Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology, PolandNon-visual determinants of coherence and legibility of the built environment in the context of human-environment relation. Guidelines for design process and evaluation[Abstract]
2009
MSc in Psychology
Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, PolandFunctionality of the common spaces (hallways) of the university buildings evaluated from users' subjective perspective at the design stage
2021 MITx 6.00.1x: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python [certificate]
2021 MITx 6.00.2x: Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science [certificate]
May 9th-13th 2015 Project management methodology workshop organized in cooperation with The Center for Advanced Studies on Warsaw University of Technology (EU funded)
December 9th - 13th 2014 Think(in)visual communication Conference and Workshop (The visual expression of the physical world: new routes in mapping cities to enhance the lives of people - workshop with Simon Roche), Warsaw, Poland
September 22nd 2014 Prototype effectively with Design Thinking Workshop (lecturer: Katy Kavanaugh), Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
2010 - 2011 Masovian program of knowledge transfer (main topics: creativity and motivation, business solution design and strategic thinking, marketing analysis for the new products) (EU funded)
2006-2007 architectural drawing course
conferences
September 24th – 26th 2020 Senses in Architecture, Urban Landscaping and Design SAUL-Katowice, University of Silesia, Silesian University of Technology, Katowice, Poland
September 25th – 28th 2013 11th Conference of the European Architectural Envisioning Association: Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Jun 11th – 13th 2012 UD2012 – Universal Design Conference, Oslo, Norway
Jun 5th 2012 Innovative Office 2012 Seminar, Office and Facility Magazine, Warsaw, Poland
December 13th 2011 The blind and the art , Silesian Museum, Katowice, Poland
September 26th – 29th 2011 Environment 2.0: The 9th biennial conference on environmental psychology, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
social science research methodology, research planning and organization, communication with professionals from various industries, listening, patience, empathy, and a good sense of humor
hobbies and good vibes' sources
coffee, neuroscience, drawing, photography, tennis & squash, skiing, walking, addiction to learning, addiction to listening, the constant hunger for understanding, and coffee
Find out where are the users in an architectural and urban design process and how their role looks like from designers perspective.
The outcome:
Insight about how user-centered design is implemented in architectural and urban design in Poland.
Recommendations on how to improve the usefulness of user engagement in the design process.
keywords: universal design, participatory design, user-centered design in architecture and urbanism
My role and responsibilities:
researcher: planning and conducting research, data analysis, report preparation
Baseline
The main research problem is, how architects approach users issues in architectural and urban design?
This question splits into five points:
importance of users’ problems in architectural design,
motivations for activities concerning users during a design process,
expenditures on users (time, people, funds),
activities concerning users,
knowledge about users.
The first part of the research project includes in-depth interviews with six architects leading their design studios in Poland.
The next step is to extend the participants’ group on architectural and urban design studios that vary in size, years in the industry, design specialties, design approaches they manifest.
The results from the first part of this research are described and analyzed in my Ph.D. dissertation. I won’t reveal it here yet, as the research project is in progress.
The report, I am working on will include the conclusions from the whole research project. It will cover the actual state of the art in user-centered design in Poland and recommendations and guidelines for improving the effectiveness of the use of the users in the design process.
I hope it will bring both users and their role in the design process to the light and show the ways to move forward in designing a better world.
I would like to invite architects and urban designers to participate in this research project. If you are interested in giving a in-depth interview, please send me an e-mail at: interview[at]usersense.pl.
Date and place:
2014, 2019, 2022
Poland
Environmental psychology perspective on urban planning of Warsaw city center
The challenge:
Make urban planners aware of environmental psychology perspectives on urban development. Provide the recommendations concerning spatial and social functionality of Palace of Culture and Science’s surrounding. This specific site of Warsaw is both controversial and fragile. That makes every planning decisions even more difficult and immersed in historical, political, and business net of contexts and dependencies. The challenge was to provide a broader and more user/citizen-centered knowledge as an essential variable in the decision-making process.
The outcome:
The report for the Warsaw Municipal Government Office that covers issues concerning users activities and affordances in place, place branding, the image of a place, and place identity, and walkability. The report covers the analysis of the Warsaw Municipal Government Office urban concept plan and theoretical foundations.
keywords: user-centered urban planning, public spaces
In cooperation with:
Agnieszka Skorupka, Ph.D.; Katarzyna Przedpełska
My role and responsibilities:
coauthor: literature review and zoning plan analysis on users activities issues, preparation of the presentation for the client
Date and place:
2009
Warsaw, Poland
External source:
Full text of the [report] for Warsaw City Authority, Warsaw Municipal Government Office.
