Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 51, No. 1, 2010
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Workspace design: a case study applying participatory design principles of healthy workplaces in an industrial setting Ole Broberg Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Building 423, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark Fax: +45-4593-4467 E-mail:
[email protected] 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. In the role as workspace designer, it was important for the WSD team to make sure that the achievements in the workshops were ‘transmitted’ to and sustained in the ordinary engineering design process. In this case, it turned out that the artefacts such as a layout game board and documents with compilations of ideas and requirements from use scenarios served as appropriate transmitter devices or inscriptions. Keywords: technology politics; participatory design; workplace design; ergonomics; action research. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Broberg, O. (2010) ‘Workspace design: a case study applying participatory design principles of healthy workplaces in an industrial setting’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp.39–56. Biographical notes: Ole Broberg is Associate Professor at the Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, where he teaches Design of Work Processes and Workspace Design. He is currently the Head of the Danish Research Programme on Workspace Design. His research interests are socio-technical design of production systems, human factors in design and management of production systems, participatory design and sociology of engineering. He has MSc (Eng) and PhD from the Technical University of Denmark.
Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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Introduction
Many ergonomists and other workplace professionals are placed in consultative positions, as in the occupational health service (OHS) in Denmark. The OHS system in Denmark has recently undergone a major change from being a mandatory system for companies to a system operating in a liberalised market. Over the years, it has always been a prominent goal for the OHS units to be proactive, trying to integrate safety and health aspects into the design stage of socio-technical changes in workplaces. However, when dealing with socio-technical change processes in client enterprises, experience shows that it is often difficult for the OHS consultant to get access to and influence the design process from an ergonomic point of view. In a previous study it has been shown that the ability to take on the role of a ‘political reflective navigator’ might be a success factor in such cases (Broberg and Hermund, 2004). However, instead of trying to ‘push’ ergonomics into the design process, ergonomists could take on another role. The role as ‘workspace designer’ might be a new approach for integrating ergonomics into workplace design processes. In this role, the ergonomist takes a more design oriented approach with a focus on staging the workspace design process. This might contribute to the overcoming of some of the identified obstacles concerning the integration of ergonomics into design processes (Broberg, 2007). It may, moreover, be a new service offered by the liberalised OHS units, many of which have been merged into engineering consultancy companies. The Danish workspace design (WSD) research program aims to develop and trial such a potential new concept for ergonomists and OHS consultants engaged in design processes which imply new or changed workplaces. The notion of workspace design is inspired by the work of Horgen et al., (1999). The workplace with work practices is seen as embedded in four dimensions: spatial, organisational, financial, and technological (SOFT), see Figure 1. Figure 1
The SOFT model
Source: Horgen et al. (1999)
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These dimensions are interdependent and in a dynamic relationship with one another. A change in one dimension may demand changes in others as well. The staging of the WSD process is aimed at creating a dynamic coherence between work and these four dimensions of the workspace. The creation and shaping of workplaces are processes that are influenced by the actors who populate each of the four corners. The basic idea of the concept of workspace design is that actors who are capable of working across the four corners are needed, facilitating and negotiating the process of workplace making with the different actors. These actors stage the WSD process: they are workspace designers. This is a job of creating shared visions among actors with different perspectives and competencies, overcoming resistance and political interests, setting up a collaborative design process, and facilitating meetings between actors from different corners in the SOFT model. In addition, it is a core feature of the WSD concept that staging the process is based on user participation. This entails that methodologies and tools for user participation are important elements of the concept. And finally, the concept is aimed at helping organisations to create effective as well as sound workplaces, meaning healthy and safe work conditions and good ergonomics. Having outlined the aims and basic terms in the WSD project, it is clear that the program adds to the body of user centred or human centred projects which try to intervene in technology design and implementation to promote more ergonomic, friendly and ‘humanistic’ technology. In line with Badham et al. (2001) and Garrety and Badham (2004), the author argues for the need to understanding the political and organisational context surrounding such interventions in socio-technical projects. It is important to delineate and understand our role as (action) researchers in particular socio-technical projects, as we are contributing to the technology design process. The way we sell intervention projects to organisations has consequences for how we become perceived in the field and hence for the outcomes of the intervention (Jensen, 2006). Badham et al., (2001) report an intervention in the piloting and design of an intelligent manufacturing system. They focus on the particular political and organisational contexts of the intervention, and they notice that there have been surprisingly few detailed studies of such projects. Due to the political and organisational contexts in the project, it never reached a stage where the intervention activities based on user centred design (UCD) methods had any direct impact on the technology design (Garrety and Badham, 2004). Hence, another important aspect is not reported, namely how and by what mechanisms UCD methods work in practice, and how they can contribute to an engineering design project. In the WSD research program, the interventions in two trial cases had the form of workshops inspired by Scandinavian methods in the field of participatory design (Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991; Brandt and Messeter, 2004; Johansson et al., 2002). Hence, the issue of how to ‘transmit’ and sustain insights and results from workshops into the ongoing socio-technical change project in the organisations became an important question. 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 research questions based on this case study were:
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How do WSD workshops contribute to the engineering design process?
