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Susan Winchip has written an excellent introduction to lighting. The text is clear, interesting, and punctuated with useful and attractive illustrations.
Research Design Connections is again pleased to present a diverse collection of articles to you, our readers.
In 1987, Kaplan outlined the components of preferred outdoor physical environments and related these aspects of our preferred environments to humankind’s evolutionary past.
The appropriate designs for psychological counseling spaces and adolescent care facilities have not been extensively researched. Designing each of these types of places presents special challenges, and two recent research projects provide insights that can be useful to people creating these sorts of environments.
In 2005, we conducted privacy studies for office workers at a large Midwestern manufacturer to determine what architectural privacy features impacted individual and group privacy across several job types. In the process, we learned several interesting things that designers can apply immediately to enhance perceived privacy in the workplace.
When shown images, Asians tend to focus more on the image as a whole, while Westerners are more apt to focus on foreground.
People who see themselves as generally independent from other people think that angular shapes are more attractive, and people who perceive themselves as primarily interdependent with others find rounded shapes more attractive.
The metaphors linking power and vertical position (e.g., “He’s moving up in the world”) seem to tie into an important judgment that humans make unconsciously.
Increases in temperature can actually be perceived as decreases in temperature if they are coupled with variations in the velocity of air movement in a space.
Color symbolism has an important influence on response to particular environments. Aslam presents information about the variety of meanings particular colors have in different parts of the world.