Any Designed Environment

Working from Anywhere (05-07-21)

Choudhury has integrated findings from his and other’s working from anywhere-related research to detail emerging best practices; his article is available without charge at the web address noted below.  Choudhury’s material is useful to anyone developing a working from anywhere program or looking for insights into environments that support working from anywhere.  As Choudhury states in the overview for his article, “The pandemic has hastened a rise in remote working for knowledge-based organizations.

Cross Cultural Comfort (05-06-21)

Vink and colleagues have thoroughly studied how physical comfort is evaluated in different countries. They report that “A questionnaire was sent to participants out in nine countries (Brazil, Canada, the USA, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). . . . All countries score the comfort of a luxurious bed higher than a simple bed, first-class seats higher than economy class and all countries rate the comfort lower when the duration of sitting increases.

Temperatures and Liking (05-05-21)

Erkan investigated how temperature influences “architectural liking.”   Study participants experienced “a virtual reality environment at three different temperatures (15°C, 22°C, 30°C). . . .  An EEG device was used to determine the cognitive activities of the participants during space navigation. In addition, an eye-tracking device was used in virtual reality goggles to identify the areas that participants were looking at. It was determined that the architectural preferences of the people changed depending on the temperature of the space. . . .

Distracting Noises (05-04-21)

Gheewalla and colleagues assessed how distracting different sorts of noises are.  They learned, by having study participants complete reading comprehension tasks, that “Compared to working silence, white noise also reduced the efficiency of text comprehension.”

Fateema Gheewalla, Alastair McClelland, and Adrian Furnham. 2021.   “Effects of Background Noise and Extraversion on Reading Comprehension Performance.”  Ergonomics, vol. 64, no. 5, https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2020.1854352

Online and Physical Privacy Linked (04-30-21)

Anyone who’s puzzled over similarities and differences between online and physical privacy issues will be intrigued by research done by Shariff and colleagues.  This team reports that “Although people report grave concern over their data privacy, they take little care to protect it. We suggest that this privacy paradox can be understood in part as the consequence of an evolutionary mismatch: Privacy intuitions evolved in an environment that was radically different from the one found online.

Culture(s) and Design

Cultures are ways of considering the world and how it functions.  They help organize the thoughts of smaller sets of people, say work teams, and much larger ones, such as entire nations or ethnic groups.  Neuroscience research details how design can recognize, reflect, and respect user group cultures, so  people feel more comfortable and achieve objectives they prize.
 

Design Dialogues

Design sends messages about space users, both individuals and groups—and those communiqués have powerful effects on our wellbeing.  When the nonverbal signals transmitted are interpreted positively, they boost welfare.  When that’s not the case, stress results.  Neuroscience research indicates how design’s messages can be used to enhance lives. 
 

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