22.09.2026
Broken Futures Stakeholder Co-Design Workshop
On Thursday, 17 September, Institute for Innovation and Development of University of Ljubljana, in collaboration with Workplace Innovation Europe, organised the online Broken Futures Stakeholder Co-Design Workshop as part of the SONATA project. The workshop explored how future adaptive office environments could work in practice and how people might experience them in their everyday working lives. Rather than presenting participants with a finished vision of the future workplace, the workshop invited them to critically reflect on what would need to change for such a scenario to feel realistic, acceptable, and workable.
Participants worked all together with a short fictional “broken story” set in a future open-plan office. In the scenario, the office adapted throughout the day to employees’ planned activities, such as focused work, meetings, collaborative sessions, and online calls. The imagined workplace included changing work zones, movable acoustic partitions, adaptive ceiling panels, electrochromic glass, and different desk assignments depending on employees’ needs and activities. The story also touched on everyday experiences of working in such an environment, including concentration, interruptions, social interaction, changing workstations, and the relationship between employees and adaptive technologies.
The workshop was inspired by the work of Sarah Pink and her colleagues (2025) on “broken futures”. Participants were encouraged to take a corrective approach to the scenario: to identify what felt unrealistic, uncomfortable, problematic, or difficult to implement, to consider who might be affected, and to suggest how the imagined workplace could be improved. Instead of simply asking whether participants liked or disliked the scenario, the discussion focused on what would need to be “repaired” for it to work better in practice. Several recurring themes emerged from the discussion. Participants emphasized the importance of human-cantered design, including involving workers in shaping and designing their own working environments. They also highlighted the need for people to retain a sense of control over adaptive technologies, while ensuring that health and wellbeing are considered alongside efficiency and productivity.
The insights gathered during the workshop will contribute to the further development of the SONATA project and its approach to adaptive workplace technologies. By looking not only at what technologies can do, but also at how they may affect everyday routines, interactions, comfort, autonomy, and decision-making, the workshop helped bring social and human considerations into discussions about the future of work.
Reference
Pink, S., Korsmeyer, H., & Lyall, B. (2025). “Generative AI and Broken Futures.” Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004251358070
