Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Automobiles Our driving performance improves when we’re smelling lemon, so next time you’re buying an in-car air freshener, go lemon. If you can tune the colour of the lights used in your car at...
Ever wanted to take the Hotel decor home with you?
Hotels are, literally, our homes away from home. We spend time in them when we’re on vacation and having a good time, but also when we’re on business trips and trying like crazy to...
Waiting in Line….
Have you ever found yourself getting all agitated while waiting in a queue for tickets? Bouncing from one foot to the other while you’re waiting for the shop assistant to finish helping the people...
For the love of Robots…
Although more and more things around us are being automated, from hotel check-ins to whole dining experiences, that doesn’t mean that we necessarily like working with a robot or anything “smart”. Did you know...
The Way we Work Now…
Megan Tatum has written an interesting article for the BBC online about the importance of aligning workplace options with user mindsets (“The People Who Hate Working from Home,” 2022, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220616-the-people-who-hate-working-from-home). Tatum’s article is written...
Photographing everything in your home?
I love this article. Barbara Iweins has photographed each and every thing in her home and Oscar Holland of CNN discusses her images in a recent article (“A Photographer Cataloged All 12, 795 Items...
Plants = meditation
Researchers found that looking at plants and guided meditation have similar effects on our mental state. Archary and Thatcher, investigating recovery from mental fatigue (which also degraded mood) found that “distress significantly decreased for...
Benefits of looking at art and cultural content online
Trupp and colleagues found there are significant benefits to looking at visual art and cultural content electronically, even very briefly: “When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated—in a growing body of evidence—with...
What do humans find beautiful?
Krpan and van Tilburg share that they “developed and empirically evaluated the Aesthetic Quality Model, which proposes that the link between [visual] complexity and beauty depends on another key visual property—randomness. According to the...
Circadian lighting and sleep
Benedetti and colleagues found that circadian lighting in offices can improve how well people sleep at night. They “tested the effects of optimized dynamic daylight and electric lighting on circadian phase of melatonin, cortisol...
Art!
Almost all of us have art of some sort in our homes, but that art can range from a Picasso to a first finger painting by a grandchild. Art can be most useful in...
Attractiveness and scent….
Chen and Spence studied how scents influence perceptions of facial attractiveness; it seems likely that their findings can also be applied in other contexts. The duo report they studied “whether the presentation of a...
Gardening is good for you – more evidence!
Researchers determined, via a study published in PLoS ONE, that “many people may indeed reap mental health benefits from working with plants — even if they’ve never gardened before. . . . gardening activities...
Why do we love the smell after it has rained?
Nabhan, Daugherty, and Hartung report that “Desert dwellers know it well: the smell of rain and the feeling of euphoria that comes when a storm washes over the parched earth. That feeling, and the...
Seeing Yourself Talking
Recent research related to seeing yourself during Zoom calls may be useful in other contexts, for example, when you see yourself in a mirror as you speak. A study published in Clinical Psychological Science...
Activity-based working appeals to some more than others…
Activity-based working (ABW) is the term applied to the system which recognises the fact that people do different tasks during the day at work, and so need a mix of work settings with the...
Designing for People with ADHD
If you’re trying to create a space where someone with ADHD will feel comfortable: Make sure that workspaces, and home offices, for example, are as distraction-free as possible. That means, only work-related items on...
What design features encourage active play?
Hunter and colleagues had this goal: “To identify features parents perceived as being relevant for their child’s active play, their own active recreation, and their coactivity. Parents . . . with preschoolers . ....
How to shape your products
Of course it depends on what product you are selling, but this is interesting research. Shi, Mai, and Mo report that “this research explores how anthropomorphic products’ humanlike body shapes influence consumer evaluation and...
For Room Rater fans – the back story
Are you an avid reader of the Room Rater Twitter account which scores what’s seen behind people in Zoom meetings, during video calls, etc. Emma Goldberg (“You’re Still on Mute,” 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/business/wfh-setups-rto.html) interviews one...
Blue is in!
And why shouldn’t it be (always)? Research consistently shows that no matter where on the planet you ask, people are more likely to tell you that blue is their favourite colour than any other...
What to Take on a Trip Anywhere
It’s nice to feel at home even when you aren’t-but unless your luggage is much, much larger than the suitcase I travel with, you can’t take much of your home with you when you...
How to Design a Museum – The Long Read
Museums store some of our species’ greatest work, as well as impressive achievements by Mother Earth—they are places where we go to prepare to think great thoughts, and, occasionally to do a little high-powered...
Library Life
Like museums, libraries seem to be the sort of spaces where we’ll either think great thoughts or gather the ideas required to do so. You may have a library in your home or may...
Worthy Waiting Areas – the Long Read
There are times when it seems that most of our lives are being spent waiting for something (for example, an appointment) or someone. Design can make waiting much more pleasant, and lots of research...
Restaurant Design
When you’re in a restaurant, it’s likely that you have at least a passing interest in eating healthy. Design can help you do just that. If you are designing a new space for an...
How to Feel Safe/Secure at Home
We’re more apt to feel safer, that where we live is more “neighbourly,” and actually be more secure when: Cooler colours predominate in the space we’re in. We’re sitting or sleeping so that we...
When to Keep Things the Same, When to Make a Change
When you’re asking yourself if you should make a change, you’re answering your own question. When a space doesn’t seem comfortable anymore, it isn’t. A place can seem less comfortable for a variety of...
Thinking while Grooving
Fukuie and colleagues report that “Hearing a groove rhythm (GR), which creates the sensation of wanting to move to the music, can also create feelings of pleasure and arousal in people, and it may...
Home or Asset?
Grant and Handelman report that “Traditionally, the home is regarded as a place of singularization that is to be aligned with the homeowner’s unique identity. This traditional meaning has come to be confronted with...
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