably change and advance, just as at many other workplaces. The base for professional teams must maintain its high performance as an environment to support professionals, while adapting to these changes. In order to meet such a high level of demand, it is necessary to devise a mechanism which will maintain functional diversity throughout the entire space and allow efficient reallocation of spacial functions continuously. What is required is a spatial system which can quickly change the size and shape of individual spaces as well as their uses, restructure the module composing each functional space and transfer its functions, and replace tools, system elements and components. Concretely, the system needed is, for example, an interior-architectural system which can flexibly change not only the layout of furniture and partitions but also spatial functions including interior equipment such as lighting fixtures and cabling system. However, there is more to consider. For the adaptability to these changes is at the level of "planned change" and allows for time to plan in advance. At the forefront of ad hoc team activities, more frequent "daily adjustments" are necessary. It is desirable that the user on the spot can customize the environment of a shared space for solo work according to his or her needs or rearrange the setting of a space for group work according to the work contents or number of participants. In order to do this, it will be effective to adopt a mechanism capable of on-demand adjustments of the functions of various spaces and furniture and to introduce an interior system where visible mechanisms and structures entice users' environmental literacy and their own environmental adjustments. Prototype of Spatial Structure Let's think about a new model of spatial structure as a total setting for a professional team, drawing on the requirements for team spaces described above. First of all, the conventional office is structured on the basis of a workstyle where work is done in a universal individual space structured with a principle that most of the work is done in one's own dedicated space. In such an office, personal desks (or cubicles) are intensively located in the work area and in most cases space reconfigurations to meet organizational changes take place only in that area, so that the whole space remain unchanged in terms of area structure. (Fig. 6, left) What is happening in the office thus structured is that many spaces in the work area are unoccupied, while there tends to be a shortage of meeting spaces and conference rooms in the communication area, namely a mismatch between behavioral pattern and space allocation. In the space designed to assure the right work in the right place, it is intended that workers move in order to choose a setting appropriate to a particular work. In order to make this really happen (i.e. make people really move selectively), it is important to locate optional settings within a proper walking distance. It is also desirable that each setting can be flexibly connected according to the needs. In the figure, settings are categorized into four types, solo work, group work, service, and interaction, which are combined to create an activities setting. (Fig. 6, right) This space model features that an equal space is allocated for the settings for solo work and common use and that the circulation space is included in the settings for common use. This would allow workers' activities to shift naturally to the common spaces, with the movement pattern becoming a "wandering" one where workers have higher chances of meeting and interacting with other workers. Thus, the activities of team members in the office will be more interactive, promoting them to share contexts. Since the structure in the boundary between settings is vague, continuous changes in team arrangement and activity type will be dealt with by adjusting how spaces are reallocated throughout the entire space. (Fig. 6) An Image of Prototype Space Let's build on the above-mentioned prototype and visualize a space developed by a system which can flexibly achieve various functions, focusing on making workers share context of behavior and communication and creating a boundary which would encourage workers to selectively move to a location on the basis of "the right work in the right place." The space shown here is such an example. This is an attempt to realize a shift towards a new team-type setting by deftly fitting an alternative space structure inside a conventional architectural space. The days ahead will see organizations becoming more fluidized and information technology evolving rapidly. This trend will be a large element to promote the workplace to diversify and become decentralized. However, the fruit professionals nurture by bringing together a myriad of knowledge and ideas and working interactively will also occupy an important place in business activities. The future central office space will definitely evolve to a new structure, playing a role as one of the essential bases for such teamwork. excerpt from ECIFFO 40 March 29, 2002