There is a movement within design research to increase the pleasure of interacting
with places and objects. Whether you are for or against pleasure, it is
useful to know potential sources of it as well as displeasure so that you can
fine-tune a place design accordingly.
Patrick Jordan has written the definitive book on pleasurable design,
and he outlines four types of pleasure (building on the work of Lionel Tiger).6
Physio-pleasure is tied directly to body sensory experiences. Any of the senses
can be pleasurably or unpleasurably stimulated by a physical environment.
Appropriate and possible physio-pleasure to be provided in a space can be
determined through conversations with users, literature reviews, and material
research, for example. Socio-pleasure comes through relationships with
other people, and a product or place can provide this directly or indirectly.
Chairs that can be arranged so that it is easy to talk in desired groups can
supply socio-pleasure, but so can souvenirs that spur passersby to pause and
ask questions. Objects can signal social affiliations, general social situation,
and status, all of which are linked to socio-pleasure; this sort of information
facilitates social interactions as well as informing them. Psycho-pleasure ties
directly to cognitive and emotional response to a product or place. Psychopleasure
can be related to usability of an object or place. Ideo-pleasure is the
sort associated with green design, among other worthy causes. It ties in to
more abstract concepts such as social values and aesthetics, for example.
These descriptions indicate how something can be pleasurable, but not
why it is. It is also important to realize that these types of pleasure are perceived
and actually derived through the interactions of a person and an object
or place; they do not exist independent of that interface. So, designing pleasurable
places requires knowledge of the people that will use them as well as how
experience is influenced psychologically.
Humans have fundamental psychological needs that must be satisfied
in their lives in general. Places can help to satiate them and research such as
literature reviews can provide details about how. Maslow outlined a hierarchy
of needs that languished, not respected by the mainstream scientific world, for
some time. It has recently been substantially revalidated and shown to have a
significant influence on human behavior.7 The official ranking, from most basic
(bottom of the pyramid) to higher order needs (at the top of the pyramid) is:
immediate physiological needs, safety, love (which includes both affection and
group membership), respect, and self-actualization (achieving higher-order,
personally meaningful goals). More psychological resources are available to
pursue goals further up the pyramid when those of lesser importance are satisfied;
the order in these needs can be satiated is not as rigid as the pyramid
arrangement may infer.
Maslow’s hierarchy can guide design in a basic way. People must feel
comfortable enough in a space to lower their self-protective defenses if they
are going to socialize or think broadly enough to self-actualize, for example.
People are unlikely to want to interact with others in a location in which their
backs are exposed or unprotected. More substantive conversations occur in
spaces like a high-backed restaurant booth than at a table and chairs thrust
into the middle of a corridor (see Figure C.4 in the color insert). A literature
review of seating arrangements in which people feel safe would uncover this
information.
Reiss has also outlined a collection of basic human desires or drives.8
Many can be addressed through place design and also influence economic and
other decision making. Reiss’s list is a lot like Maslow’s and can be used in a
similar way: to focus a literature review and ensure that a place being created
meets as many of these needs as possible. The desires and drives Reiss discusses
include:
• Power—place has an inherent ability to inspire awe and to indicate power
resulting from a social role (such as being a judge).
• Curiosity—a space can facilitate your fundamental human need to grow
and develop as a person, as outlined by Lawrence and Nohria in 2002.9
• Independence—spaces help us influence our own destiny, particularly
when we have fundamental control over them.
• Status—place can communicate social status both directly and through
more nuanced, culture-based nonverbal communication.
• Social contact—human beings are pack animals, and even introverts
shrivel when they are deprived of social contact with others. Spaces
design can facilitate or hinder social interaction.
• Vengeance—environments that denigrate others, for example, are
vengeful.
• Honor (meaning tradition in this context)—communicating tradition
and the extent to which it is valued is one of the things that places can
do well.
• Idealism—early examples of green design show how easily places can be
used for idealistic purposes.
