World Building Congress 2016 - Intelligent Built Environment. Day 1.

The biggest scientific conference for Built Environment - World Building Congress 2016 - is taking place this week in Tampere and PATI team members are presenting papers from the research project. It is amazing to see so many professionals gathered in one location and discussing about the Intelligent Built Environment for Life and brainstorming how the future of Built Environment will look like.

Here, I will try to capture the first day presentations and topics that have been discussed and hopefully at the end of the week we will have a comprehensive overview of the conference and the idea where the future will take us.

So, the day started with two keynote presentations by Dongping Fang from Tsinghua University, China, and Matti Kokkala from VTT technical Research Center, Finland. Both of the presentations quite nicely captured the future direction of built environment. Prof. Fang introduced initiatives in China for resilient urbanization, while Prof. Kokkala discussed how digitalization is shaping building and construction sectors.

Today 130 papers were presented in more than 20 sessions and workshops. What an intensive day it was! As you imagine, it is hard to cover everything as physically I was able to listen to only a small fraction on those. But from the ones I’ve heard, I can say – the future looks very interesting!

The first session I participated covered usability issues, and researchers discussed about knowledge creation processes, work environments, and effects workplace has on the organizational performance. The new ways of working and an end-user approach suggest many discussions in the research society.  The importance of increased productivity and performance seems to be clear in the research but I keep on wondering: is it also well understood in organizations?

Similar thoughts were introduced in presentation related to BIM – Building Information Modelling - topic. Simon Ashworth from UK introduced his research on how FM experts use BIM in their operations. His results showed that FM service providers and their customers are not that familiar with BIM and rather use asset management standards than BIM standards, although BIM is already widely used in construction phase. BIM can have (and will have) a significant impact on FM in a long term by providing the data about the building, and simulations based on that data. Mr. Ashworth suggested that FM practitioners understand the benefits but so why is it that FM practitioners are still not implicating that in the real life (researched showed, that less than 10% of FM service providers use BIM in operations)? Is it just the lack of experience? Is there something else that is hidden under this resistance for change?

Another interesting topic I could introduce here was the workshop related to Smart Cities. 5 panelists from Hong Kong, USA, Norway and UK discussed how the future of cities might look like and what are the main topics that need to be researched. According to panelists, the Smart city is an integrated system, covering energy management, building networks, urban planning issues such as land use and infrastructure, transportation, and community. Digitalization seems to be the key enabler, empowering innovation and co-creation in the field. With the help of digitalization, new ecosystems and value chains are created, and built environment is changing towards service business, like building-as-a-service, energy-as-a-service, X-as-a-service, or… Workplace-as-a-service! Aren’t we on a hot topic right here? J

But… There were many more interesting topics covered today and I could continue for a while but you will probably get bored by reading it. One needs to be in place to feel the spirit and get excited about it. I have gained very valuable knowledge and connections, and believe this will add value to PATI project as well. And if you’re around there, let’s keep in touch! We always talk about collaboration and co-creation, so let’s make it happen in real life!

Yours truly,

Vitalija

Uusia palveluita nopeasti ja ilman ylimääräistä sensuuria

Rakentamisen Laatu RALA ry yhdessä TTY:n ja digitaalisia palveluita tarjoavan Futuricen kanssa järjestivät hackathonin, jonka tavoitteena oli rakentaa uusi palvelukonsepti rakennusyritysten toiminnan laadun valvomiseen keskittyvälle yritykselle. Kolmen päivän aikana käydyt intensiiviset työpajat olivat Futuricen fasilitoimia.

Osallistujakunta koostui mm. rakennustekniikan -, käyttökokemuksen, arkkitehtuurin ja tietojohtamisen opiskelijoista. Ensimmäisen illan aikana jakauduttiin pienryhmiin, käärittiin hihat ja alettiin hommiin! Oma ryhmäni osoittautui varsinaiseksi konkariporukaksi – kaikki ryhmän jäsenet olivat jo useamman vuoden ajan olleet yrityselämässä, niin IT:n, rakennesuunnittelun kuin markkinoinninkin parissa. Tästä lähdökohdasta oli hedelmällistä lähteä liikkeelle.

