What is Roast?

Roast is an occupant comfort survey app developed by KT Innovations that lets you create surveys, collect responses, and visualize data. Its multiple functions and ease of use make Roast an essential app in any post-occupancy evaluation (POE) or occupant comfort toolkit.

Who is KT Innovations?

Roast was developed by KT Innovations, an affiliate of Philadelphia-based architecture firm KieranTimberlake.

How does Roast measure comfort?

Roast lets you rapidly create and administer surveys using pre-loaded questions that gauge participants’ perception of temperature, humidity, ventilation, ambient light, noise levels, air freshness, and cleanliness. All responses are stamped with a time, floorplan location, clothing value, and activity level. You can view, analyze, and share the results within Roast’s intuitive interface to generate actionable insights.

Who is Roast for?

Roast is for anyone who designs, owns, manages, studies, or inhabits buildings. This includes designers, architects, engineers, facility managers, building owners, consultants or commissioning agents, human resources officers, and comfort researchers. It is particularly applicable to office, healthcare, hospitality, housing, and education environments. Whether you’re a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) pro or a newcomer to the world of thermal comfort, Roast’s intuitive interface makes it easy for you to read the room, no matter how large or small.

How is Roast different from other survey apps?

Roast was specifically designed to survey occupant comfort and addresses the unique challenges associated with occupant comfort survey projects. In our experience, these challenges include selecting questions, distributing surveys, monitoring response collection rates, and creating graphics that capture rapid, actionable feedback.

Additionally, where you are matters to Roast. Your survey responses are mapped to your floorplan, generating spatially explicit data that lets you quickly analyze correlations between a participant’s comfort, location, and the time of day. With this type of granular occupant feedback, you’ll be able to detect microclimates throughout your building, understand potential problem areas, choose the right setpoint for your building systems, and make other targeted improvements.

What types of questions can Roast help me answer?

Roast helps you ask and answer questions about how occupants are experiencing temperature, humidity, air freshness, and more. Roast also helps you dig into the factors that contribute to or detract from occupant comfort, such as access to a fan, the impacts of a skylight, or the presence of a truck idling next to an open window. By comparing survey results to a participant’s location, clothing value, and activity level, Roast visualizes what correlations exist between how a participant feels (e.g. hot and stifled) and their space (the south corner of an office without fans or operable windows).

What occupant comfort survey standards does Roast meet?

Roast allows you to systematically analyze the indoor environment using the Bedford scale. Our pre-populated survey questions and answers are influenced by ASHRAE 55 and other industry survey standards, but whereas these standards often focus on occupants’ “satisfaction with” or “acceptance of” their indoor environment, Roast was developed to leverage the human senses and allows occupants to describe their environments using more approachable language (e.g. bright, loud, or drafty).

Can Roast help me achieve green building rating system certifications?

Roast can help your project achieve occupant survey credits under the following rating systems:

LEED BD+C v4 Innovation in Design
LEED ID+C v4 Innovation in Design
LEED O+M v4 IEQc10
LEED NC-2009 IEQc7.2
LEED CI-2009 IEQc7.2
LEED EBOM-2009 IEQc2.1
WELL Building Standard Feature 86 (Acoustics, Thermal Comfort, Light Levels, and Odors)

Roast automatically calculates a survey’s response rate as required by LEED v4 and WELL, and it features a results page that helps assess a corrective action plan’s success as required by LEED v4.

What do I need to get started?

To get started, you’ll need a list of participants’ emails and a floorplan of your space in a .JPEG, .SVG, .PNG, or .DXF file format. This will allow you to map survey responses to participants’ locations. Users uploading a .DXF floorplan can add an optional layer to define unique zones that can help spatially organize survey results.

Do I need any additional software?

Nope! All you need to get started is a list of participants’ emails and a floorplan of your space in a .JPEG, .SVG, .PNG, or .DXF file format.

Can I use Roast on my mobile device?

Yes! Roast is fully compatible on iOS, Android, and other mobile devices.

Is it possible to add additional questions to the Roast question set?

Not yet! For now, Roast includes questions addressing temperature, humidity, ventilation, ambient light, noise levels, air freshness, cleanliness, and productivity. Stay tuned for future updates that will increase the number and type of questions to include furniture and furniture layout, maintenance, and more. Want to see Roast include a specific question? Contact Us with your ideas.

How are my surveys delivered?

Roast manages survey distribution and survey and project invitations via email. Be sure to check your spam folder if your emails are not being received. Adding roastsurvey.com to your list of safe senders will help ensure delivery.

Can I schedule my surveys?

Yes! You can schedule surveys to be sent at specific times (e.g. on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 AM) or specific intervals (e.g. every hour between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on Wednesdays), or you can send them manually on a case-by-case basis. Participants will receive an email notifying them when a survey is available.

Is there a limit to how many participants I can send a survey to?

The number of participants per project is based on your subscription. For more information, visit our Pricing page. Can’t find the right subscription for you? Contact Us to discuss custom subscription options.

Why does Roast need my location?

Roast asks for your location to help survey administrators identify trends between how you’re feeling (e.g. hot and stifled) and where you are (the south corner of a building without fans or operable windows).

Why does Roast need to know what I’m wearing?

Unsurprisingly, what you’re wearing makes a big difference in your thermal comfort. By describing what you’re wearing, you’re helping your survey administrators determine the total insulative value, or clothing value (clo), of your outfit so that they can see how your clothing (e.g. a tee shirt and sandals in January) may impact overall comfort (cold and drafty).

How long will my data be stored?

If you’re a survey owner or administrator, your surveys and their associated data will be stored for the entirety of your subscription period, or until you manually delete them. After your subscription expires your data will be archived, but not accessible, on Roast for 6 months to give you time to renew your subscription before your data is lost. After this 6-month grace period, all surveys and data will be permanently deleted. For more information, read our Privacy Policy.

If you’re a participant, your account information will be deleted after your account has been inactive for 6 months, or when you manually delete it. For more information, read our Privacy Policy.

Who can see my information?

Only project owners or survey administrators have access to survey data, which may include the names and emails of participants. However, project and survey owners and administrators can share their results with anyone via a pre-filtered .CSV download option or by directly exporting an .SVG of their results graphics. To learn more about this process, read our Privacy Policy.

KT Innovations will never sell or share email information to a third-party.

Still have questions?