A role of soundscape perception in place ambience's evaluation
The challenge:
Find out if the soundscape characteristics change a perceived ambience, affective qualities, and social functionality of a place.
The outcome:
Yes, changes in soundscape change the way we perceive places.
Since it is not only about visual qualities in architectural and urban design,
how about not leaving to a chance the soundscape while designing the landscape or cityscape?
keywords: soundscape, ambience, social functionality, affective qualities of the environment
My role and responsibilities:
planning, and conducting the research project, experiment design, data analysis, report preparation
FULL STORY
The goal was to capture a soundscapes’ effect at the early design stage when only artificial and straightforward representations of space are available. In particular, I wanted to check the role and significance of sound information in:
perception of ambience,
social functionality of public spaces,
perception of affective qualities of the built environment.
To find the answers I designed an experiment (2-way ANOVA) with two plans of the public spaces (with different ratio of infrastructure dedicated to pedestrians and cars) and three soundscapes (control - silence and two with varying levels of people, traffic and nature sounds).
Figure 1. Places and soundscapes used in the experiment.
I conducted a computer-assisted web interview with 274 participants.
The results show that changes in the soundscape contribute significantly to the changes in the perception of the affective qualities of places. For example, the more people’s sounds (talking) in soundscape the site became rated as more arousal pleasure (exciting). However, places with more infrastructure for people with silence soundscape are getting more sleepiness pleasure (relaxing) rates.
The perception of places’ ambience and social functionality is affected significantly by the changes in the soundscapes.
Take with you
If you design a place, you create not only the artifacts, the physical objects in spatial configuration. People activities will fill up this space and artifacts with life and its sounds. This will influence the quality of their experience of designed spaces and objects.
Let’s design soundscape and landscape (cityscape, architecture) in parallel. Let’s plan, design, test, and evaluate the soundscapes’ outcomes as precise as the visual ones.
Read more:
Bogucka, Z. (2019). Nie-wizualne determinaty czytelności i spójności środowiska wybudowanego w kontekście relacji człowieka ze środowiskiem. Wytyczne do projektowania i ewaluacji przestrzeni miejskiej. Appendix for PhD dissertation written on Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology. [Extended research report in english].
Bogucka, Z. (2013). Design process: a role of soundscape perception in spatial ambience evaluation. Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication; 11th Conference of the European Architectural Envisioning Association. Milan, September 25-28 2013. [Link to conference site.]
Date and place of the conference:
September 25-28 2013, Milan, Italy
Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication; 11th Conference of the European Architectural Envisioning Association.
Architectural psychology: the concept design of the Faculty of Psychology building
The challenge:
Faculty of Psychology members wanted to implement the user-centered design and participatory design approaches to the design process of their new building (16 618.70 sq m) at the University of Warsaw Campus.
The outcome:
We developed the model of cooperation between the architectural psychologists (researchers and consultants) and the architects.
keywords: user-centered design, privacy, social functionality, participatory design
planning and conducting participatory design process,
research methodology design (interviews with Faculty Members and Administration Workers, questionnaire), and data analysis,
presentations for the Architects,
supporting communication and information flow between architects, Dean, and users,
recommendations for the building’s functionality program.
FULL STORY
Psychological needs of the users in a diverse academic organization
The design decisions on the spatial configuration and articulation involve a set of psychological dimensions:
quality and characteristics of social interactions, and level of stimulation,
privacy needs,
affordances, the comfort of takingactivity, and perceived control,
legibility,
the atmosphere, ambience and organization identity.
The design process is not only about general and basic categories like aesthetic and functionality. If you dive deeper into these categories, you can see how particular design decisions refer to specific aspects of the human-environment relation and the quality of life. It is a worthwhile challenge to have this user-centered perspective in mind and be conscious of how it manifests in the design decisions.
