Image: aloshbennett | Flickr

The two: building and occupants, have an unparalleled relationship where each adapts to the other over time and in different ways — and as new technologies, and in particular gesture technology, makes its way into the forefront, I think that buildings will be able to communicate with occupants through more natural, nonverbal and real-time cues.

For this reason, by not only observing communication gestures, but by also making use of them, you will be able to create architecture that not only better adapts to your occupants as their daily needs change, but you will also be able to enhance your own design skillset as you will better understand your client’s and occupants’ behavioral signals, so you can envision architectural solutions for them that they may not be able to articulate verbally.

There is an entire design fabric that you can acquire by simply understanding nonverbal communication elicited by your occupants as they inhabit built environments. In other words, occupants have behaviors and habits which can help you optimize your current design visions — and help you formulate renewed design visions that are innovative, improving upon present-day conventions about what we think occupants do in building designs.

Understanding Occupant Behaviors Using Communication Gestures

An open-source gesture technology which has surfaced is a glove within which is embedded an accelerometer, and from which information can be gathered and coupled with computer scripts, which link the wearer’s communication gestures to move such things as robotic objects. (1) While I do not see a future where all building occupants are always wearing such gloves to remotely control or interact with all of the objects within their surroundings, I do see certain uses where architecture can give occupant gestures meaning, particularly naturally occurring and/or intentional gestures.

For instance, many buildings today have lights that turn on and off automatically depending upon when and where an occupant enters into a room. As such, I can perceive a future where such natural and simple occupant behaviors (like walking into or exiting a room) within a building are used to develop environments which adapt more personally and more transiently to occupant needs at just the right moments within their experiential journey. The key here is to not overlook the naturally occurring communication gestures that occupants inherently emit as they go about their daily lives, even the simple and often overlooked ones, for these can be just as useful to you as a designer as their more obvious and purposefully-driven hand or body gesture signals.

How Everyday Objects Can Tie Architecture to the Human Body

Now, as new ways continue to develop for architecture to communicate with its occupants through more natural interfaces, I do see objects within architectural environments being used as a powerful intermediary between building and human body. And as more mobile and ubiquitous sensing technologies are embedded within everyday objects (such as furniture, lighting, appliances, and hand-held objects) the collective amount of information gathered will be able to communicate behavioral clues about an occupant. Thus, everyday objects are a means by which architecture can “interpret” its occupants’ behaviors. And from these, the building may respond accordingly.

Either way, the key becomes to design your buildings in a way that renews, with meaning, the relationship between a building and its occupants — whether they be communication gestures that are sensed through objects within an environment, observed as natural occupant body movements or even accessed through wearable sensors which monitor occupant behaviors.

The key is for you as an architect to not overlook the nuances in your occupants’ behaviors — not only focusing on the big things like when and where they sleep, eat, and work, but also by focusing on the little things like how they like to re-energize while working as compared to while exercising. Another aspect to consider is how your occupants communicate with each other nonverbally as they carry on with their daily functions. You can even take this a step further by looking at nuances in your occupants’ behavior when they see something of beauty — noticing what inspires them, tires them or teaches them.

Needless to say, as an architect there may be times where you need to act as a detective to unravel the nonverbal language which your occupants reveal, for there is likely great inspiration and knowledge within those nonverbal communication gestures from which you can draw more beautiful and innovative architectural designs that are equally unique as they are universal.

Citation:

(1) Covert, Adrian. Open-Source, Accelerometer-Equipped Glove Allows for Infinite Control Possibilities. PopSci.com. July 9, 2009

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter and Facebook followers by clicking on the “re-tweet” and “like” button at the beginning of this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: on_the_wings | Flickr

So often interactive adaptive architectural interfaces must rely on picked up cues that are either created from occupant behaviors or from different objects within an environment that move, change or transmit other real-time information. And with these types of cues comes concern from building occupants about how “control” will be established between them and their surrounding built environment. For if a building is indeed adaptive, where are the control points? Who sets the rules? And how can the resulting architectural transient behavior be seamless for both the building system and its occupant?

