Personality, Life Satisfaction, and Locations of Homes (12-15-16)
Jokela and colleagues probed links between the location of homes, personality, and life satisfaction. They learned that “Higher openness to experience was more positively associated with life satisfaction in postal districts [in London] characterized by higher average openness to experience, population density, and ethnic diversity. . . . These findings suggest that people’s life satisfaction depends, in part, on the interaction between individual personality and particular features of the places they live.” Also, people who were more agreeable had higher life satisfaction when they lived in areas with low crime, plenty of green space and lots of family-occupied homes.
Markus Jokela, Wiebke Bleidorn, Michael Lamb, Samuel Gosling, and Peter Rentfrow. 2015. “Geographically Varying Associations Between Personality and Life Satisfaction in the London Metropolitan Area.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 3, pp. 725-730.
Links Between Design and Civic Life (12-14-16)
The Center for Active Design (CfAD) probed links between design and civic life; what they’ve learned is available without charge at the website noted below. Data collected via the Knight Foundation’s Soul of the Community survey (using phone interviews in English and Spanish) in 26 US communities and analyzed by the CfAD indicates that “Compared to people with little access to outdoor recreation space in their community, people who report an abundance of outdoor recreation space are 28% more likely to think their local leaders represent their interests. They are also 27% more likely to view local police positively.” In addition, “Compared to people with little access to outdoor recreation space in their community, people who report an abundance of outdoor recreation space are 10% more likely to report attending a local event and 14% more likely to report high levels of neighborhood interpersonal care and concern.” And, “People who live in a place they think is beautiful are 9% more likely to interact with their neighbors regularly, and are 7% more likely to belong to multiple civic or social groups, relative to those that live in a place they don’t think is beautiful.”
Center for Active Design. 2016. “Assembly: Shaping Space for Civic Life, Research Brief I.” Available at: https://centerforactivedesign.org/assemblyresearchbriefone
Working Underground (12-13-16)
Lee and colleagues report that, at this time, it is unlikely that people will respond positively to working underground. Their work is timely because “With growing population in urban areas, the problem of lacking space is becoming more prominent. . . . the development of underground space has increasingly gained attention as a viable solution.” The researchers’ review of available literature determined that “the overall impression of underground environment is generally negative. This may be the outcome of features of underground environment that are naturally feared and avoided by people . . . such as entrapment and darkness, or from the lack of real physical experiences with underground spaces.” More specifics, as an example: “Underground environment is a confined type of space, of which people have (or believe to have) less control over. If any incident, such as fire or explosion, takes place, it would be much more difficult to escape as there is no direct access to the outdoor environment. . . . Lack of perceived control from underground space can result in a variety of symptoms ranging from formation of negative perception to claustrophobia.”
Eun Lee, George Christopoulos, Ming Lu, Min Heo, and Chee-Kiong Soh. “Social Aspects of Working In Underground Spaces.” Tunneling and Underground Space Technology, in press.
Hands Free Still Distracting (12-12-16)
Haque’s research determined that people are just as distracted when driving and talking on the phone hands free as they are when driving and holding their phone as they talk. So, even though headsets, etc., have become more prevalent among people traveling/walking and talking on their phones, it is still important to create spaces where people on the phone can be safe even though they’re not paying much attention to the world around themselves (for example, ones where changes of level/stairs are eliminated whenever possible). Haque determined that “’The reaction time of drivers participating in either a hand-held or hands-free conversation was more than 40 per cent longer than those not using a phone’. . . . Dr Haque said it was the cognitive load required to hold a conversation that was the distraction, not whether or not the driver was holding a phone. . . . ‘In other words the human brain compensates for receiving increased information from a mobile phone conversation by not sending some visual information to the working memory, leading to a tendency to ‘look at’ but not ‘see’ objects by distracted drivers. The distraction of a mobile phone conversation is not the same as an in-car conversation with a passenger because the non-driver can alter their dialogue based on the driving environment, for example stop talking when approaching a complex driving situation.’”
“Hands-Free Just as Distracting as Handheld Mobile Phone Use Behind the Wheel.” 2016. Press release, Queensland University of Technology, https://www.qut.edu.au/about/news/news?news-id=112640e.