Project Objectives, functionality program (clues and constraints), and its implementation in the design
The Project Objectives delivered by the Client indicate five functional groups of spaces: didactic, scientific labs and researchers rooms, services, administrative and for common use, and sport. Project Objectives requires to allocate 25% of the area for common space (like hallways, corridors). This constraint is consistent with the Polish construction code, but not relevant to the functional characteristics of the academic community. Long story short: life (especially social one) goes on in between, so it is worth to have enough comfortable space for it.
During the concept design phase, we analyzed the needs specific for the Faculty of Psychology community. We conducted interviews with the faculty members and administration workers and a questionnaire. We could also use the data from previous research reports prepared by students and the content of faculty members’ internal mailing list.
Functionality
There were two crucial issues from the environmental psychology perspective revealed in the research reports and interviews: a privacy “zoning”, and a common space for social activities.
The privacy “zoning” concerns the relations and communication between students and faculty members. Faculty members point of view is that the design should meet their needs concerning a perception of privacy and control over it, as their work consists of both individual and teamwork (research) and didactic activities (lectures and meetings with students). Changes in the privacy level and ability to the self-control of their accessibility for students, and other coworkers’ needs to be gradual. This gradation helps to regulate a level of stimulation and facilitate entering social interactions.
You can read about the similar effect in Oscar Newman’s Creating defensible space (1996); that’s also a reason why the open-space offices don’t work.
Figure 1. A privacy zoning scheme. Relations between the faculty members and the students translate to the spatial relations.
The assumptions on privacy and social activities underline two design decisions. The first one is to locate the didactic rooms and auditoriums on the lower levels and the researchers’ offices on the higher ones. The second is to design departments’ units with graduate privacy zoning. Every unit should have private rooms for individual work and a small conference room for meetings and teamwork, which might be transparent and visible from the hallways.
The biggest constraint was a specification for the corridors and common spaces (25% of the usable space). As mentioned before, the hallways are the places where social life goes on in the academic building. It does not only serve as an evacuation route or a route from point A to B. It is a configuration of essential places for both individual activities, and spontaneous, as well as planned meetings. Therefore it requires a suitable proportion of sociofugal and sociopetal (see: Sommer, 1969) interior design. Due to the 25% constrain it is the main hall that serves as a social interaction center with its vicinity of a bookstore, a library, a student council room, and an exit to the garden. Wider corridors were also designed near to the bigger auditoriums.
Organization identity
We were able to conclude some basic organization identity characteristics from available research data and the psychological theory of central traits. Solomon Asch’s (1946) research on central traits of personality impressions indicate the characteristics that influence the impression of someone’s personality. He pointed out the warm - cold dimension. These traits are not only separate characteristics, but they also add specific qualities to the other traits. For example, when you hear that someone is “intelligent and warm” it evokes different impression about that person than “intelligent and cold”. Later research (Rosenberg, Nelson, and Vivekanathan, 1968) on the structure of traits similarity, shows two main dimensions on which we develope the personality impression. They indicated: a “good - bad social functioning” and a “good - bad intellectual functioning”.
From the research reports and the interviews, we had known that the faculty members and the students see themselves as a diverse, open, sociable, and highly professional community.
The question was, how to translate this personality and identity traits into both interior and exterior design articulation and the decisions about materials.
The quotation form handbook about psychological skills in interview and observation techniques (Szustrowa, 1991) serves as a motto for the design idea that the building should be for its users the same way as a psychologist for his/her clients.
[The psychologist task is] “…to create such conditions for the diagnose or research participant so she could enter the relationship with herself in the most open and fulfill manner. [It could] “be on service for the client - by the way, he or she behave, helps the respondent-client in open expression of important content.” (Szustrowa, 1991, pp. 6-7)
Moreover, there is a lot of scientific papers about how articulation and building materials influence the impression of the personality of its users/habitants (Check this out: Acking, Kuller, 1972; Sadall, Sheets, 1993).
Faculty building facade design is mostly based on glass and aluminum in the white and gray color palette. Cold materials and colors with open composition, providing an optimal proportion of transparency, evoke both professionalism and openness. This effect is completed by a warm interior design based on wood and ceramic bricks.
The model of architectural psychologist and architects cooperation (the role of a psychologist in the design process)
Below I provide a few basic guidelines for an architectural psychologist or a design researcher working with the architects and their clients. The main goal is always to help them do their work better, notably better for the users.