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How are insights and ideas from workshops transmitted to and sustained in the ongoing engineering design process of an organisation?
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What sort of navigation tools are needed to be a workspace designer in an organisational context?
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Research approach and the role of researchers
Testing of the WSD concept took place in three case companies. In this paper, the author presents 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 of workspace designer in relation to the technological change process. The team was partially split up into interventionists and follow-up researchers. The first group was responsible for the planning and completion of activities aimed at setting up a participatory design process in the company in order to optimise ergonomics and efficiency in the production facility being designed. The other group was responsible for establishing baseline data on: basic features of the company, current production system, including ergonomics, the course of the design process so far, and the level of occupational safety and health management. This group also observed the interventions and made follow up interviews with participants in order to clarify the effects of the intervention. The OHS consultants were part of the first group. 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 undertaken by the OHS consultants in their future consultancy tasks for companies.
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Staging the workspace design process
The basic idea in the WSD research program was to trial the role of workspace designer in socio-technical change projects within different organisations. We had a theoretical idea of this role based on the SOFT model, and we had an existing collection of methods based on the experience gained by the WSD team members from their previous work. It was, however, during the intervention case studies that we gained experience on how to practice the role and use the methods in particular organisational and technological contexts. Based on the experience gathered from two case studies, we developed a model for a workspace designer to intervene in socio-technical change projects (Figure 2). In this model the workspace designer is seen as navigating concurrently at three different stages.
Workspace design Figure 2
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The WSD stages
SETTING THE STAGE
INTERVENTION STAGE
What is open in SOFT?
WORKSHOP 1
Intervention goals?
Homework
Resources?
WORKSHOP 2
Who should participate?
Homework
How to transmit and sustain results from workshops
WORKSHOP 3
WORK SYSTEM STAGE Current work practice Issues in work and organisation
In setting the stage, the workspace designer investigates and negotiates the frames and networks surrounding the socio-technical change project in the organisation. This will typically be based on meetings with management and employee representatives. Having the SOFT model in mind, the workspace designer enquires into the status of the change project by asking what in the four corners is open to alternative options and what seems to be closed. It is important to be critical with regards to what is declared as being closed by the involved actors. It often turns out that closed issues can be reopened. The SOFT model also points to relevant actors to be considered as participants in the intervention activities. In this phase, the workspace designer is negotiating with organisational members on the goal of the intervention, the resources to be put into the intervention, who should participate, and how insights and results from the intervention are transmitted to and sustained in the ongoing socio-technical change project. The workspace designer has to gain a basic understanding of the work system in the organisation or in the relevant part of the organisation in question. The issue here is to understand the basic features of the production system, work practices and working conditions. It also includes getting an idea of what is being debated in the work system, what are the current issues to be solved in the employee/management relations? Obtaining this understanding might be a concurrent process to setting the stage. Based on the experience acquired from two cases, the interventions took a similar overall format. This was a format consisting of a series of workshops with intermediate periods of homework. A series of workshops must be coherent in a way which ensures that participants can see they are moving forwards towards a certain goal. The process and expected outcome of the workshop series must be presented to the participants before starting. At the same time, due to the particular organisational context and the progress of the socio-technical project, the workspace designer must be prepared to navigate. In our
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second case study, a public administration office, actors in the change project unexpectedly speeded up the process of designing new open space offices. This forced the WSD team to propose an adjustment in the planned series of workshops to match this speed up. Another general experience in the intervention phase is that having two overall activities seems to work well: first, using tools and methods which are aimed at setting up a collaborative inquiry into the current work practice and workplace. Second, using tools and methods directed towards the future work practice and workplace as a result of the socio-technical change project. In the second activity, it seems fruitful to emphasise the notion of ‘laboratory’. Participants in the workshops investigate several possible futures; they conduct experiments with the future workplace (Binder, 2007). After a presentation of the industrial manufacturer case study, the model in Figure 2 will be used to give an account for the WSD navigation and intervention in this particular context.
