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...
The Most Common and Important Errors Design Professionals Seem to Make
None of us are perfect, even people who design for a living. Unfortunately, design professionals regularly do the following things, which are oh so very un-good for the people using what they’ve designed: Signalling...
Garden Rooms
Margaret Roach reports on “garden rooms” (“The Art of Making Garden Rooms,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/realestate/the-art-of-making-garden-rooms.html) in The New York Times. She focuses on the development of the Sakonnet Garden, “a private landscape in coastal Rhode Island”...
Ah the Trees of Paris…
Trees matter, a lot. Looking at them helps us revitalise our tired brains and they help keep temperatures, and stress levels in check just for starters. Writing about trees in Paris, Vivian Song (“Admiring...
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...
Headphones and Privacy
Mueller and colleagues share that “Office workers lately use active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones to improve the acoustic situation by blocking unwanted sound. . . . Two studies were conducted to examine if ANC headphones...
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...
Reduce stress – exercise outdoors!
Das and Gailey studied the implications of exercising in green spaces during the pandemic. They report that “Previous cross-sectional literature reports protective effects of outdoor exposure on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We...
Music and Pain
Howlin, Stapleton, and Rooney collected information from adults experiencing acute pain. They share that “Music is increasingly being recognised as an adjuvant [auxiliary] treatment for pain management. Music can help to decrease the experience...
Views outside help prevent us from getting lost…
New research confirms that being able to see outside as we travel through a building helps us keep from getting lost. Qi, Lu, and Chen report that “General hospitals in China always present significant...
Colour and Taste – Sweet and Salty
Wang and Chang studied colours used on popcorn packaging and report that “Four experimental package design colours (red, blue, yellow, and white) and three popcorn tastes (sweet, salty, and tasteless) were used to evaluate...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 . ....
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