Timing and data accuracy for particular design stage: ask questions and provide the answers that suite precisely the design stage goals and tasks,
Be the link - the connector: while for architects the main job is to design, and for the clients and the users it is important to participate, and to get the feedback; be the one who facilitates the participation process and carries on the organization of communication and participation flow.
Be the translator: architects and users speak different languages and think differently about the same things, help them understand each other better and faster, so they can save more time.
Provide the insight: care for what is the most important in problem understanding and problem-solving process as the design is mainly that kind of case.
Focus on the users: let others dive into the technical and budget details.
More about the issue of psychologist-researcher and architects cooperation is in my Ph.D. dissertation.
References:
The detailed analysis of the project and the design process is described in the research report prepared in the Institute of Design and Theory of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology:
The architectural spaces users’ needs in relation to sustainable development. The functionality of the built environment in terms of physical and physiological needs from the perspective of architectural and urban design, and social science (2011, in polish).
Literature pick:
Acking, D. A., Kuller, R. (1972). The perception of an interior as a function of its color. Ergonomics, 15, 645-654.
Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41(3), 258-290.
Newman, O. (1996). Creating Defensible Space. Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University.
Rosenberg, S., Nelson, C., Vivekanathan, P. S. (1968). A multidimensional approach to the structure of personality impressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 283-294.
Sadalla, E. K., Sheets, V. S. (1993). Symbolism in building materials: Self-preservation and cognitive components. Environment and Behavior, 25, 155-180.
Sommer, R. (1969). Sociofugal Space. The American Journal of Sociology, 72, 654-660.
Szustrowa, T. (1991). Swobodne techniki diagnostyczne, wywiad i obserwacja. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Date and place of the project:
2010 - 2011
Warsaw, Poland
Urban planning challenge of Nowa Towarowa
The challenge:
Introduce participatory design and human-centered design procedures, and solutions to the urban planning process of the city center’s site threatened by gentrification.
The outcome:
“Wola Rozwoju” - the program of urban planning design and strategy that implements the pedestrian and bicycle riders priority in the public spaces; thoughtful use of renewable energy sources in public space infrastructure, creation of new public spaces - elevated terraces integrated with office buildings.
keywords: urban planning, gentrification, public spaces, historic urban heritage
In cooperation with:
Arch. Magdalena Wrzesień, Arch. Monika Pękalska, Ph.D., and Krzysztof Martyniak
My role and responsibilities:
provide an environmental psychology expertise, coauthor of texts
FULL STORY
Site and context
Towarowa Street is situated in the Wola district of Warsaw. It is one of the old industrial parts of the city, close to the city center, currently extensively developing into a business district. The old residential and industrial buildings (those dated before WWII, as well as those built in the second half of the XX century) intertwine with the new residential and business investments. The growth of the business center is accelerated by the opening of a new metro line station. This site is like a microscope specimen in which we can see magnified, the phenomenon of rapidly growing socio-economic inequality and gentrification.
The cultural and historic institutions situated in close vicinity of Towarowa Street (e.g., Muzeum Woli, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego 1944 (The Warsaw Rising Museum)) and low density of the buildings open an opportunity for the development of high-quality public spaces. The domination of road infrastructure on Towarowa Street and perpendicular Prosta Street is an additional challenge.
Figure 1. Workshop site map.
Task
The Nowa Towarowa Project had two stages. First, the competition, and second - workshops - focused on the development of the programs that passed the first stage.
The main task of the workshop was to prepare a program of possible changes and urban development in the vicinity of Towarowa Street in Warsaw, Poland.
Our approach: “Wola Rozwoju” - project and program proposal
Main challenges:
Full range of the economic status mosaic - an ideal “occasion” for gentrification.
Historical heritage and the old residential buildings in the fast-growing business district.
The pedestrian and bicycle priority are facing the heavy through car traffic, and extensive road infrastructure.
The response: concept project and program of a future urban development
We proposed changes at three scales: global - a city scale, local - a site scale, and a human scale. By the human scale we understand, what is perceived and experienced by the pedestrians nearby (everything below 3 meters high).