Surface Colors and Perceived Weight (12-09-16)
Research by Sunaga, Park, and Spence confirms that, all else being equal, things that are painted lighter colors are perceived to weigh less than items painted darker colors. The team described their study “The present study examines how the lightness of packaging colors, and the location of products on a display shelf interact to affect consumers’ purchase decision‐making via perceived visual heaviness. As predicted, a display with light (dark) colored products positioned in the upper (lower) shelf positions increases shoppers’ perceptual fluency and facilitates their visual search, thus leading to the suggestion that ‘light’ (heavy) locations are most appropriate for light (dark) colored products. . . . .This research also demonstrates that when consumers consider the lightness (in terms of their weight) of the products, they are more likely to choose light (vs. dark) colored products located in the upper shelf positions. . . . consumers’ purchase decision‐making may be promoted by in‐store environments designed to be congruent with their sensory correspondences.” This research also indicates, for example, that people will be more comfortable when darker colored objects and surfaces are closer to the floor/ground than lighter colored ones.
Tsutomu Sunaga, Jaewoo Park, and Charles Spence. 2016. “Effects of Lightness-Location Congruency on Consumers’ Purchase Decision-Making.” Psychology and Marketing, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 934-950.
Home Values, Bikeability and Public Transit (12-08-16)
Li and Joh have identified a positive relationship between home values, the bikeability of neighborhoods, and the presence of viable public transit: home values increase with bikeability and feasible transit options. As Li and Joh report, “Planners and policy makers are increasingly promoting biking and public transit as viable means of transportation. The integration of bicycling and transit has been acknowledged as a strategy to increase the mode share of bicycling and the efficiency of public transit by solving the first- and last-mile problem. . . .This study [assessed] the property value impact of neighbourhood bikeability, transit accessibility, and their synergistic effect by analysing the single-family and condominium property sale transactions during 2010–2012 in Austin, Texas, USA. . . . to quantify neighbourhood bikeability and transit accessibility, we use Bike Score and Transit Score as publicly available indices. . . . The results from this research show that jointly enhancing bikeability and transit accessibility can generate positive synergistic effects on property values.”
Wei Li and Kenneth Joh. “Exploring the Synergistic Economic Benefit of Enhancing Neighbourhood Bikeability and Public Transit Accessibility Based on Real Estate Sale Transactions.” Urban Studies, in press.
Keeping Retail Employees Visible (12-07-16)
Soderlund has identified good reasons for making sure retail employees are visible to shoppers. He reports that “Existing research suggests that humans are hardwired to be sensitive to the presence of other humans, and that the mere presence of someone is likely to affect human behavior. . . . This study examined empirically if the mere presence of an employee in a physical environment has an impact on customer affect (in terms of pleasure) and customer satisfaction. Two . . . experiments, in two different settings, showed that the absence of an employee produced lower levels of pleasure and lower levels of customer satisfaction than the mere presence of an employee. . . . In addition, a field study with mystery shoppers confirmed that the employee absent condition produced lower levels of satisfaction than conditions in which employees were visible.
Magnus Soderlund. 2016. “Employee Mere Presence and Its Impact on Customer Satisfaction.” Psychology and Marketing, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 449-464.
Seeing the Color Pink (12-06-16)
Kalay-Shahin and colleagues investigated the psychological implications of seeing the color pink. They determined that people, especially women, doing so were apt to be more optimistic. More specifically, the team conducted “Three experiments . . . to investigate the association between pink and optimism. In Experiment 1A, . . . [people] were asked to classify words as optimistic or pessimistic as fast as possible. Half the words were presented in pink and half in black. Experiment 1B . . . was identical to 1A except for the color of the words—black and light blue instead of pink—to rule out the possible influence of brightness. Experiment 2 exposed 144 participants . . . to pink or yellow and then measured their optimism level. The findings for Experiments 1A and 1B indicated an association between pink and optimism regardless of brightness. Experiment 2 found that mere exposure to pink increased optimism levels for females.”
Lior Kalay-Shahin, Allon Cohen, Rachel Lemberg, Gil Harary, and Thalma Lobel. 2016. “Seeing the World Through ‘Pink-Colored Glasses’: The Link Between Optimism and Pink.” Journal of Personality, vol. 84, no. 6, pp. 726-736.
Performance-Sapping Noise (12-02-16)
Research by Tamesue confirms that meaningful office noise degrades professional performance. A press release detailing findings he presented at the 5th Joint Meeting Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan reports that “When carrying out intellectual activities involving memory or arithmetic tasks, it is a common experience for noise to cause an increased psychological impression of “annoyance,” leading to a decline in performance. This is more apparent for meaningful noise, such as conversation, than it is for other random, meaningless noise. . . . the impact of meaningless and meaningful noises on selective attention and cognitive performance in volunteers, as well as the degree of subjective annoyance of those noises, were investigated. . . . selective attention to cognitive tasks was influenced by the degree of meaningfulness of the noise. . . . the subjective experience of annoyance in response to noise increased due to the meaningfulness of the noise. . . . That means that when designing sound environments in spaces used for cognitive tasks, such as the workplace or schools, it is appropriate to consider not only the sound level, but also meaningfulness of the noise that is likely to be present. . . . Because it is difficult to soundproof an open office, a way to mask meaningful speech with some other sound would be of great benefit for achieving a comfortable sound environment.”
