A database model to increase interior design success for acoustic comfort in open offices

Considering the time spent in the offices; offices have a unique importance for human-space relationship. Therefore; relationship between office interior design and emloyees' performance has been an important research area for many years. Within this scope, many institutions tried new design and techniques in order to improve employees' performance. In other words, office workers satisfaction with the office space is deemed as an import factor on the success of an organization and an effective performance indicator. In this context, the main study area of the thesis has been decided as "The relationship between office interior design and employee performance in Turkey". The reason for the choice of Turkey as a country is that it ranks on the top among different countries with the highest weekly average working hours. A two–phase study has been conducted to define the scope and purpose of the problem, that will be discussed and will propose solution suggestions for the main study area of the thesis defined as "The relationship between the office interior design and employee performance in Turkey". At the first stage; the reasons for the necessity to limit the thesis with which " office plan type", for the sake of defining the scope of the thesis, have been described. Because; each different office plan type is shaped to meet the requirements of the employees with different requirements, status and working attitudes and to increase their performance accordingly. In the second stage; the factors related with the interior space design, for the office plan type specified in the first stage, affecting the emolyees' performance have been specified. When all the obtained results are evaluated systematically, the scope and the aim of the thesis have been recommended as the suggestion for "A Database Model to increase Interior Design Success for Acoustic Comfort in Open Offices". Within the scope of this specified content and purpose; as the methodology of the thesis study, at the first stage, literature research has been made for reviewing the thesis studies conducted on national and international level about improving the interior for acoustic comfort in open offices and the obtained results have been evaluated. Then; a database model has been suggested to increase the success of interior space design for the acoustic comfort in open offices. The main aim of the database model suggested within the scope of thesis is establishing the link between the academic studies made on this issue and the developments in the sector and to ensure the access of relevant people to this information. An interior architect involved in design and implementation will be able to reach to design rules in the literature; which have been put forward as a result of the several scientific studies on increasing the success in interior space design for acoustic comfort in open offices; and he/she will be able to use these in different phases of his/her project. Besides; relevant to the design rules in the database, the user will be able to access the data of products or materials that are sold in the sector. In other words; he/she will be able to see which design rule can be realized with which material or product and he/she will be able to access the details of the firms related with these. When the database is used by a scholar working on acoustic issue; the person will be able to systematically reach all scientific studies about the acoustic comfort in open offices and he/she will be able to see the issues concentrated on or the ones that are not concentrated during the scientific studies. This will help to deterimine the subjects of academic study more accurately. In addition; the user will be able to see which products or materials in the sector match to the scientific studies. With this database; companies in the sector, which work on acoustic issues, will be able to follow the scientific studies on the products or materials in their own sales line and they will be able to use them in their R&D product development studies. Also; they will be able to upload the information about their new products to the database and establish the link between this information and academic studies. As an addition to all these; it will be possible to obtain different statistical outputs such as graphs on the number of records on the basis of design rules classes, graph of the number of design rules on the basis of products etc. Such outputs may be used for different purposed both in academic and sectorel level.