Quantifying Use of Office Space

The best photo of a Chickadee I have ever taken!

In 2010 I wrote a post entitled “Time Lapse” that extolled the virtues of being able to track and quantify how people use their office space.  Herman Miller has figured out how to do just that.

Last week Herman Miller came to my office to introduce me to a service they have developed that tracks how a company uses its office space. Unlike my ridiculously data heavy and personally intrusive idea of tracking every person as they move through the premises, Herman Miller measures a single data source – the chairs.

Current practice includes interviews, observation, general formulas applied to how people work but it lacks cold, hard data. Even using the data and applying it against the reservation calendar for meeting rooms revealed a 50% discrepancy in reserved versus occupied space.

There is little question that quantifying how office space is used will become an important and commonly used tool in the near future.