|
Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health; 2018:5;2
|
EDITORIAL
What is Human-Centered Design? Should Anyone Care?
Sarah Williams Goldhagen
Managing Director of Human-Centered Design at Turf Advisory, USA
Managing Director of Human-Centered Design at Turf Advisory, USA
Human-Centered Design has ignited a by-now well-established revolution. “Design thinking” has proven itself a facilitator of creative, user-centered solutions to industrial-scale problems, helping companies produce affordable products tailored to the needs and desires of actual people rather than the economic abstraction of the rational actor. Firms (most famously, IDEO) market replicable methods and strategies that enable designers to incorporate fuzzy, difficult-to-quantify factors such as human emotions, physical preferences, cognitive schemas, the machinations of our perceptual faculties and habits into everything from home products to problem-solving strategies to human experiences. The result is a still-expanding market for the Human-Centered Design models and services, which range from software running on technological devices to high-tech sports gear to hotel interiors.
Until now, though, the principles and practices of Human-Centered Design have barely touched the larger-scale landscape of our built environments. That needs to change.
As I discuss in Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, several decades of research in disciplines such as Cognitive Neuroscience, Environmental Psychology, and Ecological Psychology have produced a watershed in our understanding of human perception and cognition. This research definitively confirms that humans are radically, fundamentally embedded in their physical habitats, with which they sustain an iterative, reciprocal relationship.
Today, for nearly all people, nearly all the time, the denotative synonym for habitat is built environment. And those habitats, our built environments, don’t rise from or nestle into the ground unless people construct them. In other words, human habitats, from the largest transportation terminal or city park to the smallest vacant lot or townhouse, are constructed and reconstructed (or abandoned) through a series of decisions, decisions that are made either by default or - more often - by choice.
Because people are making these decisions, each one of them could be made otherwise. The quality of our built environments, then, is by definition a matter of design.
The findings from the cognitive revolution unveil a startling, remarkable realization: stakeholders, contemporary markets, and even some practitioners misunderstand and grossly undervalue good design. When it comes to the built environments people inhabit, there is no such thing as neutral. If a park, or a hospital waiting room, or a streetscape, or a neighborhood, or a workplace isn’t designed in a way that inspires users and bypassers, that doesn’t support what they need or what they do, then they are quite literally inhibiting cognitive development, eroding people’s sense of well-being, compromising their physical and mental health. Poorly designed built environments impoverish people’s lives.
A lot of hands and minds are currently responsible for the design of our built environments. Architects. Civil Engineers. Landscape Architects. Urban Designers. Real estate developers. Project managers. Value engineers. Construction companies. The municipal authorities who write and adjudicate the zoning and building codes. And so on.
Currently, training in these professions does not include systematic exploration of the basics of human cognition and perception, much less investigate how that knowledge might be incorporated into design practices. That’s why we urgently need to expand the meaning and practices of Human-Centered Design beyond the things we consume to the places we inhabit every day. Schools. Hospitals. Homes. Libraries.
As it stands, even clients (including real estate developers) who purchase services from these professions fail to appreciate that good design is much less about personal taste than it is about human bodies and minds and spirits in interdependent relationships with constructed places. Designers absolutely should have freedom to innovate, to explore, and to problem-solve. But they need to do so within the framework of Human-Centered built environmental design.
We need new frameworks to analyze existing conditions from a human-centered point of view, to hold stakeholders accountable for the decisions they make, and we need guidelines that clarify what clients should look for and how designers can accomplish Human-Centered Design. The next environmental revolution is on its way.
Until now, though, the principles and practices of Human-Centered Design have barely touched the larger-scale landscape of our built environments. That needs to change.
As I discuss in Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, several decades of research in disciplines such as Cognitive Neuroscience, Environmental Psychology, and Ecological Psychology have produced a watershed in our understanding of human perception and cognition. This research definitively confirms that humans are radically, fundamentally embedded in their physical habitats, with which they sustain an iterative, reciprocal relationship.
Today, for nearly all people, nearly all the time, the denotative synonym for habitat is built environment. And those habitats, our built environments, don’t rise from or nestle into the ground unless people construct them. In other words, human habitats, from the largest transportation terminal or city park to the smallest vacant lot or townhouse, are constructed and reconstructed (or abandoned) through a series of decisions, decisions that are made either by default or - more often - by choice.
Because people are making these decisions, each one of them could be made otherwise. The quality of our built environments, then, is by definition a matter of design.
The findings from the cognitive revolution unveil a startling, remarkable realization: stakeholders, contemporary markets, and even some practitioners misunderstand and grossly undervalue good design. When it comes to the built environments people inhabit, there is no such thing as neutral. If a park, or a hospital waiting room, or a streetscape, or a neighborhood, or a workplace isn’t designed in a way that inspires users and bypassers, that doesn’t support what they need or what they do, then they are quite literally inhibiting cognitive development, eroding people’s sense of well-being, compromising their physical and mental health. Poorly designed built environments impoverish people’s lives.
A lot of hands and minds are currently responsible for the design of our built environments. Architects. Civil Engineers. Landscape Architects. Urban Designers. Real estate developers. Project managers. Value engineers. Construction companies. The municipal authorities who write and adjudicate the zoning and building codes. And so on.
Currently, training in these professions does not include systematic exploration of the basics of human cognition and perception, much less investigate how that knowledge might be incorporated into design practices. That’s why we urgently need to expand the meaning and practices of Human-Centered Design beyond the things we consume to the places we inhabit every day. Schools. Hospitals. Homes. Libraries.
As it stands, even clients (including real estate developers) who purchase services from these professions fail to appreciate that good design is much less about personal taste than it is about human bodies and minds and spirits in interdependent relationships with constructed places. Designers absolutely should have freedom to innovate, to explore, and to problem-solve. But they need to do so within the framework of Human-Centered built environmental design.
We need new frameworks to analyze existing conditions from a human-centered point of view, to hold stakeholders accountable for the decisions they make, and we need guidelines that clarify what clients should look for and how designers can accomplish Human-Centered Design. The next environmental revolution is on its way.
Copyright of this editorial is retained by the author.
About the Author
|
Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Managing Director of Human-Centered Design at Turf Advisory, is the author of Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes our Lives
@SarahWGoldhagen |