The Impact on Student Cognitive Performance from Classroom Design Utilizing Views of Nature and Daylight

This project engages senior interior design students, to investigate the impacts of different lighting attributes including illuminance, and spatial pattern of light on wayfinding behavior in a complex healthcare environment (identified university community engagement partner, Los Angeles Home for Aging) by using Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs). In this study, twelve IVE cases/scenarios will be created with three different levels of illumination (200, 500 and 750 lux), and spatial pattern of light (uniform/non uniform, direct/indirect, and central/peripheral). The IVEs will be created based on the physical environment characteristic of the healthcare environment. The IVEs will be used to measure the participants wayfinding performance while participants navigate the virtual environments to find assigned destinations. To address the impact of different lighting variables, this study collects data on the total time of navigation, success/failure in finding destinations, and visual points of interest (through eye-tracking procedure). The findings of this study will provide design recommendations for improving the lighting design in complex healthcare environments. These would help create supportive environments that ultimately improve the quality of health and ameliorate anxiety and depression-like behavior for patients, staff, and family visitors. The findings of this study will also provide design recommendations for healthcare facilities in regard to designing lighting. Students involved in this project will provide lighting design guidelines that can positively impact wayfinding and subsequently contribute to the recovery, rehabilitation, wellbeing, and quality of life for residents in assisted living facilities.

Experiencing Evidence to Build Empathy: Improving Spatial Design Through Simulated Experience Using a Gerontological Suit

Designers are tasked with creating universally accessible spaces that will be experienced by a broader spectrum of users than ever before, accommodating individuals ranging in age, health, and ability. Whether visible or invisible, disability and chronic illness impact an individual’s experience in the built environment. 

For teachers working in spaces primarily designed for children, taking on additional strain due to conditions such as injury, chronic illness, sensory sensitivity, or pregnancy in their professional environment can exacerbate stress and challenges with teacher retention. How can an empathetic approach to understanding the unique experiences of educators facing various challenges improve the design of educational facilities and support well-being and optimal outcomes for both students and teachers?

Through an approach that connects insight gained from real educators with data gleaned through experimental simulations, this research aims to evaluate pain points in the built environment for educators experiencing a broad range of conditions and to provide design strategies that support educator well-being and self-efficacy. 

This study first seeks to develop user personas and journey maps guided by surveys and in-depth interviews. Building on the experiences shared, a simulation approach will be taken using a gerontological suit and other physical interventions in real education environments to simulate commonly cited disability conditions. The resulting insights will lead to a comparative analysis of journey maps and opportunities for design improvement. The implications drawn from these findings will be explored in design workshops, facilitating the application of empathetic insights to develop teacher-supportive strategies to improve school design.

Enhancing Acoustic Comfort in Dormitories for Students with Developmental Disabilities: Spatial and Construction Guidelines

The relationship between environment and an individual's well-being is pronounced more evidently in those with developmental disabilities. Given the heightened sensory sensitivities prevalent among students with developmental disabilities, ensuring acoustic comfort in their living spaces is paramount. Despite the significant strides in accessible design, dormitories often overlook the intricacies of acoustic dynamics, a facet that plays a pivotal role in the overall well-being and academic success of these students. At a campus housing facility in Florida International University, students with developmental disabilities have found to experience greater challenges and discomfort from noise compared to their peers. Student dormitories across other campuses in the nation might be suffering from similar issues, often overlooking heightened sensitivity to noise. The goal of this research is to propose spatial and construction guidelines for dormitory layouts that enhance the well-being of students with developmental disabilities by addressing noise levels.

The Inclusive Classroom: Effects of Classroom Lighting on Students with ASD

Interior lighting influences human development, function, and behavior.  Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are becoming the most common lighting fixture due to their long-life span, energy efficiency, and low maintenance, however, LEDs’ influence on children’s behavior, learning and academic success is still unknown. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children process and respond to stimuli faster than adults and react differently to visual light.  Limited lighting studies have been performed in actual classroom environments or focused on children.  The long-term goal is to identify the appropriate correlated color temperature (CCT) of LED lighting to install in classrooms since CCT levels are not specified in architectural codes. The CCT of lighting is known to influence human behavior and refers to the temperature of the light from warm to cool.  As more schools switch to LED lighting, there is a critical need to determine LED’s influence on ASD student behavior, learning and academic success to create an inclusive general education classroom.   

