The Genetics of Design

For Tufts link see: https://sites.tufts.edu/uxdesign/

For ArchNewsNow.com link: 11.06.2018

How Do We See our World?

What grabs our eye first, second + third?

Come find out at the Discovery Museum in Acton, MA on Friday, October 5, 2018, from 4:30 – 7 PM. Admission’s free. It’s fun for all ages.

Our thanks to the Acton-Boxborough Cultural Council (ABCC) for providing Genetics of Design with funding to create this program; our high-school interns, Christopher Duncan, Siraj Chokshi, and Anindita Lai for helping run it; and 3MVAS.com for the software making it all possible, bringing science to life.

How does architecture catch the eye?

The 2018 Acton-Boxborough Photo Contest, an art-science project, run by Genetics of Design, with help from high school students and supported by a local Cultural Council (ABCC), came up with these intriguing answers.

In 1^stPlace, Woodlawn Chapel, Acton, by Sandra Hinds predicts the visual sequence people will likely take the first few seconds they see the building, at left; the original photo’s at right.

In 2^ndPlace, Red Barn in West Acton, by Christopher Duncan shows the ‘regions’ which draw in the eye, and likelihood of doing so as a percentage (areas outside delineations are ignored); the original image is at right.

In 3^rdPlace, Acton Memorial Library, by Sanjana Cheerla, above, shows a heat map glowing brightest where people will likely look most, fading to grey and black in areas they’ll ignore; the original is at right.

High school students took the photos and interns Anindita Lal and Siraj Chokshi, working with Genetics of Design, selected them from more than three dozen entries. Winning photos were chosen based on composition, originality and the quality of images they generated using software that predicts how people look at things during pre-attentive processing, that’s in the first 3-5 seconds before the conscious brain can get into the act.

3M’s Visual Attention Software (VAS), based on 30-years of eye-tracking research studying how human eyes move, created the heat maps, visual sequence and regions of interest diagrams shown here. Interns Anindita Lal, Siraj Chokshi, and Christopher Duncan ran the original photographs through the VAS to display these intriguing findings. They help us understand how the human brain is hardwired without conscious control to seek out areas of contrast, edges, faces and has an affinity for the color red.

The images and others like them will be on display at the Discovery Museum in Acton, MA this August. The intent is to make learning about science and biology fun; studies like these can also be useful in understanding way finding and walkability and implementing designs that improve it.

We’re sharing a new post from iMotions, a bio-metric aggregating company based in Boston and Copenhagen, on the emerging field of neuroarchitecture, and how high tech tools can help us better understand human responses to the built-environment and improve design.  (Full disclosure: we’ve successfully used iMotions in our studies.)

Neuroarchitecture or cognitive architecture, is an emerging field that provides an empirical basis for the design choices made by architects. Rather than settling for purely theoretical debates about test prices in design, research is showing the way, and guiding the creation of actual evidence-based design.

Continue reading this post to find current trends in eye-tracking and how they inform our world today.

What makes Paris so walkable? The 18th and 19th-century architecture, the shops, the cafes-on-every corner, the human-scaled development – yes, yes, yes.  All true. But there’s more, something not as celebrated and a key secret to Paris’ walkability and engaging street-life: the road construction itself. The pavers of Paris – like these:

These stone blocks surround the Louvre, the 2nd-most-visited museum in the world, (after the Palace Museum, Beijing), and literally knit together a visitor’s uplifting experience there. Everyone sees them entering, leaving or lingering around the museum. They’re colorful, look hand-hewn and create an eye-catching, unostentatious visual fabric. They anticipate our human need for pleasant visual stimulation – even before people set foot inside the museum – and they complement the color of the surrounding palace, too – everything a uniform all asphalt or concrete drive could never do.

Even the newer museums in Paris, like the hi-tech style Pompidou Center, (c. 1977) boast antique style pavers and patterns that move you forward and invite you to linger. Here are the ones surrounding this modern art museum; it’s a timeless look that acknowledges our human love for repeating patterns and undulating shape:

The pavers not only anticipate our need to always have something to look at, but the fact – see person walking down hill, above right – that most of the time  we hold our head about 15% downward as we walk, making sure the path’s safe ahead. It’s an old habit, that got us safely out of the savanna 70,000 years ago and is not going to go away soon.

In sum, the pavers of Paris tell a story, not just about what we like to see but about who we are – a bi-pedal mammal pre-occupied with the patterns at our feet.  It’s all understandable, once you stop to think about it, and provides the next step to improve walkability everywhere moving forward. People aren’t cars; we need to accept that to build the best places for them.

Biometric ‘shadow’ study shows how mural draws attention; ©geneticsofdesign.com

Click on images above or the link here to read this recent post on Common\Edge.org, a non-profit site dedicated to improving the design of our built environment.

Ann Sussman and Janice M. Ward from geneticsofdesign.com co-authored the piece with Tufts professor Justin Hollander and editorial savvy from Martin Pedersen.