1. Disproving Widespread Myths About Workplace Design, 2001

BOSTI Associates has a 30-year history of continuous innovation in workplace planning and design, and has pioneered in the application of innovative workplace solutions and high-performance design to support the new forms of work. Much of our work has been published in both the business and design press, and BOSTI has received many awards for their leadership and their contributions to understanding the relationship between workplace design and business performance.

BOSTI's 1985 two-volume work Using Office Design To Increase Productivity, based on rigorous, client-based research with 10,000 workers in 100 organizations showed that workplace design affects productivity and job satisfaction.

Now, 15 years later, BOSTI has completed another important research effort. Led by Michael Brill, President; Sue Weidemann, Director of Research; and Vice Presidents John Olson and Ellen Keable, BOSTI has done empirical, quantitative analyses of data from some 13,000 people in 40 business units between 1994 and 2000, all gathered during BOSTI's research-based client engagements.

BOSTI was curious to see if there were strong commonalities in the findings across industries and companies. There are, and more importantly, the findings strongly call into question many of our most cherished assumptions about design of today's and tomorrow's workplaces.

Key findings from this research are now available in a 63 page illustrated booklet entitled Disproving Widespread Myths About Workplace Design, published and distributed by Kimball International as a service to business executives, facilities managers, human resource staff, designers, suppliers, and other stakeholders involved in developing high-performance workplaces.

The new booklet focuses on the two most powerful design determinants of productivity and satisfaction … the near-universal needs for distraction-free work and for learning-laden informal interactions. It translates these findings into new facility design concepts which have great capacity for dramatic and positive effects on critical organizational outcomes - increased performance, more satisfied employees, more productive teams, and enhanced learning.

Disproving Widespread Myths About Workplace Design is available by contacting Kent Reyling at Kimball International, e-mail: kreylin@kimball.com. Please include your name, title, company name, and full address for mailing. The book is available at no charge to qualified individuals.

2. Using Office Design to Increase Productivity, Volumes I&II, 1985

The first research to link office design to productivity and quality of work life.
Volume I contains the research results of BOSTI Associates' rigorous 6-year nationwide study of over 10,000 individuals across 100 companies, while Volume II, based on Volume I's findings, presents research-based design guidelines, prototypical office designs and offers many practical applications for enhancing worker performance in any office. These books have won several awards from Progressive Architecture magazine and from Industrial Design magazine and Mike Brill, their principal author, was named author of the year by IFMA (the International Facility Managers Association) for these (and other) publications in 1985.

The books contain information which:

• Quantifies the effects of office design on productivity and quality of working life, and shows how these effects are caused by specific design characteristics.

• Presents economic analyses of the dollar value of appropriate office design for all job types … managers, professionals and clerical workers.

• Develops research-based design guidelines for three levels of design concern: the workspaces for each of 11 functional job types; the multi-person workgroup; and for large office areas.

• Tests the esthetic implications of the guidelines by having three of America's best design firms develop prototype designs.

• Presents a more effective and more people-oriented design process which emphasizes environmental evaluation, user orientation and training, and user participation in the design decision process.

The two volumes are available as a set from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), P.O. Box 7146, Edmond, OK 73083-7146, Ph: (405) 330-4863, e-mail: edra@telepath.com and are currently priced at $30 USD (includes U.S. shipping). Accepted forms of payment: MasterCard, Visa, Money Orders and Checks. Please call ahead for shipping charges to destinations other than U.S. Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for U.S. delivery.