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The industrial manufacturer case
The company manufactures 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 requires much manual handling of barrels and bags by the four to five 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 socio-technical change project was initiated by the production management and the company safety organisation. In different contexts, the reason to start the project was stated as being one of the following, or a combination of them both: 1
the production capacity had to be increased due to a growing number of orders
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the current production facility suffered from severe work environment problems.
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. During the process of building the machine, the supplier was participating in his own workshop. 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 optimisation 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. Table 1 gives an overview of the WSD activities in this case, showing the three stages at which the WSD team was navigating.
Workspace design Table 1
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WSD activities at the industrial manufacturer
Stage
Activity
Setting the stage
Two meetings with the project manager; Signing of agreement on collaboration
Work system
Work environment screening by WSD team walk through in current production facility
Work system
WSD team interview operators, production planner and production manager
Setting the stage
First meeting with participation of the two consulting design engineers
Work system
WSD team members doing a walk through with operators taking photos for a workbook
Setting the stage
Presentation of intervention plan to project manager and design engineers and allocation of tasks
Intervention: workshop 1
Presentation of workbooks; Layout design game based on proposal from design engineers (meeting room)
Homework
The operators design their layout
Intervention: workshop 2
Layout design game based on operators’ proposal (meeting room)
Setting the stage
Meeting with OHS coordinator and production planner on planning of use scenarios
Work system
Meeting with project manager and OHS coordinator; Identification of incidents in current production system
Intervention: workshop 3
Use scenario with focus on work procedures, machinery and layout (production hall)
Homework
Contact to machine supplier
Intervention: workshop 4
Use scenario with focus on OHS conditions in the new facility (production hall)
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Setting the stage
In starting up the WSD project, we had difficulties in recruiting companies which were willing to serve as trial cases. The industrial manufacturer company was recruited due to one of the OHS consultants in the team. Her husband had a job in the corporation which owned the company. She gave him a pamphlet describing the WSD project. He, in turn, gave this pamphlet to the occupational health and safety coordinator in the company. The OHS coordinator then contacted the WSD project manager, and a meeting was set up. The participants were: the WSD project manager and one of the OHS consultants, the OHS coordinator of the company and the production manager, who also was the project manager of the technology project. Shortly after this meeting, a new meeting took place due to some uncertainty in the WSD team as to whether the company in question would be an appropriate case. Some team members were afraid that too many decisions were taken; leaving only limited space for the intervention. This time, the meeting was between a consultant from the Danish Technological Institute and the OHS consultant from the first meeting. The agenda was to clarify the current status of the socio-technical
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change project and mutual expectations and requirements. The meeting resulted in a formal agreement on collaboration. The agreement stated that the company would receive assistance to ensure the best possible working conditions in the new facility and to enable a process of workers’ participation and involvement. The agreement also stated that a contact between the machine supplier and the WSD project should be established. On the other hand, the agreement ensured the WSD project the ‘rights’ to trial tools and methods, and to disseminate the results. The overall goal of the WSD activities in the company was stated: “..to ensure a holistic shaping of new or redesigned workplaces which are healthy for the employees and effective for the company”. The WSD team represented by the OHS consultant presented a plan for two workshops that were to focus on the layout of the new production hall. This was the result of the inquiries into the current socio-technical change process in the company. In the WSD team, we had discussions on the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ issues in the change process. The new machine was being built in the workshops of the German supplier, and this seemed to be a closed issue in the sense that it would be difficult to change the specifications and alter the machine. But the layout in the empty production hall seemed to be open to alternatives. The two design engineers had made two proposals for the layout, but nothing was decided. The plan was presented to the project manager and the OHS coordinator, and we requested the project manager enlist the two external design engineers in the workshops. The project manager agreed to this.
