Windows onto the World!
When going outside can seem like a burden, looking at it from inside seems like a better and better option. Take a minute now, while fixes are relatively easy and pleasant, to fine tune...
Add some gentle Movement in your Home….
Winter and time spent inside can be both stressful and boring. Some gentle movement in the spaces where you live will change all that. Here, we are talking about curtains that sway slightly and...
Managing the Temperature without touching the Thermostat!
Our brains and bodies work and feel best in spaces where the temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity levels are 40% to 70%. Ideal conditions are not always achievable ones. There are...
The First Language we Speak…. and Design
The first language we speak can influence how we experience spaces and the objects in them for the rest of our lives. Our earliest language influences what we pay attention to (because we need...
Don’t forget Visual Metaphors too….
Verbal metaphors seem to be linked in a fundamental way to how we physically experience the world that surrounds us, how we reason through the information in it. Some examples: The same centre in...
The “Best” Gardens
Margaret Roach (2023, “More Plants, More Life, More Pleasure: What Sets the Best Gardens Apart,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/realestate/gardening-landscaping-ecological.html ) has spent a lot of quality time figuring out what sets the best...
Designing Schools
There are some aspects of great learning spaces that we can’t tie to our early history as a species, at least not well. They include: Effective screening to eliminate audio and visual distractions. Lots...
Quick Recap – Places to Focus
People learning need to be focusing on what they’re doing. Design supports focus when it: Uses colours that are not very saturated and are relatively light—a sage green or smokey blue with lots of...
Optimising Mental Energy Levels via Design
We do mentally easier tasks in spaces that are relatively energising places to be and those that require us to be more thoughtful, that are more challenging, in spaces where the design vibe is...
Spaces to mentally refresh!
When your brain has grown tired learning, remembering, etc., design can encourage a quick mental refresh when: You can see through a nearby window to nature outside, particularly if quietly flowing, “friendly” looking water...
Using Spaces to Remember…
Human minds really are fascinating and the way they work means that using spaces in particular ways can help us remember things. When we’re working or just musing, we offload thoughts to the world...
Creating places to mentally refresh?
When your brain has grown tired learning, remembering, etc., design can encourage a quick mental refresh when: You can see through a nearby window to nature outside, particularly if quietly flowing, “friendly” looking water...
Nature makes us more sociable!
Arbuthnott learned via a literature review that “Nature exposure increases prosocial behavior, decreases antisocial behavior, and increases ratings of social connection and satisfaction. Prosocial and antisocial behavior effects are observed with brief nature exposure,...
Why is gardening good for you?
Lehberger and Sparke’s work confirms that gardening is good for our mental health. They “replicated a study conducted in 2020 in Germany, which focused on comparing garden owners and non-garden owners. Almost exactly one...
Get out there and go for an Open Water Swim!
Overbury, Conroy, and Marks determined that “Open water swimming may lead to improvements in mood and wellbeing, reductions in mental distress symptomatology, and was experienced as a positive, enriching process for many. Blue spaces...
Is Traffic Noise knocking out your Smartness?
Researchers have determined that “as little as 40 decibels of traffic noise – the typical level of background noise in an office environment or kitchen – has a detrimental effect on cognitive performance. Researchers...
More than what’s in your wine glass…
Professor Joy (I am not making this up!) and team from the University of British Columbia assessed “a number of items including the material features of the winery and the sensorial theme, such as...
Nature and Mood
Bardhan and teammates report that they “conducted one of the first longer-term investigations of daily nature exposure and mood with a mobile app as part of the NatureDose™ Student Study (NDSS). The NatureDose™ app...
ASMR and Biophilia
Mahady, Takac, and De Foe report that “Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a nascent phenomenon wherein a pleasant and relaxing tingling sensation occurs in response to audio and visual triggers like whispering and...
Too much tech in hotel rooms, bring on the Biophilia!
There is a natural limit to everything, including the amount of automation in our lives, and as Amy Tara Koch reports in “Encountering the Infuriating, Overwhelming and Unwanted Smart Tech in My Hotel Room”...
Barbie Pink!
With the global PR tsunami pushing people into theatres to see the new Barbie movie, it seems that the colour pink is everywhere. Looking at relatively unsaturated, light shades of pink is definitely relaxing...
We hear silence…
Silence is not simply the absence of sound; we actively hear it. Goh, Phillips, and Firestone found that “silences can ‘substitute’ for sounds in event-based auditory illusions. Seven experiments introduce three ‘silence illusions,’ adapted...
Yummy scents and then bang goes the diet! The lasting smell of temptation!
Chae, Yoon, Baskin and Zhu link smells and food consumed, studying “the effects of indulgent food scents [the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking, for example] on preference for indulgent food items. . . ....
Keeping up with the Jones – Home decor and market forces!
Grant and Handelman determined that “while consumers readily turn to the home décor marketplace for objects that help them reflect their personal identity, lifestyle media have clearly influenced an emergent cultural understanding of the...
Nature vs Malls – places and thinking
Scherz and colleagues found that people have different sorts of thoughts about other people and about places in different sorts of public spaces. The researchers determined that “Self-related thoughts were less likely in a...
Using Wood in Offices
Ojala and colleagues share that they gathered data “in two rooms: a room with wooden elements and a control room without wood. The participants first performed cognitive tasks by the computer to imitate typical...
Add trees and sky for Creativity
Sharam, Mayer, and Baumann determined that a “nature-view condition [ability to see trees and blue sky] had a significant positive effect on creative fluency (i.e. quantity of output) but not on the quality of...
Trees for Brains
Kuhn and colleagues report that “Previous research has suggested an association between living environment during the first 15 years of life and brain structure. More precisely, urbanicity during upbringing has been shown to be...
Designing for Health and Happiness
Design can definitely make you feel happy, what’s technically known in the psych biz as improving your mental health. Being happier can be good for your physical health, it can make your immune system...
Boosting Physical Health, Via Place Design
The most obvious ways that design can improve physical health is by not actively harming users—off gassing fatal to inhale chemicals, being appropriate ergonomically, etc. Once all of the active threats are eliminated from...
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