design research

Perez-Urrestarazu and colleagues confirm the psychological value of plants by discussing at-home experiences during the pandemic.  The researchers share that they learned via a survey completed by thousands of participants that the presence of “Indoor plants correlated with positive emotional well-being during the COVID-19 confinement.  Negative emotions were more frequent in those living in small sized homes with minimal natural light and deprived of plants.  Few plants strategically placed indoors and a higher number of plants combined with living walls outdoors are preferred. . .

Kaufmann-Buhler reports on the life course of open plan offices in America.  Her focus is on “the material and technical aspects of the open plan and systems furniture that manifest through its design, production, specification and use.  My research draws on information and data from dozens of different open plan of ‘systems’ furniture lines ranging from the major names in the industry such as Herman Miller, Steelcase and Knoll to the lesser known systems by companies like Eppinger, Krueger, Kimball, and Hauserman.”  As Bloomsbury shares on the book’s website (

Ross and team’s research confirms that responses to sensory experiences by children do not always directly align with those of adults, a finding that supports user age group-specific research.  The investigators report that “When adults are presented with basic multimodal sensory stimuli, the Colavita effect suggests that they have a visual dominance, whereas more recent research finds that an auditory sensory dominance may be present in children under 8 years of age. . . .

Researchers have identified fundamental differences in how men and women experience space.  Wood and Jones report in a study published in Nature Human Behaviour “that the increasingly gendered division of labor in human societies during the past 2.5 million years dramatically shaped how our species uses space, and possibly how we think about it.  Underlying these conclusions is a huge and detailed trove of travel data revealing stark differences in the ways men and women among the nomadic Hadza people of Tanzania use space.

The Lighting Research Center, Rensselaer, has released materials that can support the development of energy efficient circadian lighting n classrooms and hospitals.  As a press release from the LRC reports the LRC team “published new guidance documents for designing circadian-effective lighting in K-12 classrooms and hospital patient rooms while avoiding increased energy use. . . .