Learning from Neuroscience: Strategies for Integrating User Experiences into the Architectural Design Process

Description

The transition that has taken place over the past three centuries, from architecture built by master builders to architecture built by architects, has significantly impacted the architectural design process. The design of architecture has shifted from the site to the desk, its construction has been detached from the design process, and the role users play in the design and construction process has largely become theoretical. This transformation starkly contrasts with enduring insights from architectural phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience, which emphasise the profound impact of user-environment relationships. Recent discoveries in neuroscience underscore the importance of integrating future inhabitants and users not merely as theoretical entities but as beings with individual lived experiences into the architectural design process. However, efforts to incorporate users into the design process have faced significant challenges in practice.

This PhD thesis embraces this challenge. It starts with the hypothesis that recent biosensor technology, particularly brain imaging technology, as it has become significantly cheaper and available to a broader user group, offers new possibilities for effectively integrating users into the design process. Situated at the intersection of architectural phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, human-computer interaction (HCI), and environmental psychology, this thesis thus aims to address the question of how empirical research on user experience, utilising new brain imaging technology, can be integrated into architectural design processes and, therefore, support the development of strategies for a user-centred design model.

To investigate the suitability of employing Electroencephalography (EEG) and Virtual Reality (VR) in identifying the effects of the environment on humans, an experimental methodology is developed that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative approaches derived from a review of existing empirical studies in neuroarchitecture. This methodology, serving as a case study, focuses on creative performance in spaces of high aesthetic quality so as to compare EEG data in both VR and physical spaces to data obtained from standard creativity questionnaires and tasks. Creativity is suitable for short-term studies and of significant interest to designers; aesthetic experiences contribute to shifts of attention, the expansion of views, and the stabilisation of the human-environment relationship.

The thesis’ experimental study, measuring the participants’ brain responses with EEG, indicates that the aesthetic quality of designed spaces influences aesthetic experience as well as different stages of the creativity process. The experiment also shows that expert designers experience designed spaces in other ways than novice designers, the latter being more reactive to aesthetic stimuli; the former showing evidence of memory retrieval and integration of aesthetic experience with previous knowledge. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the potential of alpha and theta in examining aesthetic experiences, as well as occipital beta for investigating the sense of novelty. Therefore, the thesis concludes, albeit cautiously, that the combination of EEG + VR can assist in providing valuable insights into the effects of designed and built environments on users when employed as a complementary method along with other established methods. Based on these findings, the thesis finally proposes a design model that anchors users within the design process through a set of strategies incorporating EEG + VR methods and integrating user experience feedback into the design process.

Period	1 Sept 2019 → 8 Oct 2024
Examinee	Fatemeh Taherysayah
Degree of Recognition	International