Work

Development of the affective customized office emphasizing indoor environment quality, employee performance, and happiness system

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: An employee’s emotional, affective, physiological, and performance (MAP) states and their work environment are closely connected. This connection served as the foundation for the development of the Affective Customized Office Emphasizing Indoor Environment Quality, Employee Performance and Happiness (AFFECTS) system, which is focused on minimizing a building’s energy requirements and enhancing the quality of the indoor office environment. AFFECTS applies the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and affective computing technologies. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate the practical applicability of AFFECTS. We designed this system to track an employee’s MAP states and then customize their office space based on the Yerkes–Dodson law, the somatic marker hypothesis, and social exchange theory. Based on over 870 million data points, we developed and validated the AFFECTS arousal, valence, and happiness regression models and validated them (R 2 = 0.884–0.999). Two main innovative elements make AFFECTS different from the most advanced systems of a similar kind: First, it adapts the working spaces (various smells, music, films, images, heating and cooling, energy efficiency, carbon dioxide optimization, humidity, air cleaning, oxygen, physical activities, medical substances, vibrations, lighting intensity, and colors) to achieve customized user comfort and performance. Second, it can maintain the desired MAP states by adapting working spaces.

Source: Energy and Buildings

DOI: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2025.116497