Hackathon fasilitoitiin perinteisin palvelumuotoilun työkaluin: mietimme asiakassegmenttejä, viestintää, ansaintalogiikkaa, kohderyhmiä, palvelupolkuja ja suoritimme pikaisesta aikataulusta huolimatta myös haastatteluja. Intensiivisten hackathon-päivien lopputuotoksena esittelimme konseptin, jossa ehdotimme kohderyhmän laajentamista uuteen asiakaskuntaan sekä rakentamaan tunnettuutta meidän “tavallisten suomalaisten” keskuudessa. Raadin jäsenistöön kuului edustus seuraavista yrityksistä: TTY, RALA ry, Rakennusteollisuus RT ry, Hartela, Skanska ja Peab.

Kun halutaan kehittää nopeasti uutta, unohtaa liian tiukat arjen rajoitteet ja innovoida yli toimialarajojen, on tämänkaltaiset konseptointiworkshopit erinomaisia vähintään ajatusten herättelijöinä. Parhaimmillaan työpajoista voi saada usean pitkälle pureksitun konseptin, joita hiomalla ja jatkojalostamalla saadaan uusia kohderyhmiä, uusia palveluita /tuotteita tai vaikkapa täysin disrputoitu tapa markkinoida!

Osallistujan näkökulmasta nämä intensiiviset työpajat ovat erittäin antoisia, hauska vaihtoehtoinen tapa opiskelulle, ja muutaman päivän rutistuksen jälkeen on aina kaikkensa antanut olo. Tässä workshopissa RALA sai mielestäni hyviä ideoita, kun kaikki neljä ryhmää olivat lähestyneet hieman eri näkökulmista ja kolmea eri kohderyhmää palvellen. RALAn toiminnanjohtaja itse kiitteli osallistujia kaikkien odotusten ylittämisestä. Jään odottelemaan päätyykö joku esitellyistä konsepteista – tai ainakin joku osa niistä – käytäntöön saakka!  

Tämän kaltainen intensiivinen hackathon voisi toimia lähestymistapana erinomaisesti myös PATI-hankkeeseen kehittäessämme uusia palveluita liikkuville tietotyöläisille. Coworking, virtuaaliset työkalut ja yhdessä tekeminen yli organisaatiorajojen saavuttaa yhä enemmän jalansijaa myös suomalaisissa yrityksissä, joten nopeat palveluinnovaatiot olisivat varmasti hyödyllisiä myös PATIlle.

Future of work and the evening at the Mothership of Work

Picture by: Vitalija Petrulaitiene

Last Thursday real estate investment company Sponda launched a new service concept – co-working space called The Mothership of Work (MOW). MOW is a co-working space for freelancers and businesses, providing not only work space but other spaces together with additional services such as health and well-being, accounting and legal services. One of the main aims of MOW is to create a community which empower employees - various activities and events organized there help to reach that aim.

So back to the event. PATI team is very keen on learning about new workspaces and co-working spaces around Helsinki, therefore we were fast in getting in contact with MOW and going to look around new spaces for inspiration. And how did it go for us?

It was fun! There were so many people! More than 500 participants were on the list, and the place was crowded. The concept of the event was something new at least for PATI team. MOW made a small conference “Telling the Future” which included 5 presentations about the future of Work, Education, Health, Food and Love in 5 to 10 minutes. After the presentations, participants were able to look around the space which is distributed through 6 floors and have a sneak-peak how it would feel to be working there. But I am not here to promote anything, rather share my thoughts about the event and conference. I will not go through all of the topics but I must say: some interesting things were presented! From eating various bugs to improving own health by biohacking (optimizing yourself based on your current health, well-being, genetic data and other information). Shortly, I loved the idea of mini-conference and I believe that “conference” type of knowledge sharing even in smaller circles is the future of knowledge work!

