Feeling not with your Fingertips – from your feet to your butt!

We don’t just have nerve endings in our fingertips and tactile experiences from the soles of our feet as we walk, from our butts as we sit, etc., also influence our experiences in a space, how we think and behave while we’re there.

For example, when people are sitting in chairs with even slight cushions, say an inch deep, they get along better with other people, they negotiate with them less vigorously and don’t drive as hard a bargain, than when they are sitting on a hard surface, one without any cushioning.

Also, intriguingly, we’re more creative when sitting on those cushions than on hard surfaces but don’t invest in too many cushions too fast—our memories work better when we’re sitting on an uncushioned surface than on one with a cushion on it.

The implications of the textures we feel under our feet as we move around have been extensively researched:

• For starters, they are often used to cue us in that something we need to pay attention to is approaching.Long before we had captivating cell phones to blame, people often didn’t pay that much attention to the space they were traveling through, so for a long time people have changed the floor texture near walls (so people didn’t walk into them) or at the top of staircases (so people didn’t tumble down them).  When we encounter a rough surface with our feet, we’re alerted to a nearby potential “situation.” When we’re walking on something rougher, in general, we tend to be more cautious, so a rougher texture can be useful when people are traveling around corners and not keen on bumping into each other.
• We’re likely to stay on the same sort of surface as we move through a space, so if you’d like people to travel a particular path, direct them to follow it by creating an all-carpet, all-hardwood, all-linoleum, or all-whatever route for them to travel.
• If you want to save some money and will be using a shopping cart, shop at a store with relatively smaller floor tiles. In situations where the tiles are smaller, you’ll walk faster compared to if tiles are larger or there are no tiles, which will make it harder for you to see tempting impulse purchase options.
• Balance influences decision-making, and those of you prone to wearing high heels or platform shoes should heed related research findings.It seems that when our experiences bring thoughts of balance top of mind—for example, we are walking on a cobblestone-type surface wearing high heels—we’re more likely to purchase a mid-range product, not one at the high or low end of the scale.
• Changes in textures underfoot can signal changes in use zones (exercising vs. relaxing areas; public vs. private) and owned territories, all of which can be quite handy, preventing all sorts of confusions. For more information on territories, how to mark them and why they matter, read this article.
• The acoustic implications of textures, mentioned above, are particularly important with flooring. For example, the differences in sounds made by leather soled shoes on marble and those the same shoes make on carpeting can be quite dramatic and the staccato sound of someone in leather shoes or high heels moving across a marble atrium, for instance, can have a dramatic effect on mood.  Researchers have also learned that people tend to walk slightly faster when working on a surface on which their shoes make a higher frequency sound (as they would when walking on ice) than they do when their shoes have the reverse effect, as they do, in an extreme case, in mud.
• There is some, largely anecdotal evidence linking walking on cobblestones to enhanced cognitive performance.
• We walk more slowly on carpeted floors than on bare floors, so textures experienced underfoot can be used to regulate, to some extent, travel speed through a space.We also seem to be in a better mood after standing on carpet than after standing on surfaces such as hard vinyl tile.
• At hospitals, people tend to spend more time visiting people in carpeted rooms than in rooms with vinyl floors and staff report higher comfort levels and less noise and glare and better air temperature regulation in patient rooms with carpet, compared to rooms with vinyl tiles.Patients reported that the carpeted rooms were a more comfortable temperature.  The rooms with vinyl floors were felt, by staff and patients, to be cleaner and have better ventilation and consequently fresher air.
• Floors with shiny surfaces can be perceived to be slippery, even when they technically aren’t, because of visual effects created with light in these areas.
• Anyone selecting a texture for a floor must be very careful, considering all the potential combined consequences of its colours and patterns and textures that no optical illusions might be created through their use—optical illusions on floors can make moving through a space a risky proposition for many, particularly those with visual issues.
• If you want to make a hallway seem shorter, use two different surface textures along its length.