Case Study

The Code Calculator

In 2018 I joined WeWork as the company’s first and only ‘Space Planner.’ I had a unique opportunity to define a new role and rethink the way test fits were being utilized. At the time of my arrival, the company was entering into new markets across the West, making the property evaluation process more important than ever.

Expanding into new cities meant navigating new jurisdictions and understanding local interpretations of the building code. It was clear that adding a code component to the test fit was essential to truly understanding project feasibility.

Timeline

Version 1: 8 Weeks, Version 2: 4 Weeks

Role

Research Lead, Product Designer

Team

2x Designers (Architects)

focus

Product Design, Interaction Design

THE challange

The company is having to make costly upgrades to project base buildings- in order to meet basic fire and life safety requirements.

Building Code is an integral and inescapable part of any construction project, and can often dictate many aspects of design. Understanding code is critical when it comes to obtaining necessary permits to begin construction. Projects which don’t meet a cities code requirements can be held up until all issues are resolved.

As WeWork was expanding into new cities across the west coast this seemed to be happing more and more- costing the company both time and money. When looking at past projects we found that the most common and costly issues were specifically related to occupant load.

Building Code Made Simple

Building code calculations can be time-consuming and confusing. The Code Dashboard makes them simple. With this tool architects and designers can gain an early understanding of code compliance from the office or in the fields in a few easy steps.

Input: The Calculator

After entering the project name, the user will answer a series of questions. By selecting an answer from the drop-down menus, the calculator will be able to consider project-specific and jurisdictional nuances.

Output: The Analysis

The Code Analysis Function will summarize all code calculations, alerting the user of any code-related issues and potential impact on the project.

RESEARCH

Hitting the Code Books

I knew incorporating a preliminary code check into the test fit was not going to be easy. While the International Building Code (IBC) has been adopted as a standard in most places within the United States, interpretations and amendments varied widely. This made a preliminary code check a bit of a guessing game.

User Interviews

In order to design a tool that would produce accurate code calculations, I would need to understand how occupancy was being interpreted in each jurisdiction. I conducted interviews with architects from every territory - who had recently completed a project and gone through the permitting process.

Project location proved to be a large factor in permitting success rate because different jurisdictions were using methodologies for calculating occupant load. Jurisdictions were using one of two methods - producing inconsistent end result.

See the example below!

Insights & Findings

Method 1:

Standard occupant load calculation method outlined in the IBC. When applying this method floor areas will be broken out by “use” (Bussiness, Assembly, Storage.) Each “use” has an allowed number of persons per square foot of space. Divide the total area of each use by its associated factor, add the dividends to find the occupant load.

Method 2:

Standard occupant load calculation method outlined in the IBC is applied to “non-business use” spaces, combined with the total number of desks shown on the plan.

This method is much more conservative and often yields a much higher occupant load.

discovery

Calculations needed to be done differently for each jurisdiction.

Ideation & Exploration

It is important to remember that this project started as a team initiative, run by myself and one other architect. As architects our understanding of the building code was solid, but our knowledge of how to build a functioning calculator tool was pretty limited. Since the primary function was to run calculations, we figured google sheets would be a good place to start.

lo-fi prototype

We began building our very low fidelity prototype in google sheets, translating the building code into simple formulas. Because each jurisdiction had a specific plumbing code and different interpretations of the building code, we would need our calculator to consider multiple conditions and factors.

We were able to do this by creating a dropdown menu for the jurisdiction field. Each option referenced a locked calculation sheet, where jurisdiction-specific rules and formulas lived. The rules would then be applied to corresponding fields on the calculator sheet.

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Usability Testing

The tool was still a work in progress, but user feedback was critical for improving our prototype. We conducted 2 rounds of usability testing, one moderated and one un-moderated where we asked our 5 participants to incorporated the calculator into their workflow and take note of any difficulties or issues they encountered.

Two major issues were revealed.

Issue #1:

The tool was not currently considering exit capacity, which meant users could not compare the estimated occupant load to the building exit capacity. The entire goal of the project was to gauge code compliance against existing building conditions, so omitting this from our tool felt like a major oversight.

Solution: Add the exit capacity field to the calculator.

Adding this field was more complex than anticipated. By incorporating exit capacity, we would also need to add another conditional field for sprinkler and voice alarm. We started to reorganize the input categories and map out the new logic in illustrator. Once we had a visual understanding of how the calculator needed to work, we updated the layout and started editing our prototype, writing and testing a series of IF-THEN statements, until we finally had our calculator thinking correctly.

Reorganizing inputs

Issue #2 : Understanding the outputs was difficult and probably only made sense if you were an architect.

Solution: Create an outputs summary view

I started to think about what a summary sheet might look like, and how it could work. Ultimately we landed on a format that would display a summary of code specifications for reference and a list of purposed solutions. It was also important to note that all solutions were to be regarded as recommendations only, all other aspects of the property evaluation should be considered in conjunction with this study.

Iterate & Iterate…

After we had the calculator working correctly and organized in a format that made reading the information easy and clear, we started to play with the visuals creating several versions before landing on a final design.

OUTCOME & Next Steps

Launching Code Dashboard 2.0

The Code Dashboard 2.0 was released to the West Coast architecture team in 2018, where it was quickly adopted into the standard workflow. A few months after launch, we were asked to add East Coast cities into the calculator and re-release the tool regionally.

Project Managers and MEP Engineers were also utilizing the calculator to assess early cost estimations, bring new attention to our work.

This ultimately led to the development of the Site Selection Manager.

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