Design Process and Issues

Researchers confirmed that nudges, including design-based nudges, can influence behavior in intended ways.  A team lead by Mertens determined via a meta-analysis that  “By making small changes in our environment, these interventions [nudges] aim to encourage changes in our behaviour, while preserving our freedom of choice. From adding informative labels to reorganising the food offer in a cafeteria, the overall effectiveness of these interventions has now been demonstrated by a scientific team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE).

Walsh, Gorman, and Salmond assessed the inside of International Space Station and their methodology, reported in this free-to-all article, can also be applied in terrestrial environments.  The trio report that they “offer an archaeological analysis of the visual display of ‘space heroes’ and Orthodox icons in the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS). . . .  we use historic imagery from NASA archives to track the changing presence of 78 different items in a single zone.

Ugail and 12 others have developed a tool (more information currently available to all at the web address noted below) that can be used to redesign spaces to support pandemic-related social distancing.  The team reports that “manually enhanced ad-hoc solutions have helped the physical space designers and decision makers to cope with the dynamic nature of space planning. . . .  we propose a design optimization methodology which takes the dimensions, as well as the constraints and other necessary requirements of a given physical space to yield optimal redesign  solutions. . . .

Menser and colleagues investigated what makes an image seem like it shows a nature scene.  They determined that “canopies [vegetation over eight feet tall], bodies of water, and mountains were found to be highly representative of nature, whereas unnatural elements [objects and man-made structures, such as boats and walkways, respectively] and close-range views [a view focused on a singular object or small area (e.g., flowers, plants, etc.)] were inversely related.