• Physical exercise—exercise is much more feasible in some environments
than others
• Romance—space design can encourage or discourage romance
• Family—through home and playground design, for example, we can interact
with our families in ways that we value.
• Order—the rise of the closet organizing industry shows how much we
crave order in our lives.
• Eating—although we can chew and swallow food almost anywhere, it is
certainly more comfortable to do so in some environments, such as those
that are pleasant temperatures and humidity
• Acceptance—following social conventions when we design earns us
acceptance from others (well, at least from many of them).
• Tranquility—we have a fundamental need to restock our levels of mental
energy, and places can help us do just that.
• Saving—places are financial investments, and they also stockpile other
items of value to us.
Using Environmental Psychology
Although researchers have been investigating how human beings respond
to and interact with the world around themselves for a long time, work in
the area was coordinated in the 1960s with the formalization of the field
of environmental psychology. Environmental psychologists focus on how
human attitudes and behaviors are influenced by the physical world. That
means they are experts at answering questions such as what colors will relax
people, how wide a dining table should be, and how to arrange furniture in
a space. They are also concerned with issues such as ceiling height and how
personality and culture (organizational and national) influence our placebased
experiences.
In this part of the chapter, you will learn the sorts of things about human
experience of place that you should consider when a project begins, how
design can influence place experience, and why you should find out about
the specific people who will use a space under development. We will discuss fundamental human needs that must be recognized in design. Some needs to
be recognized are more project specific and others more universal.
The paragraphs that follow highlight the dangers of extrapolating from
your own experiences to those of others when spaces are being designed. It
discusses a number of ways in which place-based experiences become customized
on the group and individual levels. Generally, you will not be the
user of the spaces that you are designing, so it is important to design with an
awareness of the types of human-place interactions possible. We all share
the same fundamental place-based needs, but don’t all satisfy them in the
same ways.
The single most important lesson that you should take away from this
discussion is the immense number of experiences that different people, all of
whom are perfectly “normal,” can be having in the same space at exactly the
same moment.
Sensing the World
People generally have the same sets of sensory apparatus, but all those sets
of eyes and ears don’t work in the same way. Let’s use vision as an example.
Some people can pick out more details in a scene, at greater distances, than
others. Some people, most of whom are men, have a distorted perception of
colors—that is, they are color blind. Research also shows that our psychological
state influences what we perceive—items more consistent with our current
thoughts are more likely to be noted. Even the language that we speak
influences distinctions that we see between colors and the information in our
physical world that we tend to note. So there are lots of filters between what
we believe that we see and what could more objectively be identified in our
environment.
All of our sensory experiences are filtered, not just our visual ones. Not
all sounds are heard, all scents smelled, or all tactile experiences registered.
Some of the experiences that you provide for users of spaces you develop will
be lost on them—and it’s difficult to predict which ones. What people perceive
is what they expect to experience. We form stereotypes of places just as we
do of people, and it is those stereotypes that we live through unless material
clearly inconsistent with our expectations is extremely obvious. We will
“remember” objects and architectural features as being present in a space if
those objects and features are consistent with our expectations—even if they
weren’t actually there. If we expect a friend’s stylish mom to live in an apartment
with a sophisticated design, we will remember Miro prints on the walls
and Mies chairs—even if the prints on the walls really are Kinkades and the
chairs are from Ethan Allen.
We build our stereotypes based on our own experiences and those of
others that are reported to us. They evolve somewhat as our life experiences
accumulate.
Features of Well-Designed Spaces
All well-designed places satisfy five fundamental performance criteria and
having the right information ensures that spaces you design serve their
users well:10
1. Comply—Provide the support required to complete desired activities.
2. Communicate—Supply information that the person controlling the space
would like to share about who they are, and provide opportunities for
speaking with other people.
3. Challenge—Facilitate the growth and development of the users of the
space.
4. Continue—Remain desirable over time.
5. Comfort—Relieve tension and prevent potentially stressful situations from
developing initially.