City scale
Figure 2. City scale (Lubomirski’s trenches: light green line; Avenue on the Slope: dark green line; cultural institutions: pink dots; project site: black rectangular). Credits: Magdalena Wrzesień, Monika Pękalska
Towarowa Street is situated in a place of a historical track of the Lubomirski’s trenches. This location allows creating the Warsaw Circle of Tradition and Culture as a trail integrated with Aleja Na Skarpie (Avenue on the Slope - trail parallel to the Vistula River). It would connect the cultural institutions situated along the way (from Cytadela Warszawska, Warsaw Citadel with a new location of the Polish Army Museum and Polish History Museum to the north, to Royal Łazienki Museum and Park to the south).
Local scale
Figure 3. Local scale (bicycle and pedestrian trails: light green line; pink dot on the North-West: Warsaw Rising Museum; pink dots on the South-East: Wola Museum, and Kazimierz Wielki Square). Credits: Magdalena Wrzesień, Monika Pękalska
The interventions in the local scale tend to integrate the local historical context of industrial (Bormann, Szwede i spółka Towarzystwo Akcyjne Zakładów Mechanicznych; Elektrownia Tramwajów Miejskich w Warszawie - now the Warsaw Rising Museum headquarters) and trade (historic site of Kazimierz Wielki Square with market hall) with current business and cultural development.
Therefore we propose:
Adding the new public spaces and connections placed between existing ones on the opposite sides of Towarowa Street (Plac Europejski, the European Square and surroundings of the Warsaw Rising Museum). This spatial configuration includes the viewing terraces as a functional addition to the office buildings and public spaces.
The functional and organizational plan of the historical site of the Kazimierz Wielki Square that allows the services on a ground floor level of existing and new buildings.
The reduction of traffic and the number of parking slots in existing infrastructure and an extension of pedestrian and bicycle trails.
Human scale - guidelines for future changes
Figure 4. Human scale analysis drafts. Credits: Monika Pękalska.
The “three meters high” dimension focuses the attention on the quality of the pedestrians experience. The competition and workshop program is not enough to guarantee a high quality of urban planning decisions concerning the fast-growing business center on the historic urban tissue. Our proposal for the future changes includes a set of guidelines that may ensure the high quality of planning decisions evaluated from the users perspective.
The human scale of design and planning doesn’t require high-cost investments, rather micro-interventions that increase the comfort of spending time in the public spaces which are accessible, functional, rich in affordances, and safe.
The precise program of micro-interventions should be developed with the local community and based on the urban prototyping procedures that let verify the usability of specific solutions.
Planning the site with such a mosaic of social groups differing on socio-economic levels needs to take care of the participation of people from every social group that uses this place.
The cooperation of the cultural, industry, service, and NGO organizations in developing the functional program and functionality of public spaces may enrich the offer for citizens and makes the public space the common good.
The vicinity of Towarowa Street in the analyzed site is well communicated by public transportation and within a 20 min walk from the city center. Therefore a program of temporary and full-time road closure for private cars traffic should be taken into considerations.
The micro-interventions and the urban prototyping should proceed in parallel to the research program. This research should cover the indicators of the citizens’ needs and quality of the urban life that helps to monitor the outcomes of the implemented changes.
Date and place of the workshop:
2015 - 2016
Warsaw, Poland
Competition and workshop program [“Nowa Towarowa”] organized by: Wolskie Centrum Kultury; Muzeum Woli, department of Muzeum Warszawy; Fundacja Badań i Innowacji Społecznych „Stocznia”; Oddział Warszawski SARP; Ghelamco Poland; Skanska CDE.
External source:
The press article about all projects’ proposals of the workshop participants. [Link in polish]
Design the invisible dimension of urban spaces
The challenge:
Explain stimulation to architects. Show them how to translate it into design decisions.
The outcome:
Honorable Mention presentation during the seminary session at International Biennale of Architecture, Kraków, Poland
Provide the outline of theoretical assumptions to the Stimulation Design System that takes into account the levels and characteristics of a stimulation potentially generated by the specific design solutions.
keywords: sensory stimulation, affective qualities of the environment, stimulation as a design parameter
In cooperation with
Arch. Katarzyna Sentycz, AAI
My role and responsibilities:
coauthor
FULL STORY
Our bodies experience stimulation from three sources:
sensory (pertains to information coming through our senses),
social (as an effect of interaction with other people),
movement (sensation coming from our bodies while in a move).