Well, an exciting new brain computer interface technology has been demonstrated as a new way for users to interface with their machines. And I think such technology can serve as a liaison between occupants and their buildings. Created by Emotiv Systems, this head-worn device will literally allow one to signal change by simply using one’s own thinking power. Taking only a few minutes to put on this wireless interface technology, suddenly there is so much that can potentially be done to alleviate problem points with which many of today’s interface technologies often struggle.

Within an adaptive building, such technology could greatly ease the way that a building and its occupants communicate. While privacy is indeed a concern, there is an element of control here where the wearer of this interface technology must visualize in order to create the change they wish to experience.

As you will see in the video (at the end of this article), this head-worn device may seem a bit clunky by today’s standards — but if you can imagine where such technology might take us, you will see that the rippling effects in terms of usability can be far-reaching. Not only can such a device impact the many uses for augmented reality where someone using the technology can simply visualize an action through thought, and thus, create consequential behaviors in a virtual world, but it can also improve interactions in real-life applications by enhancing a user’s thinking power as they engage with their surroundings. Think smart buildings here.

Just imagine that within your own home you could use your thoughts to visualize how you would like a certain lighting condition to change, window glass to change in transparency or the temperature of a room to change by simply imagining the action that you would like to see carried out. Although at this point some of this may seem quite “magical”, there is a very real potential for this to not only work, but to have profound and positive life-changing benefits for those that not only use it, but need it. (What this can do for accessibility within buildings could potentially change the canvas of where we are today.)

Getting this “Magical” Headset to Sync with Other Building Systems

However, such a brain computer does not eliminate the need for transient architecture to look for other cues, and continue to develop its mechanisms within its own systems for making sense of incoming data. And of course, an adaptive building system must take into account more cues than just those found within an occupant’s visualization powers and within the behavior of the objects within their building environment. Also, adaptive architecture must also take into account things like external environmental conditions, and the needs of both a collective body of occupants as well as those needs of only an individual. It must synchronize with all of these.

Taking all of this into account, I do think that this Emotiv Systems brain computer interface is definitely making some steps toward thinking outside the box. As more ways for occupants to interact with their built environment come into the forefront, adaptive architecture will be that much better because it will be able to make more sense of a building occupant’s goals, with a more seamless approach on how to get them there.

The following is a video where Tan Le, the head of Emotive Systems, explains how this brain computer interface technology works. Within this video you will see a live demonstration which is quite amazing to watch, and no doubt, you will immediately be struck by other ideas on how this headset technology will impact architectural design through more far-reaching applications.

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter and Facebook followers by clicking on the “re-tweet” and “like” button at the beginning of this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: batintherain | Flickr

As an architect, is important for you to understand your occupants as more than just and “occupant load”, and really begin to understand the demographics of who will be using your building and why — and most importantly what do they want to achieve when within it. This is important because as new technologies surface, architecture is gaining greater ability to personalize itself to its occupants, in real-time — hence, the promises and challenges of adaptive architecture.

An article I read recently entitled User Interface Design for Beginners, Intermediates or Experts, explains how user interface design often caters to the “intermediate” user because of the simple fact that most users will fall within this category. This is because very few users are actually beginners and even fewer are experts. (As was explained in the article, the reason for this is that beginners very rarely stay beginners as they will soon advance to being intermediate users.) The article further explains that while it is still very important to meet the needs of experts and beginners, user interface designers should very heavily keep the intermediate users in mind as they design the bulk of an interface. (1)

So, what does this mean for adaptive architecture and its architectural design usability?

As a designer of interactive and adaptive space, how do you make decisions about where to personalize elements for occupants, while still making them collectively accessible? Furthermore, who should you target? Why? And when?

