Holiday Colours
There are particular hues that we’re much more likely to see at the end of the year and in related celebrations than others. Don’t be surprised if they have you feeling in very particular...
Time for the Familiar!
During the holidays, and actually throughout the year, familiar really can be best—we do like spaces to change or evolve slightly over time and even to vary slightly by time of day or season...
Scent and Heat!
At this time of year we can become particularly attuned to the smells in our homes and offices, regularly because they’re not very good. If you actively manage the scents in your home and...
Refreshment time!
During the holidays, we often need to not only work at whatever our job is but also spend time catching up with family, friends, and colleagues, all of this can lead us desperate to...
Are you arguing with your designer?
If you are, don’t be surprised—the two of you bring very different mindsets to any design discussion. Designers have spent a lot of time thinking about design (no surprise there). Even if you’ve been...
Does remote working impact collaboration?
With so many of us working from home, maybe for the first time or even continuing a trend, this research is important when considering the need to create environments to encourage collaboration. Yang and...
Does Zoom affect the rhythm of our conversation?
Boland and colleagues have learned that “Small, variable transmission delays over Zoom disrupt the typical rhythm of conversation, leading to delays in turn initiation. This study compared local and remote (Zoom) turn transition times....
Can ‘celebrity’ increase your property price?
There used to be a series called “Through the Keyhole“. I don’t know if you remember that? Anyway, there has been some research that appears to prove that if your house was lived in...
Why do some things become clutter?
Ever wondered why some of your stuff becomes clutter? Jonah Berger has written a paper with Jacqueline Rifkin (“How Nonconsumption Can Turn Ordinary Items Into Perceived Treasures”) that indicates why some items become “clutter.”...
Open the windows!
Want to perform better? Joseph Allen, Director, Harvard’s Healthy Buildings program, details in a recent article in The Atlantic (free at the web address below) why ventilation, particularly in workplaces, is important: “My team...
Birdsong makes us happy
Ever wondered what soundtrack to play when you’re stressed? Turn on the birdsong. Ratcliffe confirms the value of nature soundtracks. Via a literature review she determined that “nature is broadly characterized by the sounds...
Keep warm and feel safe
The warmer we are the safer we feel. Hornstein, Fanselow, and Eisenberger link feeling something warm feeling safe: “a physically warm stimulus was less readily associated with threat (compared to soft or neutral stimuli;...
Windowless dorms? Really?
Did you see all the discussions in the news about Charlie Munger’s windowless dorm? We speak elsewhere on The Space Doctors site about the basic human need for natural light (circadian rhythms, stress, mental refreshment,...
Healthy shapes
We had a reader’s question on this too in November 2021. Trying to get someone to eat healthy? Wang, Zhang, and Jiang determined via multiple experiments that “angular shapes are associated with healthy food,...
Greenspace is better for childhood development
New research from Jarvis and colleagues has been published. They looked at how living near greenspace impacted childhood development. It turns out, that it does 🙂 How did they do it? They report that...
Language Issues
When we speak a language we need to choose words from those available—sure every so often in a Dr. Seuss inspired moment of creativity, for example, we can invent a word or a phrase,...
Designing for differences
We all come in slightly different packages. And our world needs to be designed to support the inevitability of those differences. Some differences between people are more obvious and others subtler. It’s clear when...
Invisible Differences
Some differences between people who will visit a space are invisible until they clearly are not so at all—until eyes start to water and noses get red, for example. You love Fluffy your cat...
Senses
Sometimes people to your home have some sort of “difference” that they’d rather not be publicly discussed (although today there are many fewer topics that fit into this category than in the past) but...
Designing for Who You Are and Who They Probably Are too!
One of the things that’s clearest about space design is that everyone feels better when their personality aligns with the place that they find themselves. But who are you? Who are the people who...
Fish Tank Heaven
We have mentioned the restorative, de-stressing, etc., power of fish tanks lots in earlier issues, but now, it seems, they’re officially “in” (see reference to the NY Times article below). Fish tanks are finally...
Do you have a thing for Filing Cabinets too?
I have a sentimental attachment to file cabinets. They store memories and rummaging around in them can actually lead to excellent research findings. When you type search terms into a search index of some...
Greens are in for 2022!
Greens are in and I love greens, wherever they are, for reasons I talk about all the time. Ones that are not very saturated but relatively light lead to just the right moods for...
Thinking Creatively
Trying to encourage creative thinking at your home of office. Consider the latest findings from Thoring and colleagues, people are more likely to think creatively in “Space that provides visible sources. . . ....
Pile on the Biophilic Experiences
Aristizabal and colleagues have found that more simultaneous biophilic experiences are better than fewer: when people in their study “were exposed to three biophilic design interventions (visual, auditory, and a combination (multisensory)) and a...
Biophilic Design enhancing performance, and more.
From the previous post, another study by essentially the same group: Aristizabal and colleagues also report that they collected data in spaces “allowed individuals to perform their typical workday task for 10 weeks. ....
Awe is good for you…
Want more creativity in your life? Then add a bit of awe! Zhang and team found that “on days when participants [in their study] felt more daily awe than they typically do, they reported...
Naming something? Add Nature!
If you want to give the impression that something is of value, then add some “nature” to it. Hahnel-Peeters and colleagues report that “In Study 1, we conducted a content analysis of the naming...
The unspoken signals – the Clothes and the Earrings you wear…
It seems we’ve been communicating nonverbally for a very long time. A University of Arizona press release reports that “The necklace, nametag, earrings or uniform you chose to put on this morning might say...
In conversation with The Space Doctors
Dr. Augustin and Dr. Champion had a range of experiences before they joined forces as The Space Doctors—they weren’t born yesterday even if their faces do have a certain youthful glow in every photograph...
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