We have a direct impact on the sensory stimulation in the design of a built environment. Our reactions to this stimulation manifest as the affective states. These emotional states influence our evaluation of the experienced environment. James Russell provided a two-dimensional classification of the affective reactions to the environment (A circumplex model of affect, 1980).
Figure 1. Circumplex model of affects (Russell, 1980). Source: Presentation at International Biennale of Architecture.
The vertical axis presents the level of stimulation from high (arousal) to low (sleepiness). The horizontal axis shows the type of emotional reaction as pleasant or unpleasant. We can identify places which make us: excited, relaxed calm, bored, tired, frustrated, or even afraid.
Of course, these reactions are individual for everyone. However, there is a relationship between specific stimuli and affective states, for instance: noise and stink coming from traffic tend to make us tired, the sound of moving trees and water, and a smell of forest – make us relaxed.
How does the sensory stimulation translate to the affective reactions?
Figure 2. Senses hierarchy. Source: Presentation at International Biennale of Architecture.
Sight and hearing are often called the distance senses because they give us information about what is happening around us and are more useful for navigating a complex environment.
The smell and touch are called close senses. They give information about what is happening now within arms reach.
To get a complete image of the environment, we use all of them.
Although architects and designers refer mostly to visual perception - here we are not going to talk about the sight. It is the only sense which can be “shut down” whenever a person decides to. At the same time, we cannot stop to hear upon the request. Moreover, we cannot stop to feel scents or odors that surround us. Also, yes, we are not able to live without the touch of the environment.
Let’s focus only on the remaining senses, which are often underestimated in the design process.
Hearing is the second most important sense in navigation activities. We can describe soundscape in the following categories:
Functions:
signals that carry the pieces of information,
background as a mixture of various sounds,
Sources (people, nature and artificial objects),
Intensity.
The city soundscape is mainly of an artificial source and high intensity. That’s why it is a cause of fatigue and frustration.
In other words, it’s more pleasant to walk around a park or to sit at a riverbank than to go for a walk along a highway or crowded street that elevates our level of stimulation.
The challenge is to maintain a proper ratio between natural and artificial sounds, and also to keep the intensity of the soundscape at a moderate level.
Scents and odors affect the most our emotional state and in consequence are most memorable. Those pleasant will always be a cause of positive emotions as opposed to unpleasant. We all can recall those moments when some smell stroked us either nice or disgusting.
Certainly, scents and odors are not standard tools in the architect’s workshop, but there are ways to control it like, for instance:
air movement & microclimate,
activity density,
topography,
used materials,
green elements.
Even the best looking place, if it’s associated with unpleasant odors, will never be considered as pleasant. So the challenge is not only to reduce the unpleasant odors but also to provide and maximize the pleasant smellscape.
The touch is the most direct sense. While deciding to touch something, you choose to be touched. Elements of the built environment can be assessed through their functionality and quality of the experienced sensations.
According to the dimensions of Russell’s circumplex model of affects, we are rarely excited (arousal pleasure affect) by the tactile qualities of our surroundings. If the objects, we touch in architecture and urban scale, perform as we expect, and at the same time give pleasant feelings our affective sensation is probably pleasing, or we proceed with what we’re doing not bothered by the qualities of that artifacts. Let’s use a bench as an example. When sitting on a comfortable and pleasant bench in general, we can be calm and relaxed. However, if we use a seat still functional but somehow unpleasant (let say made of steel and exposed to sun), then our sensations change to negative, and the affective state drives towards the unpleasant experience. If we add to unpleasant feelings non-functional characteristics, like for instance bench which is too narrow to sit on, we certainly end up frustrated, and annoyed, and finally more tired.
System
Everything we talked about so far seems to be quite straightforward. Moreover, this is true when analyzing individual objects. However when we think about all the elements of the built environment and their impact on the user’s affective reactions, we face a considerable challenge. The challenge is to combine multi-sensory stimulation in design and to try not to leave most of the outcomes to chance. We can consider it as a work of a composer who needs to manage and to plan the combinations of multi-sensory qualities of the built environment and combine them into desired users’ experience that leads to the better quality of life. It is a laborious process to manually collect and analyze this complex data in a systematic way.
How about a software system able to analyze all elements of the built environment and translates them into stimulation levels and qualities?
This system would not only evaluate the existing environment but also would help to design new spaces taking into account the user’s emotional reactions.