Each of these criteria can be addressed in a number of ways. Research
stimulates design ideas—but developing design options is what you’ve been
doing through the design process all along. After reviewing these five performance
criteria, you will better understand the sorts of issues that you need to
probe when researching and the implications of what you learn when you do.
Comply
People can want to accomplish a lot of different things in a space either one at
a time, simultaneously with other goals, or in a clearly anticipatable sequence.
Through programming-type research you will learn more about what sorts of
functions a space will serve.
Some of the ways that a space can support desired activities are clearer
than others. There are certain elements required in a cooking area—an ability
to heat food, clean up, and store cooking tools, for example. Different traditions
can satisfy these requirements in different ways, however. While a kitchen in
the United States does not seem complete without an oven, kitchens in Mexico
generally do not have one; there is a tradition of baking in the oven in the
United States, but th is not the case in Mexico. Basic functions can be satisfied
in different ways in different contexts.
Other ways that a space can support desired actions are less intuitively
obvious. Let’s work through a detailed example. In workplaces, there are people
doing information work as well as people doing knowledge work. We can define
information work as tasks that, after they are initially learned, don’t require a lot
of concentration to carry out. Knowledge work, by contrast, requires concentration,
even after some time in a job—it continuously presents new challenges.
Generally, working in a telephone call center is information work, while strategic
planning and research/development are knowledge work. If knowledge work is to be done well, the people engaged in it need to be able to concentrate,
and the enemy of concentration is distraction.
When we are doing our best to concentrate on knowledge work, the most
significant problems arise from audio distractions. Perfect silence is also a
problem—it is a very odd experience for humans, and we also find it distracting.
Words spoken in languages we understand are most disturbing. The most
effective mechanisms currently available to designers to blunt the impact of
audio distractions on concentration are walls. People often listen to music on
headphones to avoid being distracted, but listening to music on headphones
has also been shown to reduce cognitive performance. If designers can’t create
floor-to-ceiling walls around people who need to concentrate, the only
available mechanism to help people do so are fully enclosed (this means floor
to ceiling sound-proofed walls) touchdown spaces that can be used on an asneeded
basis. These touchdown spaces are not optimal, however, as continuity
of physical environments and presence of personalizing items enhances cognitive
performance.
Environmental distractions, such as from overheard conversations, create
continuing problems for those exposed to them. After being distracted, it takes
information/knowledge workers from 15 to 25 minutes to return to whatever
they were doing before they were distracted. This happens after each and
every distraction, so sitting near a coffee pot or along a central circulation
route can be deadly for workplace effectiveness.
Individuals working in an open environment do speak more to each other
than people in spaces where they have less visual access to each other—but
they spend less time talking about work related issues. It is important that
people working together have these non-work-related conversations so that
they bond to each other and form a more cohesive workgroup. In an open work
environment these bonding conversations can become so extensive that they
reduce productivity, however.
Research has shown that regardless of age, no one multitasks very
well—humans who want to do well need to stick to the mono-task world, as
mentioned earlier in this chapter. In addition, people of various generations
move through the same work-life phases, each of which is linked to specific
behaviors—
and that must be reflected in the design of any work area. When
developing a workplace, it is important to consider career and life states and
not generations. Instead of designing for particular generations, it is more
appropriate to create spaces in which people can do specific tasks well.
When we are doing anything, we perform best if we are at an optimal
(moderate) mental energy use level. Unfortunately, there is not a neat equation
that can be used to determine whether a person is at this level, but
people are fairly good at comparing their performance from one situation
to the next. They can accurately report these relative performance levels
if they feel safe in divulging this information. Doing a task that requires
more focus uses more mental energy than one that requires less focus. In addition, being in a relatively more complex physical environment requires
more energy than being in a less complex environment. That’s why we can
sit on a veranda (a relatively complex environment) and read recreationally
(in this case we are at our optimal energy level), but need to move inside
into a space without many audio, visual, or other sensory complexities when
we are doing technical (textbook style) reading. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 provide
examples of a relatively less complex interior environment, as well as a moderately
complex one.
Some environments are more energizing and some are more relaxing.
