Welcome to the Research Design Connections blog, started in 2007. Recent blog entries are available here. Earlier blog entries (one for every working day since the beginning of May, 2007) are available to subscribers.
This is a forum to discuss recent research of interest to designers. To comment on a blog entry, please send an e-mail message to sallyaugustin@researchdesignconnections.com.
Designers are often interested in learning how an existing space is used so new environments can be programmed appropriately – either to support current activities or make others more likely. Hauptmann, Yu, and Yang at Carnegie Mellon “have developed a[n] [improved] method for tracking the locations of multiple individuals in complex, indoor settings using a network of video cameras . . . . The method was able to automatically follow the movements of . . . [people] even though individuals sometimes slipped out of view of the cameras. . . . [individuals were tracked using] multiple cues from the video feed: apparel color, person detection, trajectory and, perhaps most significantly, facial recognition.” This new tool has been tested in a real world setting “with camera views compromised by long hallways, doorways, people mingling in the hallways, variations in lighting and too few cameras to provide comprehensive, overlapping views.” The system developed by the researchers “improved on two of the leading algorithms in multi-camera, multi-object tracking. It located individuals within one meter of their actual position 88 percent of the time, compared with 35 percent and 56 percent for the other algorithms.” When this video-based research methodology becomes generally available, design researchers can use it to develop rich, useful data sets.
“Carnegie Mellon Method Uses Network of Cameras to Track People in Complex Indoor Settings.” 2013. Press release, Carnegie Mellon University, http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/june/june11_maraudersmap.html
Design researchers often find that people from whom data is collected before spaces are programmed or objects designed seem very certain of the information they are sharing with researchers. Those researchers will be interested to learn that “Overprecision—an excessive confidence that one knows the truth—is . . . the most durable . . . form of overconfidence . . . We measured the precision in judgment implied by people’s tendency to adjust their point estimates of an uncertain quantity in response to the costs of overestimating or underestimating the correct answer. The results revealed robust overprecision. People adjusted their estimates less than they should have given their actual knowledge, and this effect was driven by their subjective confidence.” Thus, the research indicates that when people are more confident in the information they have provided about an uncertain quantity of something, they make smaller adjustments to their estimation than seem justified if they’re presented with new data about the situation.
Albert Mannes and Don Moore. “A Behavioral Demonstration of Overconfidence in Judgment.” Psychological Science, in press.
Sherwin and her team investigated the experience of being in primary care physicians’ waiting rooms (for more info on waiting room design see https://researchdesignconnections.com/pub/heathcare-focus-waiting-room-d...). They learned: “The waiting room has come to represent a containment space of inevitable frustration for patients and physicians alike. But what if the waiting room were good for more than just waiting? . . . . The existing evidence concludes that the waiting room experience is an important driver of patient satisfaction. Surveys of primary care offices show that how patients feel about their physician encounters and the quality of their health care is directly related to the impression of their time in the waiting room . . . by being occupied during the wait, this satisfaction is markedly increased, even if the length of waiting is unaltered . . . . The waiting room is an ideal opportunity to provide patients with education regarding their health. Most patients desire information about their health but are unsure of the best source for the required education . . . . Moreover, waiting room education has been linked to increased patient satisfaction.” Information can be provided via posters, pamphlets, videos, for example, and the use of these tools has practical repercussions for the design of healthcare waiting rooms.
Heather Sherwin, Megan McKeown, Michael Evans, and Onil Bhattacharyya. 2013. “The Waiting Room ‘Wait’: From Annoyance to Opportunity.” Canadian Family Physician, vol. 59, no. 5, pp. 479-481.
New evidence links language and altitude. Since language has been linked to interactions with designed objects, Everett’s research is of interest to designers (for more info on the design-language link, see https://researchdesignconnections.com/pub/through-language-glass-why-wor...). He found a “direct influence of a geographic factor [altitude] on the basic sound inventories of human languages.”
Caleb Everett. 2013. “Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The Case of Ejectives.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 6, http://www.plosone.org.
Latham and Clarke investigated the relationship between neighborhood design and the recovery of older people from mobility related injuries. As might be expected, they learned “Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; 1996–2008) . . . . [that] Even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and numerous health risk factors [which means they were eliminated as potential explanations for patterns in the data], perceived neighborhood safety was a robust predictor of mobility limitation recovery.”
Kenzie Latham and Philippa Clarke. 2013. “The Role of Neighborhood Safety in Recovery from Mobility Limitations: Findings from a National Sample of Older Americans (1996-2008).” Research on Aging, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 481-502.
Need more evidence that workplace windows enhance mental and physical well-being? If you do, you’ll be interested in a study spearheaded by Ivy Cheung, a neuroscience doctoral student at Northwestern University. Her team found that people “who had windows in the workplace slept an average of 47 more minutes per night compared to workers in offices without daylight exposure. They also . . . were more physically active, and reported better sleep quality and efficiency . . . . The workers without windows in the workplace had worse quality of life measures related to vitality and physical problems, and poorer scores on measures of overall sleep quality, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, and daytime dysfunction.” For more information on windows, daylight and office design see, for example, https://researchdesignconnections.com/pub/what-makes-home-office-good-wo....
Ashik Siddique. 2013. “Sleep Quality Improves with Daylight Exposure in the Workplace.” Medical Daily, http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/16158/20130603/sleep-sleep-disorder....
Environmental psychologists established long ago that walking in green spaces is psychologically restorative. Research in the UK with portable EEG machines has quantified that benefit: “a body of restorative literature focuses on the potential benefits to emotional recovery from stress offered by green space and 'soft fascination'’ . . . . This study investigates the use of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) as a method to record and analyse the emotional experience of a group of walkers in three types of urban environment including a green space setting . . . . participants took part in a 25 min walk through three different areas of Edinburgh. The areas . . . were . . . [an] urban shopping street . . . [a] path through green space and . . . [a] street in a busy commercial district . . . .Systematic differences in EEG recordings were found between three urban areas in line with restoration theory.”
P. Aspinall, P. Mavros, R. Coyne, and J. Roe. “The Urban Brain: Analysing Outdoor Physical Activity with Mobile EEG.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, in press.
Researchers at Northwestern have determined that it can be better to provide non-cash bonuses than monetary ones; which has implications for performance based enhancements to individual and group workspaces. Ma and Roese learned that “Less countable rewards can be more satisfying . . . presenting rewards or bonuses in less quantifiable terms decreases the likelihood that recipients will compare rewards, which in turn increases their satisfaction.”
John Pavlus. 2013. “Would You Like Your Bonus in Cash or Cake.” KelloggInsight, http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu.
Per capita productivity increases as cities grow. Why? A research team has shown that when the populations of cities grow, people living there have more opportunities to interact face-to-face as travel infrastructure improves and this enhances performance. Previous research by this team has shown that increases in face-to-face communication among employees lift productivity.
Wei Pan, Gourab Ghoshal, Coco Krumme, Manuel Cebrian and Alex Penland. “Urban Characteristics Attributable to Density-Driven Tie Formation.” Nature Communications, vol. 4, http://www.nature.com.