Literature pick:
Henshaw, V. (2013). Urban Smellscapes: Understanding and Designing City Smell Environments. London: Routledge.
Rodaway, P. (1994). Sensuous Geographies: Body, sense, and place. New York:
Routledge.
Schafer, R. M. (1977). The Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Non-visual legibility of urban spaces: design verification
The challenge:
Find the way to verify the legibility of urban design at the concept design stage, to get insight into the blind and visually impaired people perspective, and to provide the recommendations to the architects.
The outcome:
Experiment methodology developed for urban plan evaluation.
Set of essential “how-to” instructions on talking about the spatial legibility and urban design with users, especially blind and visually impaired ones.
keywords: Design for All, participatory design, cognitive maps, spatial orientation, non-visual legibility, blindness, tactile map
In cooperation with:
Prof. dr hab. inż. arch. Ewa Kuryłowicz, Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology
My role and responsibilities:
researcher: planning and conducting research, data analysis, report preparation,
coauthor
FULL STORY
Context
Why did we focus on a non-visual perception in a spatial orientation?
Spatial functioning based on the non-visual perception is an extreme case. As Tim Brown wrote in his book: Change by Design (pp. 44):
By concentrating solely on the bulge at the center of the bell curve, however, we are more likely to confirm what we already know than learn something new and surprising. For insights at that level we need to head for the edges, the places where we expect to find ‘extreme’ users who live differently, think differently, and consume differently…
Blind and visually impaired persons seem to be a group of experts when it comes to studying the non-visual legibility of the built environments. This environmental quality is a crucial factor affecting their independent and safe functioning.
Professor Ewa Kuryłowicz (1996/2005, p. 7) states: “designers have no right to refer their individual experience and capabilities to the capabilities of others that are forced to use the designed environment”.
It is hard to deduce what will facilitate blind people’s spatial functioning based on the designers’ individual experience and intuition. There are different mechanisms behind collecting and managing pieces of information about the environment used by sighted and blind persons (Golledge and Stimpson, 1997). Although blind and visually impaired people ability to navigate and spatial orientation are at the same level as those who use visual clues (e.g., Ungar, 2000). The input (stimuli sources) is different, and the effectiveness may vary.
Tactile maps are the tools that help blind and visually impaired people gain the cognitive maps of the environment. There are several types of tactile maps for different use cases (an “orientation map” for general overview of a bigger area, a “mobility map” in larger scale to show details important for navigating specific route, “individual map” or a “target-route” map containing the informations dedicated for particular users and their needs) (James 1982, Harder and Michel, 2002).
How can we use the tactile maps in the urban and architectural design process?
How can we verify the design outcomes using tactile maps (e.g., legibility of the built environment configuration for blind users)?
Method (experiment and structured interviews)
The main goal of this research was to verify the legibility of the urban environment from a blind person perspective at the concept design stage. We used four students’ projects in the experiment. Which students’ projects were easier to learn and more legible for blind users?
To answer this question, we conducted an experiment in combination with the structured interviews using the tactile maps of students’ urban designs.
Architecture students’ task was to transform and redesign the Pichelsberger Tip (Olympic Park close Berlin) into an attractive, functional, and fully accessible compound for sports and stage events alike.
During the experiment (one-way repeated measures ANOVA) procedure, four students’ projects prepared as tactile maps were presented to 12 participants rotationally. Their activities were recorded on video.
There were five dependent variables in the experimental part of the study:
time spent on getting familiar with the map,
time of looking for a preferred route from A to B,
time of showing the chosen path from A to B,
number of the attempts to show the path (amount of change in chosen initially route),
a number of errors in the following chosen way.
The study proceeded in three steps:
learning (dependent variable no. 1),
analyzing (dependent variables no. 2-5),
evaluating (structured interview).
In the evaluation phase, they were asked to show the most accessible paths, and potentially the most difficult places (in which they might get lost or experience difficulties in spatial orientation), and explain their choices.
Results and conclusions
The results show that there are no significant differences between students’ projects measured by listed dependent variables. Ergo spatial configurations in the projects were at a similar level of difficulty for blind and visually impaired participants.
However, the evaluation during the structured interviews shows similar tendencies in users’ preferences as those in quantitative data, indicating the worst and the best design solutions for blind and visually impaired users.
Which were the most accessible paths?