And I could extent a bit more about the Future of Work which was the topic presented by Outi Kuitonen from Demos Helsinki. She started with introducing the concept of work by the famous 20th century philosopher Hannah Arendt where is identified different modes of work: from ideation, construction of work to action and speech. Speech, especially in her times, was the freedom to a man and society. And these actions such as speaking and collaborating was the leading theme of this presentation. According to Outi, work in 2030 will be much more global and free. Societies and communities will gather together to collaborate, share ideas, discuss and, thus, innovate. Many of traditional tasks will be performed by robots (I would say, also automatized), much of own time will be spent on different activities (why not a hackathon on one’s free time), and world will be everyone’s office. Outi gave an example when they hired one professional from Serbia to prepare a task needed for Demos Helsinki. They found a person through a website which gathers professionals from around the world to share their expertise.

I agree with a lot of things that Outi Kuitonen presented in those valuable 6 minutes that she used. It made me think: are we all becoming freelancers? Working from project to project, not anymore devoted to one company or organization? And I believe this is the direction we are heading to. However, many times I end up pondering about those people who are afraid of that change or do not want to change at all. How will they adapt? How much are they going to resist? How much time will it take for traditional businesses and old companies to adapt to this kind of work? What will happen to those who won’t? Many questions started running in my head after this presentation and I believe that is always a good sign for the presenter. I just hope that we can get some hints regarding these issues in our PATI project…

Your sincerely,

Vitalija

We know how to use the virtual collaboration tools – but do we know how to collaborate virtually?

                                                Image by: Tatu Pakarinen, 2015

Virtual collaboration has been taking much bigger part of our daily work activities for some years now. As a term and a concept, collaboration is really wide. In physical world, collaboration can be anything between two best friends planning the bachelor parties to debate between different parliamentary parties. And even if virtual collaboration is just usual collaboration with virtual aspect, the diversity of activities is huge. So how would we define the collaboration in order to learn to collaborate virtually?

Usually, term “collaboration” is used to define activities varying from ad-hoc face to face meetings to formal and structured meetings. The common purpose is to reach some agreed target. We all know how to behave in meetings when they happen in physical environment. That is something we have learned from the day one at school. By defining virtual collaboration, in this particular case including virtual aspects to our collaboration activities at work, we have a sandbox to play further in this post.

In many cases, moving towards virtual collaboration and virtual world just means installing the programs to our laptops and smartphones. Our companies expect us to know how to use them. Education for these tools is rare in business world, and that was really visible from interviews conducted for this project. That leads us to the first half of the topic - most of us know how to use virtual collaboration tools. We know how to set up the program and connect the headphones, and yes, we know how to call to a colleague. Problems start to appear when we need to have more participants or other participant is from different organization. But even then we manage to get over these fences, we just know how to use these tools.

The second part of the topic, knowledge of virtual collaboration is trickier. When we have been stripped off from the meeting rooms, white boards, pens and papers we are many times quite clueless how to collaborate. Same tools and practices which we are using in the physical environment, do not work in the virtual world.  We have to learn about new places and spaces, tools and ways where and how collaboration is happening. And that’s where we need the education. Not for connecting the headphones or selecting the right app but for learning new practices and new possibilities in virtual sphere. As well as understand that ways we are familiar with are not working everywhere.

And why do we need that? The wisest answer to this came from one interview – we need that in order to be as productive in virtual world as we are in the physical environment! And that is the reason, in my opinion, why we need the education for virtual collaboration. We don’t want to waste our time with new tools, we want to profit from them.

This is my first blogpost for PATI – and sadly possibly the last as well. Tuning the idea just took some time, but let see if it leads into some more fruitful thoughts that I’ll have to write later. Thanks for the journey, and enjoy the ride!

