How sleep or lack of, affects our perception of people.
Investigators lead by van Egmond report (in a study published in Nature and Science of Sleep) that “young adults when sleep-deprived evaluate angry faces as less trustworthy and healthy-looking. Furthermore, neutral and fearful faces...
The larger the better?
Huang, Wang, and Chan studied links between image sizes on packages and evaluations of the contents of those packages; their findings can probably be applicable more broadly: “larger (vs. smaller) food images on food...
How do we decide?
If you are a company owner, how should your customer service look? Beeler and colleagues focus on judgments of digital assistant technologies, but what they learned can likely be extrapolated to other contexts: “ability...
Mindfulness Better Unaided
Macaulay and teammates report that “Before and after a 20-minute outdoor experience, participants . . . completed surveys. . . . Participants were randomly allocated to one of four engagement intervention groups: mindful engagement,...
Place matters, The Places you go….
Whether it’s at work, at school, in a hospital, or even in a shop, we find ourselves in environments that we haven’t designed ourselves. In the paragraphs that follow, we’ll explore why and how...
Being in control
You’ve probably noticed that sometimes designers and managers give you choices at work—where to sit, whether window blinds are open or closed, the height of your desk—and there’s a research-based reason for that. When...
Healing Spaces
Healing spaces have probably been researched more extensively than any other sort of place (largely because it’s so easy to quantify the results of design actions taken there; after something changes more or less...
Feel less Frazzled
Even in our world’s best of times, life isn’t always the best-est and our planet’s current predicaments seem to move all of our societies’ wellbeing scores from middle of the road, neither terrible nor...
How to use Sound?
A few of us actively soundscape the worlds in which we live, but way too many of us just let sound happen to us, which is an opportunity missed. To calm yourself via your...
What we See and Touch
It probably won’t surprise you at all to know that touching soft things, such like the flannels that baby pyjamas are made of, is relaxing. If you want to banish the stress demons, make...
How to REALLY relax in a Space?
To really relax in a space, people need to feel in control of it, that no one can intrude visually or acoustically without their permission—in other words, no one can see or hear them...
How to Travel Stress-Free?
Many of us now are starting to travel again (hurray!) outside our own car—but travel is stressful—we’re packed into airplanes, trains, and buses as close as sardines (sometimes it seems closer) and don’t have...
Theatre for conversation
There are ways that design can make it more likely that you’ll have a constructive, mutually-beneficial conversation with someone else—whether you’re trying to negotiate world peace or help your teenager understand that they do...
More Walkable, Lower Healthcare Costs
New research confirms that walkability is good for us. Wali and colleagues examined “high resolution data for 476 participants in the Rails and Health study on health care costs, mode specific MVPA[ moderate-to-vigorous physical...
Things to note as you travel
Some things to note as you begin to travel far from home again: Climate varies dramatically based on distance from the equator and leads people to want to use spaces in different ways.For example,...
Where we grew up affects whether we get lost or not…
Ever wondered why some people you know always seem lost? Coutrot and colleagues report that “how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here we used a...
How Music shapes our Accuracy
Santangelo and associates report that “music is frequently played while we are engaged in other activities that rely on decision-making (e.g., driving). . . . We analyzed response times and accuracy from more than...
It makes sense, so I see it better!
Rossel and teammates report that “Our study investigated the influence of expectations based on prior experience and contextual information on the perceived sharpness of objects and scenes… We manipulated the availability of relevant information...
Designing for All and Everyone
DeafSpace was developed at Gallaudet University years ago to spatially support people who are hard-of-hearing. As the article at the link below indicates, it is now being used to develop a major public space....
Windowless Dorms
We wrote before about the windowless dorm being built for students, and the negative impact it could have on them. Recent articles which report on the experiences of living in a windowless dormitory room...
Evolution and Biophilic Design
Humans are a young species and still working with the same sorts of mental apparatus and ways of processing incoming information from our physical world that we had in our first few generations as...
Light, Sound and Movement
Flooding a space with natural light (minimizing glare with blinds as needed during certain times of the day, as needed) is biophilic design at its finest; it elevates our mood as well as our...
The Science of Plazas, for Patios
What have neuroscientists learned about plaza design that you can apply in your patio: Design for what you actually want to happen on that patio.If you enjoy barbequing, not compromise on space for the...
Having a Positive, Productive Conversation
There are ways that design can make it more likely that you’ll have a constructive, mutually-beneficial conversation with someone else—whether you’re trying to negotiate world peace or help your teenager understand that they do...
ADHD at work
Abrams studied people with ADHD during the pandemic and reports that “Working from home has also presented challenges for adults with ADHD, including dealing with the loss of boundaries—such as a dedicated workspace or...
Places for Dogs, Cats, and Fish
Our pets, at the very least, seem like our very good friends, and we can make sure that they enjoy living in our homes as much as we enjoy having them share it with...
Merging Households
As the weather gets warmer, people move, and often people who are romantically linked decide to take the plunge and move in together. People who with tight enough bonds to decide to move in...
Gender and place experience
Men and women can experience spaces in slightly different ways from time to time: Women have a better sense of touch than men, in technical terms, they are more “tactically sensitive” than men. This...
Personality and musical taste
Greenberg and teammates report that they “built on theory and research in personality, cultural, and music psychology to map the terrain of preferences for Western music using data from 356,649 people across six continents....
Gender preferences for hotel robots…
Turns out the sex of a robot makes a difference! While we might look at stereotyping issues, this research points out that preference is still biased to the female in this service industry. Read...
English