As workplace strategists, we study the people and culture of an organization from the insider’s point of view with ethnographic field visits. Observation periods, focus groups, interviews, activity logs, and surveys are a few methods we use to help understand ways a workplace supports or inhibits the worker and, often times, the company culture. We analyze the collected data—some of which is user-generated through hands-on exercises—and feed key insights into what is known as user-generated, or participatory, design. But this is nothing new. We have engaged in such activities for years to guide our clients to a newly designed workplace that better fits their people, culture, brand, and processes.

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Recently, while discussing some tweaks to the layout of his own office, I was asked by an investment industry leader, “What’s changed in office designs?” As a leader of workplace design for Financial Service Firms at Gensler, it’s something I think about every day. It’s also a multi-layered issue that can be difficult to distill into boilerplate ready responses. Ironically, this straightforward, off-the-cuff question brought a sudden rush of focus to the complex and always evolving factors currently inciting changes in workplace design practices.

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