Design and Apparent Production Costs
Min, Liu, and Anderson found that “Brands and retailers often offer different aesthetic versions of the same base product that vary from visually simple to visually complex. . . . Consumers associate simple (vs....
Metaverse nature
Lv focuses on the “recent proliferation of ‘metaverse’ virtual worlds, where tech companies are investing billions to create hyper-realistic digital environments, including simulated natural landscapes. . . . these virtual ecosystems risk perpetuating a...
Colours of Energy Levels
People are people and brains are brains wherever they are, so it’s no surprise that colours influence us in predictable ways no matter where we find ourselves. Colour has 3 dimensions, hue, saturation, and...
Associations of hues
Over time, groups of people come to link specific concepts/ideas to certain colours. Sometimes these colour-idea bonds seem to happen almost by decree, for example, when a political party decides to adopt a colour...
Colours for mingling!
Making mingling with others a positive experience requires a lot more than just throwing people into a room together, as anyone who’s ever done just that and watched their party fizzle can confirm. When...
Using Colours Together
In life, we’re almost never in a place with only one surface colour (and if we are, particularly if that colour is white, we’re apt to be so stressed that we’re having a very,...
Setting the Thermometer
With Winter and Summer comes more time indoors in much of the developed world—and depending on whether you’re in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, Winter/Summer is almost upon us. Spring and Autumn are regularly...
Dealing With the Stress of “Regular Life”
Whoever we are, sometimes our lives become more stressful. Whether it’s because we’re returning to our usual lives after a relaxed summer away from our usual challenges or because the weather is getting better...
Soundtracking your life!
Most of us have ears that work OK most of the time—there’s the occasional ear infection or very bad cold, but that is a passing thing, at least generally. So what’s best to hear...
Choosing the Right Plant
Plants inside can be great—when they’re around our minds and our bodies work well—our cognitive performance and creativity go up, we get along better with other people, our stress levels fall—the list goes on...
How heat affects our brain….
We talk regularly about the best temperatures for our minds (about 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on your clothes, what you’re doing, etc.) , with 40 to 70% humidity, as reviewed here), but...
What does your topiary say about you?! Creating spaces for “who you are”….
Humans feel great when they’re in a place that they think conveys who they are and what’s important to them—and also when they’re in spaces that seem to clearly tell other people’s stories—something we’ve...
Design nerds take note!
Recently,we’ve gotten access via photographs to two interesting spaces: the chambers of the US Supreme Court (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/27/us/supreme-court-chamber-photos.html) and the room that British royals are in just before they step onto the famous balcony, the...
Using technical or famiiliar names impacts our perception of something….
Tok and colleagues determined that “using the scientific name of a major ingredient enhances product evaluations when the product is perceived as utilitarian, whereas using the common name for that ingredient has a positive...
More benefits of Biophilic Design
Szewranski, Mrowczynska, and van Hoof’s work verifies the value of biophilic design. They share that “the concept of biophilia has made its way into the built environment, for instance, through the introduction of natural...
Scenes seen and Tastes Tasted!
Wu, Li, and Spence confirm that what people are looking at and what they taste are related: “Compared to the urban condition, perceived aroma, freshness, fruitiness and pleasantness [of samples of orange juice] were...
Being good to the earth and happiness
Prinzing’s work indicates that “green” behaviours and positive moods are related. He describes a study he recently completed: “A 10-day experience-sampling study (7,161 observations from 181 adults in 14 countries, primarily the United States)...
Temperature and Thinking! The hotter it is….
Keivabu and Widmann found that “hot [out of comfort range] days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. . . . Our data consists of all parliamentary speeches in Washington D.C. (United States,...
Unseen Forces – Part 1 – Sound
‘Tis the season for invisible forces. With Midsummer’s eve and good weather sitings of all sorts of gnomes and fairies, the unseen can be top of mind. In this issue we won’t talk about...
Unseen Forces – Part 2 – Scents
Sure, we can often see the source of a scent a flower, a piece of fruit, etc., but smells themselves don’t have any forms we can see with the naked eye. We are particularly...
Unseen Forces – Part 3 – Tastes
Tastes are much more physically present than sounds or smells, something does indeed rest on your tongue and produce a particular sensation, but tasting is what is known as a “chemical” sense, like smelling....
Work in Water
It’s wild swimming season, so lots of us are spending tons of time in water about now—but working water into our lives year-round is a very, very good idea. • Humans have a special...
Singing in the Rain…. Negative ions are good for us!
There’s more and more research indicating that negative ions in the air influence what happens inside our heads. Derek Brockway (2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51157ep524o) in “How Rain Can Make You Happier and Healthier,” reports, for example,...
Why do we need Music?
Music seems to be, literally, everywhere we go, from down into the Tube to the park to Carnegie Hall. In a recent article in The New York Times (2024, “Why Do People Make Music?...
Workplace location, how it affects productivity and creativity
Arata and Kawakubo found that “productivity in simple tasks increased with the frequency of working from home. . . . improving the residential environment, including temperature and humidity control, is critical to enhance productivity...
Why Garden when you’re older?
A research team lead by Corley share that “Gardening in later life was associated with greater gain in cognitive change from age 11 to 79. . . . Higher gardening frequency was associated with...
Foraging, and relative creativity…
Malaie and team link different sorts of foraging behaviour to creativity: “According to accounts of neural reuse and embodied cognition, higher-level cognitive abilities recycle evolutionarily ancient mechanisms for perception and action. . . ....
A shout out for Nature!
Amy Thomas, in “Why ‘Biophilia’ Needs to be Part of Your Next Holiday” (2024, BBC Online,https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240502-why-biophilia-needs-to-be-part-of-your-next-holiday) encourages people to improve their mental health by spending time outside—something that we talk about a lot here...
We eat healthier when we see nature… another “Biophilic” effect!
Via 5 experiments Langlois and Chandon learned that “individuals exposed to the natural environment choose healthier foods when compared to those exposed to urban environments or a control condition. Nature’s effects are observed for...
Nature connection and schooling… Biophilic Design and improved cognitive performance!
You and colleagues report, after a virtual reality-based study, that “the addition of biophilic elements in the Metaverse could benefit [young adult] students’ health due to significantly decreased perceived stress levels and increased connections...
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