Takahiro Tamesue. 2016. “Effects of Meaningful or Meaningless Noise on Psychological Impression for Annoyance and Selective Attention to Stimuli During Intellectual Task.” 5th Joint Meeting Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan, December 1, Honolulu, Hawaii, Press release at http://acoustics.org/effects-of-meaningful-or-meaningless-noise-on-psych....
Office Design and Recruiting (12-01-16)
Radermacher and her colleagues probed links between office design and recruitment of employees. They investigated “corporate architecture as an effective signal to knowledge workers in the recruiting process. Two types of corporate architecture that are common in the knowledge economy are distinguished: traditional functionalist and new functionalist architecture. New functionalist architecture combines a flat, transparent facade with semi-open office layouts including areas for social interaction. Holistically these functional elements signal and symbolize a non-bureaucratic, non-hierarchical organization.” Data collected indicate that “Students’ [young potential knowledge workers’] stated preferences imply that they would forgo on average 10% of their starting salary in order to work in the new functionalist rather than the traditional functionalist workplace. The magnitude of this effect supports the view that architecture matters for job choice.”
Katharina Radermacher, Martin Schneider, Anja Iseke, and Tobias Tebbe. “Signalling to Young Knowledge Workers Through Architecture? A Conjoint Analysis.” German Journal of Human Resource Management, in press.
Inpatient Mental Health Unit Design Checklist (11-30-16)
The US Department of Veterans Affairs reports that it has linked architectural/interior design consistent with the recommendations embedded in its Mental Health Environment of Care Checklist to fewer suicides by inpatients in its mental health units. The Mental Health Environment of Care Checklist is available free via the website noted below. Some details “A multidisciplinary group of VA employees developed the program to review inpatient mental health units and eliminate hazards that could increase the chances of patient suicide or self-harm. The group focused on architectural changes, with analyses suggesting that structural hazards such as anchor points like a hook on the wall or a ceiling vent were linked to most attempted or completed suicides. . . . The checklist asks questions such as whether beds, walls, and ceiling vents are free of anchor points for hanging. Other potential hazards include non-shatterproof glass and non-tamper-resistant electrical outlets.” Another example of material in the checklist: “Shelving that has no sharp edges and is bolted to the walls avoids the potential suicide and self-harm risks associated with standard shelves or cabinets.” The VA study of the effectiveness of its checklist is published in Psychiatric Services.
“Study: Physical Environment Checklist Leads to Sharp Decline in Inpatient Suicides at VA Facilities. 2016. Press release, US Department of Veterans Affairs, http://www.research.va.gov/currents/1116-7.cfm
Trees and Home Values (11-29-16)
Kim and team found via a study analyzing over 11,000 single-family home sales in Austin, Texas that house prices are affected by nearby trees. They report that “Many empirical studies assessing the economic benefits of urban green space have continually documented that green space tends to increase both value and sale price of nearby residential properties. . . . this study examined the association between landscape spatial patterns of urban green spaces and single-family home sale transactions. . . . we found that that larger tree and urban forest areas surrounding single-family homes positively contributed to property values, while more fragmented, isolated and irregularly shaped landscape spatial patterns resulted in the inverse.”
Jun-Hyun Kim, Wei Li, Galen Newman, Sung-Ho Kil, and Sun Park. “The Influence of Urban Landscape Spatial Patterns on Single-Family Housing Prices.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, in press.
Interpreting Sound (11-23-16)
Researchers at NYU’s Langone Medical Center have published research in Nature Neuroscience detailing how information collected via other senses influences our interpretations of what we hear. The team learned that “The brain’s interpretation of sound is influenced by cues from other senses. . . .’What the brain ‘hears’ depends on what is ‘seen’ in addition to specific sounds, as the brain calculates how to respond,’ says study senior investigator and neuroscientist Robert Froemke, PhD, an assistant professor at NYU Langone and its Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine. . . . ‘Our study shows how the same sound can mean different things inside the brain depending on the situation,’ says Froemke. ‘We know, for instance, that people learn to respond without alarm to the honk of a car horn if heard from the safety of their homes, but are startled to hear the same honk while crossing a busy street.’” This finding may help design researchers better understand apparently conflicting information that they gather during project-specific studies, related to, for example, challenges faced when trying to concentrate in a particular workplace.
