  The layouts of the buildings we live in shape our everyday lives. In office
environments, building spaces affect employees' communication, which is crucial
for productivity and innovation. However, accurate measurement of how spatial
layouts affect interactions is a major challenge and traditional techniques may
not give an objective view.We measure the impact of building spaces on social
interactions using wearable sensing devices. We study a single organization
that moved between two different buildings, affording a unique opportunity to
examine how space alone can affect interactions. The analysis is based on two
large scale deployments of wireless sensing technologies: short-range,
lightweight RFID tags capable of detecting face-to-face interactions. We
analyze the traces to study the impact of the building change on social
behavior, which represents a first example of using ubiquitous sensing
technology to study how the physical design of two workplaces combines with
organizational structure to shape contact patterns.
