Research study on Architecture of Social Learning and Knowing wins EDRA CORE Award.
HGA won a Certificate of Research Excellence (CORE) awards from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) for “impactful, practice-based research that sparks innovation and promotes best practice in environmental design,” according to EDRA.
The study proposed ‘architecture of social learning and knowing’ – a trinary solution comprised of (1) Design Thinking (DT) methodology as a form of Action Research for cultivating sustainable change in an organization’s existing practices or producing new ones from scratch; (2) a toolset combining PeopleSpace Analytics and ethnographic thick description to not only map and record the change in users’ work practices, but also encourage their engagement to generate insights; and (3) a theoretical lens inspired by social theories of learning and knowing for framing the change in the organization. The research-design project was conducted in one of the offices of a national architecture firm where the redesign of the workplace was framed as an opportunity to rethink the way work happens.
The team included Amin Mojtahedi, PhD, Design Strategist at HGA; Paula Verboomen, Design Principal at HGA; Dr. Brian Schermer, PhD from SARUP at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and Dr. So-Yeon Yoon, PhD from the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University.
Download the study or find more information about the CORE Awards here.
About CORE
CORE winners were selected by a cross-disciplinary panel of academic researchers, practice-based researchers, designers, and industry thought leaders.