Figure 1. The most accessible routes. Credits: Kuryłowicz and Bogucka (2011), Journal of Biourbanism.
Paradoxically, the most accessible paths (solid brown lines) chosen by participants were those existing on the terrain and not allowed to change in the design.
Which were the most difficult places, and why?
Figure 2. Illegible places (the red are the worst). Credits: Kuryłowicz and Bogucka (2011), Journal of Biourbanism.
As you can see above, the list of “sins” include:
an intersection of more than two roads,
an intersection of not perpendicular streets,
the paths that are in an arc shape,
wide-open space without orientation point.
PS. If you wonder…
why not to take in research the sighted users instead of the blind and vision impaired ones, take a look at my poster presented during the Universal Design Conference UD2012 in Oslo, Norway.
Take with you
How to face the challenge of participatory design with blind and visually impaired people on board?
When to start the research (testing)?
Start as soon as you have some schematic versions of concept design. Please, verify with them follow-up changes and more detailed design decisions that may influence their spatial functionality (e.g., the layout of specific places, selection of materials, and its acoustic and tactile consequences).
How to show the design to the users?
Use the Braille and the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc. [guidelines] for tactile graphics design. Thanks to that, they can focus on the design solutions characteristics instead of learning a new sign system at first.
How to ask questions about legibility (especially non-visual legibility)?
The tricky part is that the user - most of the time, a layman in urban design, is not used to think about the built environment in such categories as legibility or coherence of a spatial configuration. They are experts in everyday living in this environment and using it. Try to conclude about the legibility from the observation of their effectiveness and comfort in everyday-like spatial functioning.
Don’t ask: is this space legible, or worse: is this design legible? The answers may leave you even more confused.
First, as I mentioned above, they don’t understand the space legibility the way you as a designer or design researcher understand it. They don’t think of space using these categories.
Second, you might have no idea if they are talking about the legibility of specific design solutions (spatial configurations) or maybe about the design itself - the way it was prepared and presented to them. Make sure both parties (researcher and research participants) are on the same page of the legibility topic.
Literature pick
Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design. How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Harder, A., Michel, R. (2002) The target-route map: Evaluating its usability for visually impaired persons. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 96, pp. 511-523.
James, G. A. (1982) Mobility maps. In: W. Shiff and E. Foulke (ed.), Tactual Perception: A Source-Book (pp. 334-363). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kuryłowicz, E. (1996/2005). Projektowanie uniwersalne: uwarunkowania
architektoniczne kształtowania otoczenia wybudowanego przyjaznego dla osób
niepełnosprawnych. Wydanie II. Warszawa: Fundacja Integracja.
Golledge, R. G., Stimson, R. J. (1997). Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective.
New York, London: Guilford Press.
Ungar, S. (2000). Cognitive mapping without visual experience. In: R. Kitchin, S.
Freudschuh (ed.), Cognitive mapping: past, present, and future (pp. 221-248).
London, New York: Routledge.
Read more:
The scientific papers that provide the details of the presented issue:
Kuryłowicz, E., Bogucka, Z. (2011). How to investigate and improve legibility of urban projects to make them understandable for blind people? Contribution of Social and Behavioural Sciences Methods to Design for All Approach. Journal of Biourbanism, 1, 41-58. [Link]
Bogucka, Z. (2011). Partycypacja w kształtowaniu przestrzeni miejskiej – psychologiczne spojrzenie na spójność przestrzeni w relacji do potrzeb wszystkich jej użytkowników: szczególny przypadek osób niewidomych. In: K. Guranowska-Gruszecka (red.) Miasto zwarte, miasto rozproszone. Materiały ogólnopolskiej konferencji Doktorantów Wydziałów Architektury. Warszawa: Wydział Architektury Politechniki Warszawskiej, 113 – 120.
Bogucka, Z. (2012). Choose the easiest path: comparison of urban design for ease of cognitive mapping by blind persons. Conference UD2012, Oslo, June 11–13 2012. [Link]
Date and place of the research:
2011 - 2012
Institute of Design and Theory of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
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Figure 1. Workshop site map.
Figure 1. Circumplex model of affects (Russell, 1980). Source: Presentation at International Biennale of Architecture.
Figure 2. Senses hierarchy. Source: Presentation at International Biennale of Architecture.
