Human beings are complicated creatures. You know that, but does your workplace design survey know it?

As a company focused on creating truly useful surveys, Survature obviously thinks surveys are a critical tool for workplace design professionals. We also know typical surveys can fall short because they don’t take human psychology into account. They can’t help you parse out the differences between what workers say they need, for instance, and what they’re really thinking. The resulting data can leave you directionless or, worse, point you in the wrong direction.

Here are three common reasons why workers’ explicit answers and implicit needs differ—and why you may not get what you need for a successful, data-driven design.

How do people really work? When you’re designing an office environment, understanding this can seem like a holy grail of insights—powerful and elusive. (Learn five reasons so many workplace design surveys don’t help you reach that understanding.)

At Survature, we’ve researched this question of how people work, and we’ve come to think of it not as a holy grail, but as a structured project.

By designing the right workplace survey questions, you can build an understanding, layer by layer, of how your client’s employees work.

Architects, interior designers, how often do you survey your client’s workforce to get the data you need—and then you end up relying on prior experience or resorting to educated guesses to create the best office environment for them?

Haven’t taken our survey yet? You can still take it here! Read on for part two of a deeper dive into the results and make sure to check out the overview here and part one here.

In the first two articles, we discussed that the dominance of digital screens in our work and private lives is already “here and now” as opposed to being for the “future workplace”. We also explained that most screen-enhanced workspaces can be considered unique because the function of those spaces is truly in the eyes of the beholder – or in this case – worker.

In this article, we want to share the strategy we take when designing workplace design surveys. Specifically, why we ask the questions that we do and the insights we’re able to capture by taking an indirect questioning approach.

Together with our research partner Work Design Magazine, we launched a survey to learn more about what screens tell us about how people really work. Between May 14^th – 31^st of this year, 368 of you participated in our research. Here is part one of the results!

Why can’t we all agree on the best use for some screen-centric workspaces?

Together with our research partner Work Design Magazine, we launched a survey to learn more about what screens tell us about how people really work. Between May 14^th – 31^st of this year, 368 of you participated in our research. Here is part one of a deeper dive into the results! Make sure to read the overview here.