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Due to construction costs, the human effects of innovations in architectural design can be expensive to test. Post-occupancy studies provide valuable data about what did and did not work in the past, but they cannot provide direct feedback for new ideas that have not yet been attempted. This presents designers with something of a dilemma. How can we harness the best potential of new technology and design innovation, while avoiding costly and potentially harmful mistakes? The current research use virtual immersion and biometric data to provide a new form of extremely rigorous human-response testing prior to construction. The researchers’ hypothesis was that virtual test runs can help designers to identify potential problems and successes in their work prior to its being physically constructed. The pilot study aims to develop a digital pre-occupancy toolset to understand the impact of different interior design variables of learning environment (independent variables) on learning performance (dependent variable). This project provides a practical toolset to test the potential human impacts of architectural design innovations. The research responds to a growing call in the field for evidence-based design and for an inexpensive means of evaluating the potential human effects of new designs. Our research will address this challenge by developing a prototype mobile brain-body imaging interface that can be used in conjunction with virtual immersion.
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Evaluating Educational Settings through Biometric Data and Virtual Response Testing
The physical design of the learning environment has been shown to contribute significantly to student performance and educational outcomes. However, the existing literature on this topic relies primarily on generalized observations rather than on rigorous empirical testing. Broad trends in environmental impacts have been noted, but there is a lack of detailed evidence about how specific design variables can affect learning performance. The goal of this study was to apply a new approach in examining classroom design innovations. We developed a protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of classroom designs by measuring the physical responses of study participants as they interacted with different designs using a virtual reality platform. Our hypothesis was that virtual “test runs” can help designers to identify potential problems and successes in their work prior to its being physically constructed. The results of our initial pilot study indicated that this approach could yield important results about human responses to classroom design, and that the virtual environment seemed to be a reliable testing substitute when compared against real classroom environments. In addition to leading toward practical conclusions about specific classroom design variables, this project provides a new kind of research method and toolset to test the potential human impacts of a wide variety of architectural innovations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1757949
- PAR ID:
- 10090190
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACADIA
- ISSN:
- 0896-0178
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 118-125
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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