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Work systems
In order to gain an insight into the work system and work environment of the company, the WSD team completed a walk-through with the operators and the safety representative of the mixing plant (work environment screening). This was followed by interviews with the operators, the production planner and the project manager, on the working of the current production system, including normal incidents which had to be handled. Finally, the WSD team took a walk through with the operators and a digital camera. The operators were told to pick out pictures from the production system based on the following code: things that are considered problematic and hence should not be transferred to the new production system (red), things that work well and should be retained in the system (green), and things that require attention (yellow). Twelve photos were then selected for a workbook. The workbook was placed in the control room for a period of one week. In this period the operators commented on the photos by using the colour code in drawing and writing. Similar workbooks were prepared by the safety representative and the OHS consultant.
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Interventions
The intervention by the WSD team was organised as two collaborative events, each consisting of two workshops. Each workshop had duration of approximately three hours. The events were design games (Horgen et al., 1999; Johansson et al., 2002; Brandt and 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
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format was aimed at facilitating a collaborative design process between these actors. In the first event, the workshops were focused 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 organised as use scenarios, aimed at simulating work processes and ergonomics in the new plant.
7.1 The layout design game The first event was a layout design game which took place in a meeting room in the company. As a starter to this workshop, the workbooks were presented by the OHS consultant, the safety representative and the operators, to give an overview of known, but also not hitherto identified, problems. Important issues were added as ‘one liners’ to a compilation which was put on the wall in the form of a poster. Next, the design engineers shortly presented how the new machine was working. Figure 3
The layout design game
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 (Figure 3). 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
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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 the layout. This layout was printed on 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 inquiries to the design engineers’ proposal and this procedure resulted in a number of possible proposed solutions to identified problems. At the end of the workshop, homework was allocated for the second workshop. The design engineers should check up on some machine features, the production manager and the OHS coordinator should investigate fire and chemical regulations and, finally, the production manager suggested that the operators should work on a new proposal for the 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 was initiated. In the end, the game board represented 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. The work practice experience and ideas brought in by the employees had an especially profound influence on the new proposal for the layout and also included important aspects of ergonomics. The employees were able to highlight things which had not been considered by the design engineers. Support functions such as maintenance and storage had not been considered by the design engineers, yet such facilities were part of the new layout 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 (Figure 4). Figure 4
The layout game board
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7.2 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 (Figure 5). The second was the placement of tape markers on the floor, representing the machines and new walls in the empty hall in accordance with 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 floor. 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. Figure 5
Use scenarios in the production hall
7.3 Use scenario with incident cards 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. This was done with the scale model that had been provided. The WSD team had also prepared incident cards on which realistic production incidents were described. These events had been identified through interviews
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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 has 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 into 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 the 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 realised that a vacuum tank had to be moved from one room to another. Afterwards, the flip charts were systematised 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.
7.4 Use scenario simulating workplace assessment 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. 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 is mandatory according to Danish law. Figure 6
Simulation of workplace assessment in the production hall
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The OHS consultant was then taken on a walk through of the new plant by the employees (Figure 6). This was done by moving around the tape markings on the floor and looking at the 3D scale model. During the tour, the OHS consultant asked a lot of specific questions on work procedures, workplace design, equipment and personal protection. All participants reflected openly upon these questions, and potential problems and ideas for solutions were registered by the WSD team, and subsequently systematised in a document which was handed out to the participants. This time, the items were categorised in relation to 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 and 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, the production manager 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 fantastically 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.”
