Bouncken and Aslam investigated coworking site design. They learned that “Different forms of coworking spaces have spread worldwide that use various artifacts (e.g., office settings, d ́ecor, furniture, equipment) to strengthen autonomy, flexibility, spontaneous interactions, and intrinsic motivation. . . . artifacts can contour and create the possibilities for actors and define the borders, e.g., when, where, and with whom to communicate and work in coworking spaces. Our findings indicate that actors and artifacts are constitutively entangled in coworking spaces and play a key role in the community development process by fostering a shared understanding and identity, mutual interdependency, and common practices. . . . our findings also suggest that irrespective of the affordance of an artifact, actors can perceive different meanings about the same artifact. . . . Our study suggests that design choice and other physical properties of artifacts (e.g., size, style, color, material, and density) can visually convey the meaning to the actors.” A single item can also have multiple affordances.
Ricarda Bouncken and Muhammad Aslam. 2023. “Bridging the Design Perspective to Coworking-Spaces: Constitutive Entanglement of Actors and Artifacts.” European Management Journal, vol. 41, pp. 101-113, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2021.10.008