The 2019 Hixson Thought Leadership Series Presentation: Three Key Takeaways

Data is everywhere these days, and Melissa Marsh, Founder and Executive Director of Plastarc, says that we as a culture are “obsessed with it.”  In her presentation for Hixson’s 2019 Thought Leadership Series, “Big Data, Little Data, and the Art of Interpretation,” Marsh looked at the how the growing scale and availability of data and other quantitative information regarding how occupants work within a space is changing the game for today’s architects and building owners, sharing many key insights during her hour-long presentation, including:

• “We’re in a golden era of architecture and design.” According to Marsh, in this age “we can focus on buildings that achieve an elevated quality of human experience and, through new digital threads, and by combining the big data with the little data, we can measure people’s perspective of their environment and use that information to make more spaces that better suit their needs.”
• “We can now use data to expand what we know about how people are using a space.”  There is an economic value on certain aspects of the experience (e.g., an occupants’ preferred features and characteristics for their work environment) that we may not have been able to quantify before.  Today though, says Marsh, “the combination of human factors viewpoint plus the data behind it allows us to have a different kind of workplace experience than we’ve ever seen before.”
• “Smart buildings are social buildings.”  Says Marsh, “if we’re thinking about a smart building as only as the lighting sensors or HVAC sensors and all those things that are making a building smarter, and we’re not talking about the components that are the human interface and then learning about that human interface, then we’re not really talking about a smart building.”

A highlights video of “Big Data, Little Data, and the Art of Interpretation” will be available soon. Want to see it or be on our invite list for the next Thought Leadership Series event? Contact us today!

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