Tatu

Services to support knowledge creation

Again, PATI's team is working remotely and is always trying new things, services and places where knowledge is or can be created. Today this post is being uploaded in quite a crowded airport lounge in Oslo. Luckily, a table in a quiet corner, wi-fi and a cup of coffee is available! This time I would like to have a little different post here and introduce a part of paper that's going to get public next spring. All comments if you have any are welcome and appreciated as it allows us go develop further. So, here it goes:
Nowadays organizations’ main competitive advantage has become the knowledge that it holds. Thus, all the efforts must go to empower and maintain the knowledge creation. According to Nonaka and Toyama (2003), the knowledge creation is a process of interactions and problem solving happening between individuals, organization and environment. Through different steps knowledge is transformed from tacit to explicit and it is time, space, and relationship specific because it needs a place where information gets a meaning through interpretation. In knowledge theory, a “Ba” concept is used which originally means place and is considered as factor, connecting time, place, and relationships with others (Senoo et al., 2007). The “Ba” might mean physical space (e.g. office) but it can also be virtual (e.g. email) or mental (e.g. ideas) as the interaction is more important factor in the knowledge creation process that the space itself (Huhtelin and Nenonen, 2015).
An understanding of the workplace as a support for knowledge creation process is important. Therefore, it needs to be seen not only as a physical space to work but also including virtual and social dimensions. This wider approach helps to better understand the needs of knowledge workers and provide support in order to meet their needs. In 2004, Nenonen introduced the concept of four workplaces that vary based on the type of work that is performed and if the space used to perform work is external or internal. Later, the study on learning environments in university campuses by Huhtelin and Nenonen (2015) identified four aspects of spaces and services for knowledge creation corresponding to four knowledge creation processes and “Ba”:

• Spaces and services that support informal interaction and idea creation;
• Spaces and services that support formal meetings;
• Digital platforms;
• Spaces that support learning-by-doing.

Based on the theory of knowledge creation and changed perception of a workplace, PATI team studied 103 services and service providers in order to understand the trends and directions where services are moving and how various services can support the knowledge creation processes. After some initial analysis, services were grouped based on the resources they are connecting and steps they are promoting in knowledge processes:

• Services that support collaboration and businesses are driven by connecting physical space and community. For example, mobile applications that allow users to know where people are, what they are doing, and who they are near, this way allowing serendipitous encounters.
• Services that enable knowledge sharing and businesses are driven by connecting community with technology. Organizations can create networks through different platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook that allows organizations to understand how the inside community inside works. Such examples could be tags that are worn by employees to track their social behaviours online and within the organization, create possibilities to collect data and monitor team interactions and styles of communication.
• Services that provide access to knowledge. Service providers create businesses by connecting physical spaces with technology or virtual platforms. Technologies that also connect people to the Internet of Things (IoT), facilitating marketplaces based on the intelligence of physical proximity like Venuu or LiquidSpace.

The analysis of services and results of clusters indicate that services for informal interactions, formal meetings and virtual work need to be provided and cover both physical and virtual spaces as well stimulate community creation. This way, formed communities enable sharing of the tacit knowledge, socializing and creating explicit knowledge.
Service providers are adopting service-dominant logic and are combining own resources with others through established interactions between the suppliers and customers for the value creation (Saarijärvi et al., 2013). Technology allows creating new platforms that not only provide personalised experience but also enable users to design services themselves. New companies are coming into the game by providing the user with that it wants, wherever it wants and at the press of a button.
In order to stay competitive, traditional service providers need to reconsider their offerings in terms of customers, the needs of an end-user and other players providing resources for the same group of customers and end-users. Because of the wide possibilities, service providers can only compete by offering an experience for the customer and end-user because the traditional place and service for a fee is not sufficient anymore.