“Making Sense of the Senses: ‘Context’ Matters When the Brain Interprets Sounds.” 2016. Press release, NYU Langone Medical Center, http://nyulangone.org/press-releases/making-sense-of-the-senses-context-matters-when-the-brain-interprets-sounds
Issues With Peripheral Vision (11-22-16)
Otten and her team have learned more about how our eyes work; their findings have implications for the design of visual experiences. The researchers report that “Vision in the fovea, the center of the visual field, is much more accurate and detailed than vision in the periphery.” When the experimenters had participants in their study look at “the center of a visual display in which central stimuli differed from peripheral stimuli. Over time, participants perceived that the peripheral stimuli changed to match the central stimuli, so that the display seemed uniform. . . . a wide range of visual features, including shape, orientation, motion, luminance, pattern, and identity, are susceptible to this uniformity illusion.” So, over time, whatever is being seen peripherally changes to align with what is visible through the center of the field of view – more evidence that seeing is not as objective an experience as it might have seemed. These findings indicate that if it’s necessary to send behavior cues or supply information, for example, regarding actions to be taken during emergency situations, that material needs to be presented in the center of users’ fields of view.
Marte Otten, Yair Pinto, Chris Paffen, Anil Seth, and Ryota Kanai. “The Uniformity Illusion: Central Stimuli Can Determine Peripheral Perception.” Psychological Science, in press.
Collaboration in Workplaces (11-18-16)
In her dissertation research at University College London, Leadon studied collaboration in workplaces. She found via a “case study at an interior design office followed by a survey of four design firms. . . . that collaboration and individual work must be supported by workplace design. While collaboration was high among employees and meeting rooms were utilized. . . . fluidity and frequency of collaboration was, at times, deterred in the open office environment, due to the expectation that collaboration would be a distraction to others. . . . Private meeting rooms were integral solutions in facilitating both collaborative and individual modes of work, as these spaces could host groups or individuals as required.”
Alexandria Leadon. 2015. “Workplace Design: Facilitating Collaborative and Individual Work Within the Creative Office Environment.” Dissertation Abstract, The Florida State University, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1725171451.
Trusting Machines (11-17-16)
A recent Kellogg Insights podcast reviews our relationship with technology, particularly robots. Comments made by Adam Waytz, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University are particularly interesting: “Human beings really like autonomy. We like having free choice, we like having agency, we like having control, we like freedom and liberty. We feel that when we give tasks to robots, or when we create humanoid technology, that that technology will usurp our agency and diminish our autonomy, and diminish our freedom. . . . When you give something a humanlike voice, what we found was that that triggered perceptions in our participants that, ‘Oh, this car is smart. It can feel the road. It can plan where I need to go. It has a mind like a human.’ What we found, and we showed this statistically as well, is that when you give the car a little bit of humanness in terms of voice and name, it increases the perceptions of the car as having a humanlike mind, being intelligent, and those ascriptions of intelligence then produce greater overall trust.”
“Podcast: You Had Me at ‘Bleep Blorp.” 2016. Kellogg Insights. http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/you-had-me-at-bleep-blor...
Drawing: Does It Still Matter? (11-16-16)
Drawing Futures teaches us that drawing still matters. As reported in Allen, Pearson, Sheil, and Migayrou’s edited volume, “Despite numerous developments in technological manufacture and computational design that provide new grounds for designers, the act of drawing still plays a central role as a vehicle for speculation. . . . Drawing Futures will present a compendium of projects, writings and interviews that critically reassess the act of drawing and where its future may lie. . . . Drawing Futures focuses on the discussion of how the field of drawing may expand synchronously alongside technological and computational developments. . . . the book discusses how drawing is changing in relation to new technologies for the production and dissemination of ideas. . . . It explores new relationships with art and other disciplines, offers alternative – often subversive – looks at computational resources and ultimately . . . the aim of Drawing Futures is to illustrate how drawing works as an abundantly rich, diverse, inventive, critical and serious research domain.” Drawing Futures can be downloaded free at the web address noted below.
Laura Allen, Luke Pearson, Bob Sheil, and Frederic Migayrou (eds.). 2016. Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture. University College: London, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/drawing-futures?utm_source=...