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WSD contributions to the socio-technical change process
How did the WSD workshop sessions contribute to the design of a new production line in the mixing plant? As mentioned in the introduction, 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 and 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 develop hypotheses 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]. This is in line with the concept of ‘configuring the user’. Configuring during the design process includes defining the identity of future users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions in relation to the object (Woolgar, 1991). Both concepts are based on a distinction between the projected user and the real user, and thus the designer is working with different representations of the user. 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 optimising the piping, and hence the work of the operators was not articulated. In this way, it is hard to
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say that a configuration of the user had taken place. 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 more explicitly establishing 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 incident 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. How could the WSD workshops contribute to the process of shaping 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. This learning space was also perceived as a laboratory in which experiments took place. The experiments were about a collaborative inquiry into the initial plans of the design engineers and subsequently a collaborative design process of the production facility based on inputs from future operators, design engineers, production management and the OHS consultant. By the design games, the WSD team facilitated the meeting and initiated mutual learning processes between these actors from different corners of the SOFT model. 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. Even the abstract term ‘learning space’ 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 in depth. And the icing on 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 recognised the effect of the workshops. One of them stated: “The starting point was to optimise the piping. Other things are now in focus, and the facility will look very different than designed from the beginning”.
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8.1 Transmitter devices between workshops and engineering design process Setting up a temporary learning space or a lab was important to facilitate a collaborative design process. It was even more important, however, that the outcomes of the workshops were ‘transmitted’ to daily life in the organisation in order to enter into the engineering design process. It turned out that artefacts like the final version of the layout game board and a systematic compilation of documents served as important ‘transmitter substances’. These artefacts contributed to sustaining the insights and ideas from the workshops in a transparent way for all participants. The game board was a collaborative design product. It was a way of sustaining what, at the end of the workshop, was a shared understanding of the layout of the new mixing plant. The project manager himself was an important ‘transmitter actor’. He used the transmitter substances to revise the requirements specification document, and by so doing he made the final transformation of workshop results into ordinary organisational documents in the engineering design process. Sticking to the lab metaphor, Latour (1987) has coined the concept of inscriptions and inscription devices in his study of laboratory work and the construction of scientific facts (Latour, 1987; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Inscription devices transform pieces of matter into written documents. As stated by Latour and Woolgar (1979, p.51): “More exactly, an inscription device is any item of apparatus or particular configuration of such items which can transform a material substance into a figure or diagram which is directly usable by one of the members of the office space”. The transmitter substances between the workshops (labs) and the engineering design process can be looked upon as inscriptions. Inscriptions are images of different kinds that have been extracted from laboratory instruments to appear cleaned, redrawn, and displayed (Latour, 1987). In our case, inscriptions were needed to transform the insights, ideas, and proposals from the workshops into details which could enter into the engineering design process. The layout game board became such an ‘inscription’ which was usable for the actors in the engineering design process. The game board transformed the layout experiments and collaborative design among the participants into a figure or drawing. This figure was placed in the company, and it was referred to after the workshops as the design of the new mixing plant. After leaving the lab, the game board inscription entered into what has been termed a political career (Henderson, 1999). The game board model entered into the political network of the company, as a visual representation of the new facility which can be used by actors to garner support for the project. The WSD team acted like an inscription device in producing inscriptions (Post it’s, bullet points, gaming pieces) from the workshops (the lab) which can be transferred and understood in the engineering design process. The workshop sessions were like a lab, and instruments/inscriptions devices were needed to provide a visual display of the results of the experiments in the lab. The many processes taking place in the lab had to be partly de-contextualised in order to move them out of the lab. The inscriptions from the use scenarios were compilations. It was, however, a transformation of the bullet points and other writings which had been recorded on flip charts during the scenarios. This text was analysed and categorised by the WSD team and compiled in a schematic representation. The WSD team became the inscription device which recorded workshop activities and transformed them into figures in the form of systematised compilations of design requirements. The compilation format turned out to fit well with the engineering way of working, as it represented design requirements and
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proposals in a form which left the detailed design to the engineers. In the case of the layout game board, this inscription was constructed by the workshops participants themselves as the result of a collaborative design process.