An Adaptive Classroom Design for Learners

Let’s discuss the example of the design of an adaptive classroom architecture. Should this design’s occupant experience cater to mostly intermediate, beginner or expert learners? If you are the designer in this example, you might ask yourself the following questions:

1. How can I design a room that meets the needs of the beginners and gets them to advance? By possibly holding them to certain standards and rules established by the adaptive architectural system?
2. But then, how can I design the classroom’s architectural adaptive system with certain freedom by which intermediates can become experts? And so that learning can happen at any pace?
3. Finally, how can I make this classroom’s architectural adaptive system able to guide further learning for experts, so they don’t feel limited? (Certain limitations can arise if a system is too biased toward the beginners — with so many rules that experts can’t break free.)

As you can see, the architecture of an adaptive classroom is much more than a place where learning “just happens”, it is a place that can spark and guide that learning if designed well. For this reason, I encourage you to ask similar questions of your work. Consider what other demographic information you can use about your occupants. (Their ages, native-languages, genders and so on.) Also, such questions can be used for any building type.

The main idea is to really get to the core of your building’s mission. Then, use that mission to optimize that building’s functions by learning and designing for your occupants with greater inherent strategy that promotes both guidance and freedom for your architecture’s occupants.

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter and Facebook followers by “tweeting” and “sharing” it using the buttons at the beginning of this page.

(1) Article Reference: User Interface Design for Beginners, Intermediates or Experts?

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: caribb | Flickr

DON’T CLICK IT!

I found a novel idea in a website called Don’t Click It, created by the Institute for Interactive Research. This site is great because it challenges the convention of how users typically interact with their computer — this is an entire website that actually does not want you to click. It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s different. It brings new life to user interface design.

Here is the Link: Don’t Click It

REVAMP YOUR DESIGNS

Wouldn’t it be great to design a building that pushes certain conventions, like Don’t Click It does? By questioning how we all do things, we can reach more innovative and interactive architectural design solutions.

As architectural technology and emerging architectural tools provide us with new and improved ways to design, you should be questioning what buildings do and how they do it.

Innovation is more than just using new technologies to get the same old result — it is about solving problems in creative ways that challenge conventions. By doing this, you will expose limitations, uncover opportunities for improvement and find new and innovative ideas.

The goal is for your architecture to evolve.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: Mypokcik | Dreamstime

Smart environments are currently being developed — such an example is the EasyLiving project at Microsoft Research. In these spaces both occupants and objects are sensed by ubiquitous computing devices embedded within the environment. So, as occupants strive to communicate with their surroundings, interface design becomes critical.

Within the smart environment there may exist a multitude of sensor types. In the EasyLiving paper entitled How a Smart Environment Can Use Perception, cameras, microphones, active badges and pressure sensing floors are all listed as sensing devices. Of course, the list goes on and on as new technology evolves; however, the main overarching goal for all devices is to develop the smart environment to detect both people and objects in “context”.(1)

This idea of sensing “context” means that a given environment can sense what goes on within it to determine an occupant’s given state over time. The smart environment reacts automatically to assist the occupant as certain objectives are targeted. Features like person recognition, person location, person activity and person expression may all be sensed by smart architecture trying to read its occupant’s needs.(1) Additionally, to help with this, objects may be sensed within a given environment as well. Again, objects are sensed in “context” – two methods are object tracking and object recognition.

So, what happens to architectural design as environments become smarter? How will the user interface design of architectural features look and feel? What will happen to interior design and architecture as ubiquitous computing becomes more widespread?

Well, for starters, occupants will begin to communicate with their environments more and more. Occupants will gesture, for example, sending signals to their surroundings. And if occupant expression, gaze and speech can direct environmental features, then architectural design will have more transient states.(1) Thus, the advent of smart architecture brings with it greater potential for a more comprehensive composition of architectural space – including targeting all of an occupant’s senses.

Already, certain new technologies are emerging – such as new objects that can help occupants communicate with their smart environment. The “XWand”, for instance, can be held in different orientations that signal the environment to take action.(1) We are headed toward environments where everyday objects will ultimately take part in the world of ubiquitous computing. Embedded devices will be everywhere and most objects will take part by integrating more subtle and sophisticated design interfaces.

Perception will be two-way — not just from occupant to architecture, but also from architecture to occupant.

(1) Krumm, John, et al. How a Smart Environment Can Use Perception. Microsoft Corporation.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman