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From Fanger's seminal work on thermal comfort in the 1970s, standards governing temperatures in the workplace enshrine clothing level calculations based on full business suits, and building regulations developed using only male metabolic data, locking in a default male perspective. Even later work that highlights gender biases with regard to metabolism calculation, inclusive of both genders has focused on younger women, and the voices of older working women are missing from this discourse. We invited women over 45 to explore what they find important in workplace thermal comfort, and how devices and interfaces might meet their needs and also encourage thermal adaptivity. Our study highlights factors such as 'fresh air', and the importance of empathy to fellow inhabitants. We bring new voices to the thermal comfort discourse which supports reducing energy use in the workplace, improving thermal environments and ensuring the needs of a diverse, aging workforce are considered.

Maintaining a consistent indoor temperature causes one of the largest energy demands in UK. UK buildings are famously poorly insulated and expensive to heat and cool. This is set to become ever more challenging in a warming and rapidly changing climate. What if we allowed ourselves to be more uncomfortable and took more charge of our thermal comfort? Wouldn't we then be healthier, more thermally delighted, more productive? Would we not also save energy and related carbon emissions? We offer this provocation, and set the challenge to identify how this should change the role of future ubiquitous environments. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); HCI theory, concepts and models; User studies.

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