Neighbourhood Perceptions, Evaluations and Wellbeing
Ayalon determined that “the importance of subjective mediators, rather than objective ones in explaining the association between perceived neighborhood characteristics and wellbeing.” Wellbeing was higher when perceived neighborhood disorder was lower and neighborhood cohesion...
Benefits of Being in a City
Movies and television shows and books and magazine articles (every sort of media, it seems) makes city living seem oh so exciting and in many ways quite irresistible. Country living is presented as fine,...
Zonings
Zones, whether they’re created by walls or via darker and lighter (more brightly lit) spaces drive our activities in powerful and useful ways. It is important to acknowledge, right off the bat, that we...
Re-nesting – The Long Read
Even if as you read this it isn’t officially autumn yet, you know that summer is past and we are beginning to settle into another winter slog toward Spring and a return to indoor-outdoor...
Hygge please
The Scandinavians have been doing it for aeons – they hygge (different languages use different terms but “hygge” is the one that English speakers are most familiar with). Hygge makes a space cosy and...
The Science of Furniture
Scientists have carefully probed how furniture design influences how people think and behave: An article earlier in this issue discusses patterns for upholstery, etc., here. Wood grain is relaxing for us to view and...
Designed Pleasure
Patrick Jordan, in a short but incredibly important book (Designing Pleasurable Products – An Introduction to the New Human Factors, 2000, Taylor and Francis), lays out how design can make our lives better. His...
Way, Way too Hot…
Stress of any sort is bad for our physical and mental health. That’s why The Space Doctors often cover topics such as aligning environments with the task at hand and personality and culture, for...
How objective are we? (or at least when it comes to music…!)
Schaap and colleagues’ work confirms that not all judgments are as objective as we might think. The researchers report that they “empirically assess[ed] how the evaluation of music fragments – electronic dance music (EDM)...
The Difference Face-to-Face Meetings have on us
Gellisch and teammates report that “To examine the implications of the transition from face-to-face to online learning from a psychobiological perspective, this study investigated potential differences in physiological stress parameters of students engaged in...
Co-Working Space and Knowledge Spillovers
Roche and colleagues report that they “examine[d] the influence of physical proximity on between-firm knowledge spillovers at one of the largest technology co-working hubs in the United States. Relying on the random assignment of...
Building in familiarity
Humans usually like to be in places that seem familiar to them—but familiar does not mean exactly the same as spaces previously encountered, just consistent with those other places in important ways, areas where...
What is Home-y?
Many a quest is underway to create a place where someone or other, or some group or other, will feel at home. Workplaces, restaurants, stores, healthcare facilities . . . you name it, even actual...
What makes a happy home?
In 2019 the Happiness Research Institute released The GoodHome Report 2019: What Makes a Happy Home? and their findings echo those shared above: “after surveying over 13,000 people and interviewing nearly 80 people in 10 European...
Designing for Bonding
Design can influence the bonds we form with other people, just as it can affect how attached we feel to a space. We’ll form more positive and lasting attachments to other people in certain...
Moving beyond Bonding to Trusting
Design can make it more likely that people trust each other in few very concrete ways: Design that eradicates bad moods will lay a strong foundation on which trust in others can build. Designing...
Balcony Benefits…
Peters and Masoudinejad studied balconies’ roles in people’s lives. Their work indicates that balconies can be handy because they can be converted from one use to another, which is especially useful when, for whatever...
Nature and Nurture?
Koivisto and Grassini conclude “that humans may have an inherited hard-wired tendency to respond with positive affects [moods] to nature, whereas the affective responses to urban scenes are more influenced by individual factors. ....
Do we zoom creativity out of us?
Brucks and Levav investigated creativity during Zoom-type sessions. They found via a lab study (involving participants worldwide) and a field study that “videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. By contrast, when it comes...
Circadian Rhythms and Weight Gain….
There’s a new reason to install circadian lighting: weight management. Teruel and colleagues determined that “Disruption of the circadian clocks that keep the body and its cells entrained to the 24-hour day-night cycle plays...
Colours and Concert-Halls
Chen and Cabrera studied experiences in concert halls; select surfaces were different colours for the various conditions tested. Study participants rated “loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes...
Late Night Sets
Wonder how talk shows seem to have all ended up with the same sets? Read Jacqui Palumbo’s article in CNN style, “How the Late Night Talk Show Set Became an American Icon” (at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/late-night-set-design-history/index.html). ...
Avoid that coffee before you shop?
Biswas and team report that “Consumers often shop online and in physical stores immediately after or while consuming caffeine. This is further facilitated by the increasing prevalence of coffee shops and also with some...
Flying high!
It may seem that planes, trains, automobiles, buses, and other vehicles that move you from place to place (and some that you’ve only seen on a screen somewhere, such as spacecraft), are designed entirely...
Plants, Biophilic Design and Technology…
Plants and Biophilic Design You’re very apt to see potted plants, real or artificial, in any transit hub because research has shown that when plants are present in public spaces, people are friendlier, which...
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...
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...
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 . ....
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...
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