Glimcher and Tymula studied the effects of outdoor light intensity on risk taking behavior over a two-year period. They “found that increased luminance leads to less risk taking. . . . the effects are . . . consistent, significant.” Some useful definitions: “Risk attitudes refer to people’s willingness to take known risks. . . . ‘luminance’ is a measurement of the amount of light that falls on the surface of the earth.
Temperature influences decision-making. Working with people experiencing temperatures perceived as comfortable, Hadi and her team learned that “cold (warm) temperatures may lead individuals to rely more (less) on emotions when making decisions.” So, when cold people are more likely to make emotion-based decisions and the reverse is true for those who are warm. Also, “participants in the affective [emotional] task conditions showed a significant average increase in [perceived] temperature while those individuals in the cognitive condition displayed a significant average decrease in temper
Fulcher and Hayes’s work confirms that surface colors send powerful messages. The duo worked with a group of children from 5 to 10 years old (average age a little over 7) finding that “children took longer to build a feminine object [feminine: cat; masculine: dinosaur] with blue bricks than with pink bricks. In the free-play task, boys built more masculine objects than girls did, regardless of the color of bricks they were given. . . . . These findings suggest that toy color and type can impact how children interact and play with toys.”
Cialone and her team evaluated differences in responses to images. They asked professional sculptors, architects, and painters as well as a control group of people with other professions questions “about spatially complex pictures [Google street view, interior of St. Paul’s church, for example]. . . . Profession profoundly relates to how we think about space. . . .
Luffarelli and his colleagues researched associations to symmetrical and asymmetrical logos. Building on research showing that “symmetrical (asymmetrical) brand logos . . . . [are] evaluated more (less) favorably (Henderson & Cote, 1998),” the Luffarelli team found that “visual asymmetry is associated with excitement in memory. . .
Drew reports on a symposium held at the 2017 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science that focused on how the form of our bodies influences our thoughts.
Choi, Chang, Lee, and Chang investigated how color can influence assessments. They found via “experiments and field surveys in the USA and South Korea. . . . that an anonymous person against a warm color background (vs. neutral and cold color background) is perceived to be one with warmer personality.” Also, “nurses’ perception of warmth from a hospital’s ambient color affects their favorable judgment of the hospital and intention to take on an extra role.”
Sieben and her team studied crowd management. Their work verifies the value of installing stanchions connected by ropes (or something similar; called the “corridor setup” by researchers) to funnel crowds through a space. As the Sieben group details, “an experiment in which a large group of people . . . enters a concert hall through two different spatial barrier structures is analyzed. These two structures correspond to everyday situations such as boarding trains and access to immigration desks. . . .
Multiple researchers have probed links between national culture and design-related expectations a
Sometimes, there aren’t enough resources – financial, human, or otherwise – to design in all the
