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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of MA by coursework and research report in the field of Organisational Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand,Johannesburg 2018 / With the change in nature of work, the spaces in which work is done has also changed, prompting research into the effects of the work environment on employees. The purpose of this study is to investigate how different types of workplace office spaces will have different impacts on aspects of wellbeing in employees. The facets explored are how employees perceive their satisfaction of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) attributes, how they perceive their performance and health within these IEQ conditions, how they perceive their current workspace affecting their physical and psychological discomfort, and how they perceived their own psychological wellbeing. A quantitative survey was compiled from previous literature, appropriate to exploring these variables. The questionnaire was piloted at a company that owns, develops, and manages property before being conducted over a two-week period at a large health insurance company in Johannesburg, Gauteng. The final survey consisted of three subscales of the Green Building Survey (Hedge & Dorsey, 2012) measuring perceived satisfaction of indoor environmental quality and its impact on health and performance; the GABO questionnaire (Pierrette et al., 2015) assessed six aspects of perceived noise; the extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire assessed physical discomfort in nine body regions; perceived psychological comfort; and perceived psychological wellbeing using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. Data were collected using an online survey platform. The final sample consisted of 1853 participants of different genders, races, ages, and organisational levels of a prominent South African organisation. The results of this study are beneficial to the field as literature pertaining to workspace layout is outdated and new research is needed as innovative trends in layout types are emerging. Most previous research on employee perceptions addresses productivity but not necessarily different aspects of perceived health, wellbeing, and comfort. It is expected that this study will contribute to finding clarity in a still-ambiguous field and will add to the present-day change in how and where work is done. / TL2019

This project investigates how interaction design can support handcrafting and foster well-being. The design process has been user-centered, focusing on people who handcraft during their leisure. Along the process, the focus was narrowed down to the practices of artistic handcrafting such as painting and sketching. The design project resulted in a concept with an associated digital prototype that supports users to handcraft personal artistic work by inspiring them to realize one's ideas or visions. The final concept supports a free and exploratory handcrafting process, proven by the design process to be important for people engaged in artistic handcrafting. This thesis further discusses the design process, the reasoning behind the prototype role, and its features. The outcome contributes knowledge to the field of Interaction Design regarding essential aspects of design that support the practice of handcrafting and fosters well-being.

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The overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine the complex trip-, activity-, and personal-level factors impacting individuals’ well-being. This is achieved through fulfilling three research objectives. The first objective examines the fluctuation of happiness induced by the influences of daily trip and activity factors. The second objective examines the sensitivity of affective well-being to trip and activity duration. The third objective evaluates the gender differences in trip- and activity-induced well-being. Three notable findings are discerned using trip and activity episodes as well as self-reported well-being of 357 participants collected by the Daynamica smartphone application in Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area from October 17, 2016, to October 25, 2017. The first finding shows the daily happiness deviation is zero in 6% of the number of trip and activity episodes recorded in a day for all individuals. Trip-level factors associated with share of time spent on education, work, and traveling alone result in the largest happiness variability. The number of activities is the sole activity-level factor with positive influence on happiness variability. Personal level factor of gender results in a low happiness variability. The second finding indicates that positive affect is more sensitive to trip duration than negative affect. Among trip-level factors, the sensitivity of affective well-being during a trip is relatively weak when traveling by bike, bus, and rail; conducting discretionary trip purposes; traveling with spouse, family, children, and friends; conducting secondary activities while traveling; and being satisfied with the travel environment. Among personal-level factors, the sensitivity of affective well-being during a trip is relatively strong for women and African Americans. The third finding demonstrates that the top three factors yielding the highest magnitude of impact for females are associated with biking, trip destination associated with discretionary activities, and walking. The likelihood of gain to loss happiness is four times for male bikers and two and a half times for female bikers. Results of both discretionary and mandatory trip origins have the least magnitude of impact for both females and males. For personal-level factors, the magnitude of impact is low for African American females, and not significant for males.

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