Framework for Reaction to Place

Bodin Danielsson reports on the context of work.  She shares that “the experience of office architecture, similar to other architectural experiences, is a holistic experience created by the combined effect of the physical characteristics of the environment and the functional feature of office work. . . . . three separate studies. . . . all indicate that personal control is a key factor for high employee satisfaction and that different factors can enable this using different means.”

Body position has been linked to eating experiences.  Investigators share that “The results of six experiments show that vestibular sensations related to posture (i.e., sitting vs. standing) influence food taste perceptions.  Specifically, standing (vs. sitting) postures induce greater physical stress on the body, which in turn decreases sensory sensitivity.  As a result, when eating in a standing (vs.

Do the environments in which taste tests are conducted influence outcomes?  New research indicates that they do to some extent. Hannum and colleagues determined that when “red-wine consumers evaluated the same 4 wines in 3 environments—a traditional sensory booth, an immersive wine bar, and an actual wine bar. . . . at the individual level. . . On average, the greatest difference in liking scores occurred between the traditional booths and the actual wine bar . . . and was significantly greater than the difference in liking scores between the booths and immersive wine bar . . .

New evidence confirms that increasing use of GPS has implications for wayfinding systems/tools. Ruginski and colleagues report that “Research has established that GPS use negatively affects environmental learning and navigation in laboratory studies. . . .  In sum, our work suggests that GPS exerts its negative influence on spatial cognitive abilities in the long-term, building on work that has shown its negative effects on environmental learning in the short-term.”  

Lefebvre and Biswas studied links between environmental odors, perceived temperature, and food consumption.  They found via field and lab experiments that “the presence of a warm ambient odor (e.g., cedarwood) versus a cool ambient odor (e.g., eucalyptus) reduces the amount of calories consumed and also leads to increased choice of lower-calorie food options. This is attributable to established implicit associations formed from the human body’s innate physiological response to changes in ambient temperature. Specifically, exposure to a warm (vs.