Humanistic Digital Inclusion

"Look, Listen, Feel and Think before Reacting"

I have been a building automation junkie/zealot/freak for over five decades always trying to trowel the newest technologies on those darn pesky people in our buildings. As an industry, we have always left the touchy/feely part of our buildings to behavioral scientist/psychologists.  Our rapid digital transformation of everything has exposed (made transparent) the location, presence, plus the mood and feeling of the occupants ( those pesky people ) who are our reason for reason. In addition to the old measured variables of temperature, humidity, IAQ, light, sound, video, etc. we now have the where all to dynamically capture peoples' anticipations and communicate their touchy/feely input back to our only purpose, making our occupant/client happy. We all need to find ways to use digital transformation transparency to "Look, Listen, Feel and Think before Reacting".

A year ago I wrote about The "Make Me Happy Button" - Claiming our Piece of the Productivity Puzzle

We are all circling the productivity puzzle and its lucrative paybacks as we all explore how our new "IoT" presences will provide more than energy and operating savings for our clients and allow us to morph to providers of occupant happiness.

Now is the time for us as an industry to stake claims for our pieces of the puzzle — that is, satisfaction, wellness, productivity — in our buildings.

My thinking as I started to write this editorial rapidly evolved to this: No one person or group can completely solve the productivity puzzle. It is a mosaic of comfort satisfaction and wellness control, and it includes temperature, humidity, IAQ, draft, lighting level, lighting color, fenestration control, wellness, social media communication, digital mindfulness, psychology with successful client interaction.

In the old days (before AutomatedBuildings.com, the early 1990s), we often joked about the "Make Me Happy Button," an important mythical DDC input from the field to let us know that our clients were not happy. This, of course, was long before smartphones and social media. In those days, we had no method of communicating the happiness of our occupant/client. But, as best said and sung by Dylan, "the times they are a changin’."

Maybe with ….
The Potential of Voice – The New Age Interface we will just speak, no button to push, just say the "Make Me Happy Command."

If we can achieve the above, we would have the start of an anticipatory building.  To create future anticipatory buildings we need to dynamically locate and start a digital dialog gathering information of the anticipations of the users of our space.  In the next gathering of words, Empathic and Healing add a new dimension to the Anticipatory Building.  I am very pleased to be leading this discussion because I get to ask very smart people how they see this happening.

"Empathic, Healing & Anticipatory Buildings"

At the Nordic Smart Building Conference Helsinki I am the moderator of a panel discussion, "Empathic, Healing & Anticipatory Buildings" and I am trying to get my mind around what this might mean. I have been reviewing and reading much of the material that has been published on the topic.

The combination of how we applied technology and the rapid changes in people's work habits, attendance patterns, and influx new technologies have created an environment with a lot of complications and many moving pieces.

Some of the work done by the digital minister of Taiwan @audreyt  suggesting we need to redefine some of our core words in our human-machine relationship.

Let's all work on the human interface of IoT words from the wisdom of Audrey

 

The humanizing of our buildings is probably our greatest task in the near future.

This LinkedIn profile of one of my speakers also helps us understand some of the changes we need to make.

Ken Dooley Technology Director at Granlund, Granlund Aalto University Helsinki Area, Finland

I am passionate about creating user-centric and environmentally sustainable buildings and cities, and I have a strong interest in understanding the balance between technological and behavioural approaches when implementing this kind of change.

Tech solutions are important as they will more than likely cause the biggest changes. However, a behavioural approach is often much lower cost, equally impactful and lasts much longer than the technological solution.

At Granlund, my role involves working on research projects, internal development, lean experiments and business model development for our future products and services. The focus will be on the built environment and mostly in the areas of end-user solutions, energy, circular economy, IoT, big data and AI.

I am looking forward meeting another Ken and learning what might be part of a behavioral approach. This part of the world has been a pioneer in cell phone invention and intervention plus the humanization of this wonderful device, so I look forward to their insight on how some of the next people technology bridges will be built.

How we sense and what we sense are a large piece of the puzzle, we need to approach this interaction with transparency we need to involve the people in their building while making it an extension of themselves. We need to understand their wishes including basic mandatory information like knowing when and where they are located in the building.  This article starts to help set the scene

Sensing Solutions for the Flexible Workspace   A mandatory requirement for implementing an effective, flexible office is the ability to use occupancy analytics.  - David Rottelman, Global VP of Sales, PointGrab

With the increase of workforce mobility and the growing trend of de-centralized and team-based work, companies realize that the traditional workplace needs to evolve to support these changes. The dynamic nature of contemporary work often requires ad hoc collaborative teams that need greater workspace flexibility. Furthermore, about 40% to 50% of current office space is underutilized, leading to a substantial waste of operational expenditures. Companies are therefore looking for a flexible workplace where the office space is optimized, and employees are given greater flexibility to choose where, when and how they work.

Image-Based Smart Sensors
An emerging sensing solution, based on image sensors, provides highly accurate and detailed information about occupants’ whereabouts at a lower cost while protecting privacy. Using ceiling mounted image-based sensors with edge-analytics processing capability, these sensors deliver unprecedented data on occupants’ presence, location, count, and movement. As edge analytics devices, all processing is performed at the sensor level and images for analytics are processed, not stored or transmitted, ensuring occupants’ privacy is protected. Having sufficient on-sensor processing power and connectivity, they can support remote upgrades. Finally, these sensors’ underlying computer vision capability allows for object detection beyond occupant location (e.g., desks, computers, doors, chairs, and the like), making room for substantial future growth and support for additional important use cases.

Much research is now surfacing on how indoor air quality is related to productivity and satisfaction within the building this report provides insight

Harvard Study Supports the Growing Body of Research Linking Air Quality to Productivity
https://www.memoori.com/harvard-study-supports-growing-body-research-linking-air-quality-productivity/

“We found that breathing better air led to significantly better decision-making performance among our participants. We saw higher test scores across nine cognitive function domains when workers were exposed to increased ventilation rates, lower levels of chemicals, and lower carbon dioxide,” said Joseph Allen, the principal investigator of the CogFx Study.

This article provides further insight,

Enhancing the human experience: algorithms to drive individual workplace comfort

[an error occurred while processing this directive] When it comes to workplace comfort, researchers at Purdue University are proving the theory that one size doesn’t fit all.

An ongoing study at the Purdue University Center for High Performance Buildings (CHPB), in partnership with JLL, is looking at the effect of customizable indoor environment conditions on employee productivity and satisfaction and building energy consumption. The goal of the two-year project, “Development of self-tuned indoor environments,” is to use measures of individual preferences to come up with smart building technology solutions.

A place of work is more than a property. It is a living environment that helps individuals and businesses craft and experience a rewarding fusion of life and work.

My blog https://nordicsmartbuilding.fi/smart-building-convention/virtual-visibility/ on creating a virtual visibility that melts into the transparency and digital twin blog https://nordicsmartbuilding.fi/smart-building-convention/talking-transparency/  is one of the key steps in getting an interface with the occupant and their building while finding our path to transparency. We need to find methods of significantly reducing the fences and barriers between people and their built environment.

Some of the thinking that is surrounding smart cities needs to be part of our Anticipating Buildings. Concepts such as Digital Inclusion and Collaboration https://www.theinternetofthings.eu/bas-boorsma-smart-regions-paving-way-successful-digitalization-strategies-beyond-smart-cities

By seeing smaller and larger communities collaborate, procure, set innovation agendas, sharing know how, creating economies of scale, and aggregating demand, digital inclusion can be addressed effectively, with smaller communities benefiting from the same digital innovations large cities can typically already enjoy. As we collectively enter a next chapter of digital evolution, we must leave no person behind.

New developments in emotional intelligent machines as outlined in this episode by digital mindfulness shows us that machines are rapidly approaching the ability to enter to assist us in helping our buildings feel and heal

 https://digitalmindfulness.net/99-emotionally-intelligent-machines-with-pamela-pavliscak/

Change Sciences Founder and author Pamela Pavliscak talks with Lawrence about the evolution of emotionally intelligent machines and their potential to radically impact society for the better. Emotionally intelligent machines are closely linked to the application of artificial intelligence to understanding human emotions, and in the show Pamela talks extensively about the co-evolution of machines with society. This is a fascinating episode and one you won’t want to miss.

Because this task is complex and never been done does not mean that we should not attempt to start the transition of teaching buildings how to anticipate, feel, and heal.

The key will be in trying to find the correct balance of a Humanistic Digital Inclusion for the people and buildings.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[Click Banner To Learn More]

[Home Page]  [The Automator]  [About]  [Subscribe ]  [Contact Us]