8.2 Workspace designer navigation In this case, the WSD team tried to act like a workspace designer. In order to understand the navigation needed in practising the workspace design concept, we constructed the model in Figure 2. The model emerged on the basis of our practical experience from two cases. In staging the workplace making process, the workspace designer has to navigate at the three different stages. When setting the stage, it was, in this case, important that the company contacted us and asked for help. They were motivated, partially because of pressure from the Labour Inspection, and partially because they were genuinely interested in learning how to involve the employees in socio-technical change projects. For the WSD team, it was crucial that an alliance with the production manager, who was also the project manager of the technology design project, was in place right from the beginning. The WSD team proposed that the project manager focus on the layout in two workshops to which he agreed. The team requested that the project manager ask the two external design engineers to take part in the workshops. Had the project manager not entered into this alliance, their attendance would have been more difficult to secure. The project manager also approved that the design engineers’ proposals could be subjected to a re-evaluation in the workshops. Furthermore, the production manager showed his commitment by revising the requirements specification document based on results from the workshops. The WSD team was navigating on behalf of a projected workspace designer; a task that in the future might be the task of the OHS consultants. One of the OHS consultants participating subsequently obtained a new position as occupational health and safety manager in the case company. In a follow up interview she stated: “It is a super product for an OHS to put on the market in relation to all kinds of changes in a company. In my new position as OHS manager I would engage a consultant to perform the WSD methods. I think it is important to have other persons manage the process who are not themselves engaged in the change process. I have strongly recommended the methods to others since my participation. It is a way of engaging the employees in an active manner”.
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Conclusions
The industrial manufacturer case showed how the WSD concept might contribute to an engineering design process. The WSD team took the role as workspace designers and by using participatory methods in workshops achieved a tangible impact on the technology design project. The layout was changed, new work procedures emerged, and measures related to ergonomics and the work environment were identified and specified in the design requirements. The technology project is not yet implemented in the company and we are not, therefore, able to demonstrate the effect of the WSD concept. The design plans, however, have been changed considerably with the acceptance of all the actors.
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The design object, and therefore the script, changed from primarily focusing on piping and the layout of the technical components to include work processes, procedures, and work environment factors. In the role as workspace designer, it was important for the WSD team to make sure that the achievements in the workshops were transmitted to and sustained in the ordinary engineering design process. In this case, it turned out that the artefacts such as the layout game board and compilations of ideas and requirements from the use scenarios served as appropriate transmitter devices or inscriptions. In taking the role as an inscription device, it seems important for the workspace designer to identify appropriate inscriptions as input to the engineering design process if the workshop results should have a chance of further impacting on the design process. When setting the stage and navigating in the particular context, the alliance between the WSD team and the production manager was of great importance to sustaining and following up on the workshop results. In the WSD program, two other case studies are under way, and they will hopefully add new experiences and knowledge to the question of how we, as researchers, can practise participatory methods in socio-technical change processes, and how these methods may impact upon technology projects from a humanistic and work environment perspective. It is of special importance to clarify the relationship between the collaborative design activity in the workshops and the succeeding technical design process by technology specialists. Moreover, it is important to determine at what level of technical complexity it is possible and appropriate to use the WSD methods and techniques. This will be further investigated in new case studies. Finally, in this case it was easy to engage the operators in the workshops whereas it was more difficult with the design engineers. It is important to find ways and techniques which will encourage the design engineers to engage in the collaborative design activities and contribute with experiences from their knowledge domain.
Acknowledgements The WSD research program is partially funded by the Danish Work Environment Research Foundation.
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