How Do You Work? Understanding User Needs for Responsive Study Space Design

Abstract

To design learning commons study spaces responsive to user needs, the study spaces programming team at Texas State University created a survey focused on (1) how faculty and students like to work and (2) inspirational environmental attributes. Results from 199 respondents indicate that (1) 85 percent prefer to study/work alone, and (2) environmental parameters noise/sound, light, and links to nature most affect work/study space quality. Removing the concept of library from the survey provided generalized results about study/work environments, suggesting that well designed study spaces can occur anywhere on campuses that serve large populations with a single library.