Everyone is about hybrid working. Which naturally changes the way people use the office. This leads us to ask what they are doing in the office. And all this eventually leads to the question: What if I design my workplace around these activities my employees perform? Surely, designing around activities is an efficient methodology.
The trick to designing activities is not to have too many while also making them specific enough to be differentiated from each other. No workplace can be designed around 40 separate types of activities. There is no group of employees in the world that would be able to effectively navigate the options available to them. Simultaneously, no real estate team could design a space-optimized workplace around that number of activities. By having too much specificity, you end up with everything suboptimal. Similarly, the basic agile office starts from 5 or so activity types (desk work, collab work small team, collab work large team, conference small, conference large) with fairly good results and a lot of built-in knowledge from employees on how to be effective.
So an activity-based workplace must have more than 5 but less than 40 activities designed for to be differentiated. The rub is that anything over 10 is unwieldy and getting the list down to just 10 is daunting. There are so many styles and ways of working to fill a book (and many people have). Each employee persona would have multiple ways that they work.
The easiest approach to thinking about workplaces is to go back to the basics. Limit the specificity that spaces are designed to support and promote flexibility in furniture. Flexibility is not just a concept that applies at a high level, it can apply very tactically as well. Simply providing an extra couple of IT accessories can transform a space from being only a heads-down workstation to a multi-modal space type. Incorporating clever wall designs to limit noise can enable parts of the office to function as overflow collaboration zones. Ensuring your wi-fi network is equally capable in all parts of the office ensures no limitation on mobility.
Activity-based design has a great intention. If employees are given tools that most closely support the specific work they are doing, they will be more productive. The problem becomes that defining and building to that intention against real-world constraints is nearly impossible. However, carrying through the spirit but not the detail can still get you most of the way to your goal. While also saving you time and money.