Have a blissful holiday season everybody!
Vitalija

References:
Huhtelin, M., Nenonen, S., (2015) “A co-creation centre for university-industry collaboration – a framework for concept development”, 8th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization. Procedia Economics and Finance 21 (2015) 137-145
Nenonen, S., (2004) “Analysing the intangible benefits of work space”, Facilities, Vol. 22 Iss 9/10 pp. 233 -239
Nonaka, I. and Toyama, R. (2003) “The knowledge-creating theory revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing process”, Knowledge Management Research & Practice, Vol. 1 No.1 pp 2-10
Saarijärvi, H., Kannan, P.K., Kuusela, H. (2013) "Value co‐creation: theoretical approaches and practical implications", European Business Review, Vol. 25 Iss: 1, pp.6 - 19
Senoo, D., Magnier-Watanabe, R., Salmador, M.P. (2007) "Workplace reformation, active ba and knowledge creation", European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 10 Iss 3 pp. 296 – 31

“Hubs will occupy the ground floor of every other block in the future”

Pati team attended Rework’15 conference which was arranged by HUB13 at YLE in Pasila on the 13^th and 14^th of October. The first day consisted of key notes and insightful panel discussions on the future of work and workplace, and an evening pitch night where startups in the field aimed to gain funding and inspire people with their groundbreaking gadgets and services. 

The speakers ranged from future researchers through workplace managers to CEOs and from workplace researchers through business developers to HR professionals. All the lectures suggested a larger inclusion and engagement of the employees to workplace changes that are, in essence, not about the spaces per se but rather about work practice changes and removal of cultural barriers created in organizations along the organizational path.

To illuminate the main points, I hereby list a bunch of phrases that the presenters used to describe the future of work and workplace:

Ola Sundell gave insights on Hub13 concept and described the background for the whole event.

“We build for startups and larger companies and give support in growth – we feel that the large companies can learn from the small and vice versa.”

Gunilla Ohls wanted to lead by example not having her own desk in the organization anymore.

“My work is in my backpack today: I sit where ever I find available, different, small spaces.”

Ilkka Halava painted with a future brush the relations between old and new organisations and their perceptions with surrounding environments.

“A building is a forecast. Some claim that they have such good forecasts, that it is worthwhile constructing a building for a specific purpose for 30 years. Forecasts fail.”

“Constructing cellular environments is the thing – environments that open up possibilities. The role of cities is to produce stimulus – it should be manifested in the built environment as well.”

“Spiritual places have always attracted people to the world of games. How come we don’t see those kinds of spiritual places in our work environments? Or will we?”

“Sharing economy challenges organizations”. 

Satu Huber from ELO gave insights from a CEO perspective and highlighted the role of leading from the front and identifying the organizational potential in the individuals.

“If you have 500 brains in the organization, it is important to find ways of utilizing that brain power.”

“A human being is an entity: If you think about it, what is the reason that gets you out of bed in the morning?”

“More open spaces support the well-being of human beings – nobody is left alone.”

“The three c’s of change consist of communication, communication, communication.”

“The young digital natives and the old veterans can support one another.”

Tytti Bergman from Alko emphasized the role of communication between HR and Real estate units inside the organization challenging the consultants that come and go.

”Your role is tricky in changing the working practices. You focus too much on the spatial dimension and you don’t have a clear enough idea of the internal organization.”

“We need certain prospects for building a communal spirit – the HR has taken ownership of an IT project.”

“The relation of space and time must change at the office – we need courage in testing quick and dirty solutions.”

PATIs own Suvi Nenonen discussed workplace changes from point of view of individual and wellbeing. She referred to identity, fear of loss and presence at a workplace.

“Tila edellä puuhun”

“Am I even allowed to eat consolation candy at my work desk?”

“Whatever ties you to your table prevents the work practice changes from happening.”

“50% of the workplace changes is purely emotional”

“A collaboratively planned is half done”

“The spatial team in Ruusupuisto came together every two weeks throughout the

 2,5 year project – its main task was to build trust."

The first panel discussion gave insights on regulation and how it creates barriers for flexibility in organisations and consequently, work practices in Finland. The panelists consisted of Petteri Uoti, Elina Lepomäki, Rasmus Roiha and Riitta Lumme-Tuomala.

