place science

Yildirim and colleagues set out to learn more about how design influences user assessments of workplaces.  They investigated, via a survey distributed in Ankara, Turkey, “the effects of location of closed offices on the front facade, rear facade and side facade plans and the indoor layout (left and right users’ cabinets) on perceptual evaluations of users of physical environmental factors. . . . it was determined that office users on the front and side facades generally perceived more positively the offices’ environmental factors than office users on the back facade.

Suhaimi and teammates studied aesthetic preferences.  They learned that “There is a long history of humans attempting to understand what drives aesthetic preference. One line of inquiry examines the effects of typicality and novelty on aesthetic responses to designed products. There is currently a wide support towards the ‘Most Advanced Yet Acceptable’ (MAYA) principle, and studies underpinning this have focused on everyday objects. Despite the differences in the function of everyday objects, what they all have in common is their visibility.

Van Kerckhove and teammates probed how form influences impressions made.  Their work “proposes surface mimicry—that is, designing a product to visually resemble another product—as an effective intervention to communicate property information to consumers. Specifically, it advances the notion that exposure to surface mimicry primes property mapping, a thinking style that leads consumers to transfer property information from one product onto another.

Zeloni and Pavani report on sounds that humans link to sadness.  They share that “In Western music and in music of other cultures, minor chords, modes and intervals evoke sadness. . . . we asked expert musicians to transcribe into music scores spontaneous vocalizations of pre-verbal infants to test the hypothesis that melodic intervals that evoke sadness in music (i.e., minor 2nd) are more represented in cry compared to neutral utterances. Results showed that the unison, major 2nd, minor 2nd, major 3rd, minor 3rd, perfect 4th and perfect 5th are all represented in infant vocalizations.

The Mason team’s findings support calls to keep light levels low in spaces where people are sleeping.  The group reports that their “laboratory study shows that, in healthy adults, one night of moderate (100 lx) light exposure during sleep increases nighttime heart rate, decreases heart rate variability (higher sympathovagal balance), and increases next-morning insulin resistance when compared to sleep in a dimly lit (<3 lx) environment.

Research by Wali and teammates confirms that walkability boosts health.  They share that they examined “high resolution data for 476 participants in the Rails and Health study on health care costs, mode specific MVPA[ moderate-to-vigorous physical activity], parcel-level built environment, and neighborhood perception surveys. . . .  A 1% increase in bike, walk, and transit-related MVPA was associated with lower health care costs by −0.28%, −0.09%, and −0.27% respectively. A one-unit increase in neighborhood walkability index correlates with a 6.48% reduction in health care costs. . . .

Research by Londono and de Maya indicates how attentive we are to human-like design elements.  The duo share that “The current research focuses on how anthropomorphizing [providing them with human characteristics] retail cues such as dump bins influences consumer behavior. . . . Using eye-tracking technology in an ecological shopping environment, we tracked shoppers' gazes through the store and analyzed their visual attention. Results show that attaching anthropomorphic forms to dump bins positively affects attitudes toward the displayed products.

Coutrot and colleagues set out to learn more about how where we grew up influences our sense of direction; what they’ve learned may help explain previously baffling programming research findings, for example.  The Coutrot-lead team report that “how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here we used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure non-verbal spatial navigation ability in 397,162 people from 38 countries across the world.

Santangelo and associates studied the effects of hearing music on decisions made.  They determined that “music is frequently played while we are engaged in other activities that rely on decision-making (e.g., driving). . . . We analyzed response times and accuracy from more than 100-thousand decisions and mapped the effects of music onto decision-process components with a mechanistic model of decision-making. We found evidence . . . . [that] decisions—across domains—were faster but less accurate with music. . . .

Llinares and colleagues studied how classroom wall color hue influences student performance.  They determined via a virtual reality project that “Cold hues improve attention and memory performance. . . .  The objective of the present study is to analyse the impact that warm and cold hue coloured classroom walls have on the cognitive attention and memory functions of university students. . . .