Not surprisingly, many of the spatial elements that energize us put us in a
more negative mood, while those that are more relaxing put us in a more
positive one.
Negative and positive moods are appropriate for different sorts of activities—
each is desirable at particular times. Positive moods broaden our thinking,
while negative ones narrow it. Positive moods are therefore great if we’re
doing a task that requires creativity or that people get along well with each
other or reach a compromise (e.g., through negotiation). Negative moods are
better when it is desirable for people to focus on completing a rigidly defined
set of tasks. Unpleasant sounds, flashing lights, and bad smells put us in a
negative mood, for example, all else being equal.
In emergency situations, adherence to an established protocol is crucial,
just as it is when doing things such as reviewing information provided and
looking for deviations from norms or processing data in other very straightforward,
specified ways.
Talking with the people who will use a space that you are developing
will help you understand their intended use for the space. This will direct you
in determining what mood the space should encourage. Place attributes that
have been associated with negative moods should be used sparingly, even in
areas where a negative mood is desirable, and not at all (if possible) in spaces
where positive moods are optimal.
Often, people paying to develop a new space say they want a place in
which people are more productive or creative or healthier. Productivity, creativity,
and health generally ensue when a space is designed so that it helps
people complete desired activities in a positive mood. An integrative review of
the social science research reveals that a positive mood in a space is likely to
result if, for example:
• Colors used are not very saturated but relatively bright.
• Colors from near each other on the color wheel are used in combination.
• Forms and lines are generally curving.
• Textures are subdued and there is little variety in them.
• Lighting levels are relatively bright and warm.
• People are at desired distances from each other (the appropriate distance
varies by situation and by national culture).
• People in the space have views out over nature or a similarly refreshing
scene.
• Natural materials, such as wood with relatively light-colored stains and
varnishes are used in the area
• Daylight is present in the space.
A positive mood also improves the functioning of our immune system—
so the mood of both patients and caregivers is very important and their environments
must also be designed to optimize their mood. An extensive body
of research has investigated the best artwork for patient, clinical, and staff
spaces in a hospital, for example.
The influence of mood on shopping behavior is complex. When people are
shopping for fun, it is best for sales if the environment puts them in a positive
mood. When people are doing utilitarian, purpose-driven shopping—stopping
to buy milk and eggs on their way home from work—that positive mood isn’t as
important and efficient store layout is highly desirable.
Communicate
Human beings are communicating all the time—sometimes with words,
sometimes without. Many messages sent nonverbally are trusted more
than spoken ones. Involuntary nonverbal messages, such as fleeting facial
expressions and body movements, gain credibility because they are often
revealed involuntarily and then filtered. Nonverbal messages are sent
through the items we choose to add to our environments as well as how
we modify the spaces themselves. Photos of families or boats, furniture
arrangements, and new marble flooring all are introduced to send particular
messages.
It’s hard to know what’s being communicated nonverbally unless you
share cultural affiliations with the person transmitting information (see Figure
3.3). As we grow up in a culture we not only learn its spoken language,
but also its unspoken one. We come to understand things such as cultural
associations to particular colors, how far we should stand from other people
in various situations, and how to isolate ourselves politely from other people
when we need to mull over recent events and order our thoughts. Many of
the place-based rules we learn are tacit knowledge, so we don’t really have
a mechanism to share them with people from other cultures, except by using
them, so it’s difficult for people from other cultures to pick them up in any
organized way.
Although the specific “words” being used to communicate nonverbally
through space vary by cultures (group and national), spaces are used to convey
both personal and group identity (See Figure 3.4). The messages we broadcast
help us feel comfortable in a space. They also change over time. The skills and mechanisms we use to send those messages evolve, as well. The importance of
the messages perseveres throughout our lives and in all of the spaces that we
control, whether we are at home, work, in a hospital bed, or visiting the commercial
establishments we chose to frequent.