”According to Tilastokeskus, over 60% of Finns work in knowledge intensive tasks. The work time law has been tailored for the purposes of industrial society and it refers to workspace. In reality work is the thing you do, not a space you go to.”

“We are moving from analogical towards digital and networked where everyone plays with everyone else with different kinds of tools – we need a huge cultural change.”

“The work time law bases on an assumption of timely divide: there is work time and other time. If I get a work-related idea naked in the shower, is it work time or the other time?”

“The work time law does not support differentiation even though an organization would like to make changes for employee’s sake.”

“Companies such as Reaktor and Futurice succeeded extremely well in the Best place to work competition. The authorities got interested, checked their hiring practices and started a hazzle: Goddamn, you can’t do it like this!”

“We would require individual regulation that should not be connected to time nor place but to the task under conduct. What we need is courage to release some regulation locally and provide responsibility.”

The lunch time provided time for networking and the afternoon continued with good talks from representatives of OP corporation, Martela, SOK and IBM.

“Our working culture needs to live with time. We enter the customer’s world where Vallila’s office is a pilot.”

“The next revolution after the industrial and digital ones will be that of wellbeing.”

“Hubs are activity-based offices for entrepreneurs and their difficulty lies in scalability – in the beginning you don’t actually know who is going to use the hub.”

“About 45% of global workforce today is unemployed or work in odd jobs. At the same time, there are jobs on the market. There is seemingly a gap between an employee and an employer which is why there is an increasing war of talent. The employees have an increasing amount of power.”

”The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“IBM Watson can process 2 million pages of information in 3 seconds, has a sense of humor and understands irony. What are we good for when Watsons take over?”

The official program was wrapped together by a panel discussion lead by Kontoret Konsult’s Tommi Ruohonen. The panelists were: Kalle Sogblom, Henri Helvarinta, Kati Barklund, Sanna Lindner and Mika Okkola. The whole panel discussion handled the issues between organisational culture, HR, physical spaces and IT. A common understanding was that a more holistic understanding and a more integrated approach is needed whether it is lead by HR sector or any person who is inside the organization and understands the humane aspects, individual and communal work practice challenges, opportunities and potential implications of their changes.

“Technology can not be implemented without cultural and managerial implications”

“The productivity of work can be improved by quitting from doing stupid, unnecessary things.”

“We tend to focus on technological dimension, not the work practices.”

“Is there a need for a separate HR or should HR be the ground for everything that is done?”

“The slowest knot of the whole change chain is human.”

“How could the human-believing human beings be taken on board the technological changes?”

The evening provided interesting pitches from startups such as Briim, 720 degrees, Lukoton, Fingertip, Agile Work and Apped. The next day's workshops touched similar issues but engaged the participants to reflect on their own working habits. More information on analyses of the PATI workshop coming up later on in the upcoming blog posts. Altogether the ReWork'15 was an insightful blast of work of the past, today, tomorrow and further. PATI team wants to thank HUB'13 and the organizers and hopes that the ReWork'16 will gain even more momentum than the first prototype.

And again, the discourse over the two days made PATI team feel ever more confident of being on the right track in its research focus.

Systemic nature of service innovation

The PATI team attended RESER 2015 conference arranged in Copenhagen Eigtved Pakhus the 10th and 11th September. The conference included about a hundred paper presentations on services in a wide range of fields including but not limited to health care, sustainability, social innovation, retail, ICT and Real Estate. 

The first day started off with a keynote from Anders Gustafsson who discussed the definition of service innovation. Discussed in a multitude of research contexts, the definition of service innovation is still somewhat blurred which makes the discussion around the subject slightly fuzzy and difficult to relate to. This reflects the issues in collaborating across sectors and integrating services in practice between different service providers.

However, Anders approached service innovation through five lenses that are all founded on behavioral innovation: Business model, Experience, Process, Brand and Social innovation. From the service provider point of view, the business model innovation relates to financial arrangements, the experience innovation handles adding experience to the customer, brand innovation seeks to differentiate the services from the competitors and social innovation seeks to offer help for the ones in need.

