Monitoring daylight provision and glare perception in office environments

It is generally accepted that there is an urgent need to understand the link between daylight and building users’ visual comfort. However, current behavioural models do not adequately describe user experience under daylight conditions. This is largely due to the lack of real life monitoring data that includes both, physical measurements and qualitative values, i.e. from user feedback. A survey methodology is presented that links the measurement of physical conditions, using luminance maps derived from high dynamic range (HDR) images, with the collection of user perception data at normal office workstations. After an initial setup phase, the method requires minimal intervention by the researchers and is thus particularly suitable for long-term field studies. The main challenges in the development of this method arose due to the need to keep the interference with the participants’ usual work activities to a minimum while still providing data suitable for meaningful analysis. The paper describes how these issues were addressed. The practical application of the method in post-occupancy investigations is explored using a case study example.