Getting your Home ready for the Fall
Autumn can be the most depressing season. Sure, the leaves all turn pretty colours and the nip in the air means it’s OK to have a nip or two of hot spiced punch (with...
Let there be Light
As we move toward the solstice and beyond, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll have fewer hours of day light every day and that means less natural light in your home. This...
Fall and Food
One of the first questions that generally gets asked about design and eating is if colours on walls, plates, etc., can influence how much we eat. The answer: surface colours do indeed influence our...
Temperature Wars
This is the time of year when there are often quite lively, shall we say, debates over where to set the thermostat in your home or office. Please consider this article a public service,...
Beware of Grumpy Design!
Your mood has an effect on your impressions of the world around you, and your drive to re-design them. When we’re in a good mood, because we just got a raise or were given...
Do masks make us distance less?
Lee and Chen found that face masks may influence how far we choose to be from other people. The researchers report that via data collected through an online survey they found that “A smaller...
Blind people and colour perception
Kim and colleagues determined that “congenitally blind and sighted individuals share in-depth understanding of object colour. Blind and sighted people share similar intuitions about which objects will have consistent colours, make similar predictions for...
How to help Someone get their Appetite back?
Trying to increase the likelihood that someone will eat something? Consider Zhou, Chen, and Li’s findings: “Despite being a fundamental food feature, the effect of food shapes has been underexplored. This study demonstrates that...
Don’t be fooled into not Recycling…
Van Doorn and Kurz found that “when presented with [recycling] options people may come to psychologically frame their waste creation as a contribution to the collective good that makes them feel good about themselves....
Pink and Green and how we perceive the taste
De Sousa and colleagues report that “participants expected the coffee associated with the pink label to taste sweeter than the green labelled coffee, whereas the coffee associated with the green label was expected to...
Live in a Green Area, if you can
Atiken found that “People who live in green neighbourhoods are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease. . . . The researchers analysed the odds of developing any new cardiovascular disease, and the number of...
Symmetrically balanced
Corradi and colleagues report that “people differ remarkably in the extent to which visual features influence their liking, highlighting the crucial role of individual variation when modelling aesthetic preferences. . . . overall, participants...
An excuse to build a study…?
Arkesteijn and teammates (using data collected from April to December 2020 from more than 36,000 Dutch people working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic) determined that “respondents who worked in a [dedicated] work room...
Learning Spaces – 1
Cognitive learning is hard, hard brain work, whether you’re 8 or 80. Spaces where you plan to learn new material, whether they’re a home schoolroom, a home office, or a classroom outside a home...
Learning Spaces – 3
There are a range of educational philosophies and styles that teachers may favour and some more rigorously encourage movement during lessons than others. Movement requires a space to move in, and that can influence...
Memory!
Want to remember what you’ve learned? The research is very, very clear. When we return to the same place where we originally learned something, or even had a particular idea/inspiration, we’re more likely to...
Mentally Exhausted? Time for a Field Trip!
You know the feeling. After you’ve been concentrating on something challenging for a while, you become mentally exhausted (and grumpy, but you don’t want to talk about that, probably). In other articles, for instance...
Planning a Party? – The Long Read
The PARTY CHECKLIST! It’s probably been a while since you’ve been able to plan any sort of gathering that includes more than you and your cat. Neuroscientists (who would no doubt by this time...
Dorm Rooms / Shared Kids Bedrooms
In a shared bedroom the main difference would be to make sure that each child has some space to put out/display a couple of things that remind them about what they value about themselves...
In the Car
You have some ability to customize the interior of your car to help you deal with situations you encounter as you drive. If you want to relax, the traffic has gotten your blood pressure...
Be Careful with the De-Cluttering!
At this point, many of us have been locked in our homes for so long that we’ve had a chance to clutter and are now thinking that the best option for our weekend amusement...
Space-By-Time
We’ve all had the experience of being in a café in the morning and being able to plough right through a backlog of work and returning at night to the same spot and having...
How to Make that Temporary Desk your Own!
Co-working? If you find yourself in a temporary desk at a co-working site you can take steps to personalize your space. You can wear a trace of scent to create a subtle olfactory bubble...
Add Vertical Nature
You may have seen Vertical Gardens, beautiful, stunning nature landscapes of greenery, plants, flowers, mini trees and more. There is increasing evidence that these have many positive effects on us, not just reducing VOCs....
Play music when doing something simple!
Have you ever wondered how music affects what you’re doing? Kiss and Linnell shared some research on two sets of people who either sat in silence or listened to some music while they are...
Depression and Vision
So when they speak about seeing the world through Rose-coloured glasses, it seems the opposite is true if you’re feeling blue. Researchers have verified that being depressed influences how people see the world, literally;...
Managing Circadian Rhythms
More research on how lighting affects us. Also read on to learn how we are lighting our homes and spaces now we have access to electric light in a way that is counter-intuitive to...
Sight-Sound Links
Did you know that our environment affects how we read and process information. This is a handy bit of information for advertisers, designers, or anyone trying to enhance their messaging to their readers. So,...
Stressed? Walk on a Carpet…
Who would have thought that a little walk on a carpet can help reduce your stress level. Hoki, Sato, and Kasai’s research “focused on the effects of indoor flooring in the residential environment on stress,...
Lighting for Sleep
Figueiro and colleagues set out to learn how light experienced during the day influences sleep. Via an online survey they evaluated how “potential changes in daytime light exposures resulting from teleworking or self-isolating at...
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