This study will use a within-subjects design in a public school elementary room. Non-participant observations will examine how ASD students’ interaction with teachers, peers, and tasks under cool CCT LED lighting compared to their interactions under warm CCT LED lighting.  Data will be collected utilizing the Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS), input into SPSS, and analyzed.

Outcomes of this study will determine the appropriate CCT level of lighting for classrooms. Establishing measurements of lighting in conjunction with behavioral observations, descriptive and prescriptive information about lighting that influences children’s engagement behaviors can influence policy change.

Co-Designing for Neurodiversity in a Discovery Museum

Museums have been called to focus efforts on underserved visitors such as neurodiverse individuals (NIs) including those who identify with the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) community and often experience heightened anxieties navigating museums. As museums become increasingly hybrid spaces which leverage both digital & physical experiences, our project explores the role of designing across the digital-physical spatial continuum to empower NIs to independently prepare, navigate, and experience museums. Interior designers can play a vital role in expanding the spatial resources available pre-visit and during the visit to a museum.

We propose a community-engaged project with a research component that focuses on co-designing for neurodiversity in a discovery museum to advance education, research, and tools for hybrid interiors. While prior work by design researchers has called for the importance of designing for ‘sensory well-being' across all environments (Park et al., 2020) and there has been a focus on examining technologies such as virtual reality (VR) to support inclusive museum experiences, interior design students have less frequently had opportunities to design with neurodiverse stakeholders to enhance the inclusivity of interiors. Through a co-design process, interior design students will partner with NIs to use 3D Space-Capture technology to transform the existing museum into an immersive digital twin model. This will result in the production of two key deliverables to expand the inclusive hybrid museum experience including 1) 3D Socio-Spatial Story and 2) 360 Virtual Tour. In addition to the spatial prototypes, student learning outcomes will prioritize designing with NIs and evidence-based design approaches.

Designing for Health Equity: Advancing the Public Repository to Engage

The importance of a healthy indoor environment starts before a building occupant walks through the door. The CDC estimates a significant proportion of a person’s health is attributed to environmental quality, personal education, and behavior constraints impacting their community. Information on these economic and social factors can be found in numerous publicly accessible data sets. However, the complex network of federal agencies leads to diverse data platforms often targeting discrete, non-design stakeholders. This limits the accessibility and integration of this information early in the design process when diversity and inclusion can most effectively be addressed. Addressing social and environmental injustices requires documenting and responding to existing health disparities. This study proposes an open-source, free dashboard tailored for the design community to quantify health challenges, identify health priorities, and educate designers on the significance of these metrics to inform design action. The Public Repository to Engage Community & Enhance Design Equity (PRECEDE) tool integrates public health data and environmental design to promote quality of life within communities impacted by new design development. PRECEDE will aggregate existing public health research, healthy building certifications, standards, and existing design case studies and facilitate trans-disciplinary partnerships to support design solutions. The research team has identified over 40 design-relevant health indicators to support interior design, including obesity, diabetes, asthma, sleep hours, and traffic proximity. These health indicators directly impact design decisions around physical activity, material selection, circadian lighting, and ventilation.

Design for Health: Resilient Age Inclusive Design (RAD)

Design for Health (D4H), an interdisciplinary team that includes researchers and practitioners from interior design, social work, sociology, business, and environmental health propose to develop a resilient and age-inclusive design (RAD) assessment framework that can be used to evaluate the social determinant of health (SDoH) outcomes of older adults characterized by rurality, poverty, and experiencing housing issues. D4H hypothesizes that an evidence-informed assessment framework rooted in principles of resiliency and age-inclusivity is needed to uncover adverse SDoH outcomes experienced by rural older adults living in poverty. D4H will conduct mixed methods research in 3 phases: project conception, assessment framework design, and assessment framework dissemination. The transformative RAD project will be informed and guided by diverse stakeholder groups representing the lived experiences of older adults, service providers, and other content experts. D4H will share SDoH outcomes, resiliency factors, community engagement factors, and design strategies to promote health and well-being of older adults. Two research questions proposed are:

1.What SDoH factors should be included in an interdisciplinary assessment for older adults who experience poverty, rurality, and housing issues? (formative evaluation)

2.What resiliency and age-inclusive design interventions and strategies should be developed to improve the quality of life for older adults who experience poverty, rurality, and housing issues? (process evaluation)

Research findings will result in the development and dissemination of the RAD assessment and intervention framework to enrich the interior design profession and ultimately strengthen the well-being and quality of life for older adults who experience poverty, rurality, and housing issues.