Human Factors and architectural design

You may think that buildings and our environments have some effect on us as humans, but you may not realise how much of a profound cognitive effect our environment has. A Human Factors lens can be applied to the buildings we work, live and visit, as well as our environment as a whole. When any space is being designed the goal is human building congruence. Have you ever tried to do something in a space that it wasn’t designed for eg. Sleeping in an airport.

Within Human Factors, the environment is a mega system, the built world including public spaces and houses are parts of smaller systems. These systems directly surround humans, from macro to micro. Cognitive ergonomics seeks to foster placemaking, social sustainability along with physical ergonomics that is people centred design. Considering smooth accessibility, circulation, manoeuvrability and way finding in and around buildings can inform design in its early stages.

Corbusier (2007) described the house as “a machine for living” facilitating our activities and movement as part of a system that also has subsystems (Eilouti 2023). A house facilitates and mediates social interaction, bedrooms have privacy for sleeping whereas living areas are open plan. In fact, as more women have entered the workplace, spaces like bathrooms have grown to accommodate two people getting ready at the same time. We also have formulas for how much space around kitchen counters to allow for one or two people in the kitchen at a time, we all know the feeling of bumping into others when you move around a kitchen.

What are some of the key components to a cognitive ergonomic space? 

Balancing aesthetics and functionality; we have a beautiful new building in our central city that I visited recently. It has high ceilings to create a sense of space and beautiful aesthetics. While visiting I questioned why there was scaffolding all through this new space, to which it was shared that they had to change the light bulbs for the first time, and there was no safe way to do that than to put up scaffolding. Aesthetics over usability is madness.  

Ease of movement around spaces; the way we move around spaces, inside and out matters. We have different briefs and users for retirement villages and malls that channel us to certain places to spend money. We humans are cognitively lazy and unless it is essential, if something is hard to find or difficult, we will likely just not go there, even if it is beautiful or state of the art.

Ergonomics and layout; how often do you shop? Does the food trickle into your house or are you organised and do it all in one day? This might effect where you want your garage in closeness to your kitchen for ease of transporting goods. These sorts of questions should be asked in residential building design. Finding out movement detail about our user helps us design better layout and facilitate comfortable living.  

Psychological wellbeing – spaces have an effect on our productivity, mood, and mental health. Security, privacy, personalization, and space all effect our affect and can be crafted for wellbeing.  

Social interaction – buildings and spaces facilitate interaction, being close to your neighbours facilitates friendships. Sociopetal setting – facilitates social interaction, Sociofugal setting – discourages social interaction and these are used by a good cognitive ergonomics designer to create better spaces for work, education and social activities.  

Accessibility – aged care institutions need to consider way finding, common areas, creating community and privacy. They not only need to include all safety technology and facilitate a sense of personal choice and control. How do you give control to someone in an alzheimers unit? Non glare floors and calming environments to prevent startle responses, extra orientation and way finding aids, outdoor areas where residents appear to be free to come and go and minimising the need for personally constrain through the built area.  

We have an attachment to places. These social bonds are created in our homes through shelter, and affordances for daily living, meaning to trigger social relationships, memories, and identity. Covid 19 increased our home attachment because we spent all our time in one place which led to a change in attitudes and even a desire to have our homes create a sense of wellbeing – homes with more curves are trending (research shows curves make us feel relaxed and restful).  

Personal space - While cultures differ, there are distances for personal space and the facilitation of behaviour, intimate 0-45cm, personal 45 to 1.2m, social 1.2-3.6m, public 3.6-7.6m, these also differ based on the population density. Creating public spaces and places of work based on personal space principles could be the difference between people using it or not.  

Body Orientation - Males prefer liked individuals in face-to- face orientation. Females prefer liked individuals adjacent (side-to-side) Sommer’s (1965) research on cooperation vs. competition found co-operating pairs were often side-by-side, competing pairs sat across from each other. Both types of seating needs to be considered in offices and places where team work occurs. Sone & Morden (1976) conducted research about optimal distance to a therapist finding university students volunteered more personal information with a therapist at 1.5m distance vs. 0.6 or 2.7m. As leaders, if we want people to be comfortable sharing, distance matters.

Sustainability and passive housing has increased in popularity. Why not use air flow, daylight, views and thermal comfort to work with our environment. Certainly noise, which has a profound effect on our behaviour and wellbeing can be mitigated by design. Research on schools close to motorways shows learning is negatively impacted in comparison to quiet areas.

Biophilic design and wellbeing is bringing nature into our design. We have an undeniable affinity with nature, after all we have only relatively recently in our history moved away from it. Research in hospitals shows that when patients matched for similar procedures and demographics recovered faster when their view was of a green space all day, as opposed to a concrete. There are many examples where our physical health improves via our mental wellbeing and environment, something for the health industry to embrace.

There are so many cognitive ergonomic factors that should be considered in our architectural designs, and this brief overview again, puts the user at the centre.