In terms of monetary value, around 70 % of the GDP (https://www.quandl.com/collections/economics/services-share-of-gdp-by-country) in western societies is already service-related and still growing - shifting monetary streams from product lines towards services. To pinpoint the changes in the market, Anders gave an example of Volvo vs Minecraft where Volvo with 40 000 employees was sold for 14 million and Minecraft with 28 employees was sold for 18 million euros. Which service is more useful for everyday life, sustainability, humanity and society, can be discussed, but the example certainly makes one understand the level of transition we are in.

The greatest value for PATI of the first conference day in addition to the keynote and practical presentation experience was considered to be the industry track, where Gustafsson, Jensen, Toivanen and Hasu reflected on service insights in retail, facilities, customer experience in general and front line employees. In fact, we felt that PATI as a project is aiming to combine the approaches presented by Jensen and Toivanen – to look at the facilities management through the lenses of a customer experience. Toivanen’s notions of the task of a service provider to assist user add value in the use-context, sharing value as an issue of trust, systemic nature of service innovation, shift from individual services towards systemic solutions, and the complexities the systemic nature brings with it to solve by the service providers.

The first presentation of PATI team was given by Eelis under the heading Serving mobile workers in university campuses – access to success. The piece of research aimed to start bridging the gap between Eelis’ dissertation on dynamics of university campus management in spatial transformation and potential services that could help in taking campuses into better uses. People appeared to be interested in the pragmatic approach and the presentation triggered a couple of questions and a sort of discussion which was promising. 

The second day started with a keynote by Paul Windrum from Nottingham University who talked about challenges that innovation researchers face especially in the public sector services. He focused on citizen-led innovation in a multi-agent framework and emphasized the roles of concepts such as Design thinking, Service design and the role of Designers as integrators in making processes functional. According to PATI’s interpretation all this relates to the transformation of decisive ownership over the services to be used from large corporations to individuals. We as researchers and firms as service providers need a deeper understanding on how the people interact and what they need and what is easy for them to interpret which is why the era of technical optimization is taken over by the era of human-centered usability. So technical optimization is needed but useless as such if the service is not usable.

Two PATI team members gave presentations during the second day. The morning session included Vitalija’s presentation about different scenarios for the future of Facilities management. The results from previous five research projects conducted at Aalto university about FM future in different sectors like retail, industry, knowledge workplaces, senior housing and wellness, were analysed. The results indicate that regardless of the sector and future scenario, FM service providers should consider providing more virtual services, paying attention to new ways of doing daily activities, thus new ways of supporting their customers. Also, a multi-use spaces are becoming a norm which requires less facility-oriented and more customer-centric approach. Responsibility and well-being should drive FM sector towards more balanced service package. PATI team was pleased to have Prof. P.A. Jensen himself at the auditorium listening and commenting on the presentation.

The second day was finished with the presentation by Maiju and her colleague Henna. They introduced few different ways how to measure emotions  of knowledge workers: human intelligence service for reporting daily experiences at work, wearable technology ring for measuring electrodermal activity during workday and mobile self-tracking service for identifying discrete emotions and their intensity. The results of the pilot study indicated that these kind of emotion measurement tools are useful if not forced by the organisation, and value of it is realised by knowledge worker becoming more aware of own emotions and thus changing the work performance individually. Maiju’s presentation raised a lot of discussion and thoughts for further development of the paper.

All in all, the RESER 2015 conference gave PATI team a feeling that we are on the right track and understand what is going on in both service and facilities sector. Service is replacing the space but the dynamics are sensitive as the success of services is dictated by human behavior and interaction. So when managing spaces and offering spatial services, rather than just optimize and make space use more efficient, the focus needs to be in effective use of spaces and change management which can be supported by a variety of services where customers and users are focal value co-creators. The PATI team has caught the wave and is happy to continue with the research.