Challenge
We all have a personal development plan—one of our fundamental drives as
human beings is to grow and develop in a personally meaningful way. Place
design can help us achieve this objective. Space can provide the acoustical
isolation we need to become a cellist or the chemistry lab we need to develop
new pyrotechnics, or spaces to socialize with our children so we can guide
them to develop as human beings—as we expand our parenting skills. Our
drive to grow and develop as a person is particularly pertinent when designing
residential environments.
Continue
A space that evolves as its users and their needs changes is desirable. Particularly
during tough psychological times, people prefer familiar spaces and
things. A space that continues to meet user needs can be a significant emotional
support. Spaces that support us psychologically over time are also better
financial investments and more earth friendly. Flexibility can be provided
through architectural elements as well as furnishings that are easy to reconfigure
Comfort
Several attributes of a space can help us feel comfortable. When people
control their experience in a space, they are comfortable in it. Control is the
ability to make choices as to a space’s physical form and attributes. Personalizing
a space with family photographs establishes control, which can also be
exercised through changing the temperature or turning on a light. Control
is at a fundamental level making a choice.11 (Iynegar’s research on choice is
discussed in Chapter 2.) Groups need control of their environments, just as
people do.
When we feel in control of a situation, our stress levels decrease and we
are more likely to be in a positive mood than when we’re without control. We
are also more apt to feel satisfied and comfortable in the space when we feel in
control of it (see Figure 3.5).
Feeling in control of our personal space is really important to us psychologically.
Personal space is a set of zones that surrounds us and varies from situation
to situation. The sizes of the personal spaces that people maintain vary by culture and perceptions of the situation—excellent arguments for providing
a range of seating options, some on wheels, so people can maintain their
desired distances from each other. Although the exact size of our personal
spaces in different contexts varies by culture, each society maintains zones
that range from one very close one that we allow only intimates to enter, to
spaces used in formal situations that are much larger. We respond negatively
when our personal space is broached and become tense. We will also adopt
behaviors that help us ignore the troubling situation. We make
sure not to catch the space invader’s eye, for example, and orient our body so
we are not directly facing them—think about what happens in an elevator
(even if it only has two people in it), and you get the idea.
We also control territories. Territories provide us with a home base in
which we can decompress, and when we do, we broaden our thought processes.
Both individuals and groups have territories and each polices intrusions
into their spaces. Some barriers between territories are more traditional,
such as walls and doors, and others are more symbolic. An edge of a rug, a
change in ceiling height, or the area lit by a particular light can all serve as
territorial markers.
Crowding results when we lose control of the number of people nearby.
Crowding is an impression and not an objective reality. Crowding by definition is an unwanted collection of people around us—what we’re happy to experience
with our family is not so pleasant on the subway with strangers, for example.
When we feel crowded, we work to escape. Interestingly, architectural
features that would, at least theoretically allow us to escape from a situation,
such as windows, make us feel less crowded. So do higher ceilings. It’s as if
when our personal space on the sides is compressed, the lost space can bubble
overhead like a balloon and we can still be comfortable.
Human beings are social animals. Even the most introverted introvert
needs human companionship from time to time. Time to time is key here. We
want to socialize as desired and be alone as desired. Being alone has a lot of
psychological value—mainly because it helps us reflect on what’s happened to
us recently and integrate our thoughts and experiences with others that we’ve
had. It also allows us to relax. Privacy is so important that in today’s open
workplaces employees seem to be taking shelter in bathroom stalls. Being
pack animals we are also very attuned to differences in status.
When we’re doing the sort of intense thinking that is characterized as
knowledge work for a long time, we become mentally exhausted. We can
restock our levels of mental energy and reduce stress by looking at scenes we
find fascinating and effortless to observe. Fish tanks and fire work well. So
do views of outdoor spaces reminiscent of our life on the savanna. The places
observed should not be totally wild jungles, but should have sections that look
like a gentle meadow bordered by trees, with a few leafy trees in the middle of
the space (see Figure 3.9). Best is to look out over this live, and from a higher
vantage point onto the scene described, but the image also has benefits when
used in two dimensions as artwork.
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