The book reviews new findings in psychology and neuroscience to help architects and planners better understand their clients as the sophisticated mammals they are, arriving in the world with built-in responses to the environment. Discussing key biometric tools to help designers ‘see’ subliminal human behaviors and suggesting new ways to analyze designs before they are built, this new edition brings readers up-to-date on scientific tools relevant for assessing architecture and the human experience of place. The book includes 40 color images of eye-tracked architecture and delves further into psychology, revealing the role trauma, specifically PTSD, post-WWI, played in the development of the paradigm for 20th-century Modern Architecture.
The 2nd edition includes images which reveal how we take in a scene initially, showing how we are hard-wired to focus on detail and ignore blankness. It further discusses how these subliminal attachments contribute to feelings of connection or disconnection (anomie) in the built environment, implicitly supporting or degrading the public realm. Eye tracking creates heat maps which glow brightest where people look most, as in image below of a NYC library, showing people and areas of contrast grab us, but not the glassy façade despite its reflections.
Heat map of street scene outside Queens Library, Flushing, New York City, analyzed with iMotions biometric software. (in Chapter 7) Click on image to enlarge.
A key take-away? Biometric studies can tell us a lot about how we look at buildings but even more about ourselves; we are a truly social species, designed for taking each other in. Eye tracking the cover of the 1st edition really brought that home; note where people looked most—the faces, the pre-eminent objects we need to see for survival!
Eye tracking the 1st edition book cover, above left, creates the heat map, at right, revealing where people initially look most without conscious awareness or control (in Chapter 8). Click on image to enlarge.
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“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Details really matter in architecture, and today we have the high-tech tools to show why and how to make the case quickly. For instance, below are two views of the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At right, an original Georgian building, dating from 1927, featuring symmetrical door and window details, and at left, its new addition, a modernist structure by famed Italian architect Renzo Piano, added in 2014.
Running both images through biometric software, in this instance 3M VAS (Visual Attention Software), which tracks how eyes take in a scene at first glance, we see how the older building instantly draws people in, while the newer one can’t. The images below forecast the visual sequence the eyes will follow; at right we see the focal points immediately falling around the front door of the old museum, which is where you want them to be at a public facility, while focus goes to the far edge and along the street of the newer one, effectively telling people to ignore both the door and building itself.
Biometric software makes equally revealing heat maps which glow brightest, and reddest, where people look most, fading to blue and then completely black in areas ignored. Note how the Georgian building and stair (below right) are bathed in blue and yellowish hue, keeping viewer attention away from street or sky. The opposite happens with the newer one (below left); it directs viewer attention to its edges, a street sign, the sky and away from the stair and entry, making it instantly less welcoming for a viewer or visitor.
Another useful biometric, Regions of Interest diagrams (ROIs), also called Hot Spots, forecast, as a percentage, where the brain makes people look, creating circles around areas that instantly draw the eye. Again note how 59-to-65 percent of views fall directly on the old museum (below right), and its entry, whereas 56-to-85 percent of views fall around the edges, sky and street artifacts, in the newer one (below left). This matters, revealing why it is harder for people to situate themselves in front of the new space.
Remember, even in our high-tech time, people are still animals, hard-wired for attachment, both to each other and the things we make. Successful design acknowledges our origins, and how evolution, and that struggle for survival that made us, preset our subliminal responses to surroundings including where we look first without even realizing it.
Details really matter in architecture because they draw us to a place, reflect how we attach, giving us what we need to see to secure ourselves in a space, and make us feel at home in a place. Details represent external manifestations of hidden internal brain requirements for survival in our dynamic eco-system; in sum: far from arbitrary or extraneous, details are requisite!
Given two interiors, how do people experience them and which do they prefer—the wallpapered room at left or the one with a living plant wall at right?
That’s the question designer Amanda Grinley looked to explore. Starting with a simple, stripped-down room, she wondered how adding biophilic elements, such as plants and representations of them, would change human behavior and how people felt about a space.
“This image (above) shows an interior stripped of design characteristics and serves as the control for understanding interiors that provide a better and healthier experience,” Grinley said. She ran it through biometric software, 3M VAS (Visual Attention Software) to understand how how people initially—at-first-glance—took in the scene.
VAS predicts initial responses, creating Visual Sequence diagrams that track the order people take things in, and Region of Interest (ROI) diagrams that predict, as a percentage, the area that draws the most attention; we see here 98% of views are predicted to fall on the couch and table with the rest of the room effectively ignored. And what happens with a redesign that adds a green wall and live biophilic elements?
VAS shows “the eye sequence dramatically changes to the green wall and wooden beam structure,” Grinley says; note how attention shifts from furniture to now include the wall and ceiling of the living space. Creating a room with elements that mimic nature also produces a shift – though not quite as dramatic:
Note how focus still falls on table and couch as in original image. The VAS program “allows you to glimpse into a psychological understanding of the human mind,” Grinley adds. It “picks up on where our eyes travel and how long we decide to focus on a given area of interest. With this understanding, designers have the opportunity to dramatically change where attention goes and promote a positive experience.”
And while VAS does not relay information about human emotional experience or how a place makes people feel, turning to social media tools like Instagram can do that, enriching the designer’s toolkit. Instagram, for instance, includes a polling feature allowing viewers to select their preferred image, as shown in the set-up below:
“A little over 100 people cast their vote on which interior they preferred,” Grinley said, in this poll which compared the two spaces over a 24-hour period. “The results came back with a majority wanting an interior with direct biophilic design.”
Why the preference? It connects to evolution. “Evolutionary theory explains humans evolving over a long period in natural environments so we became adept at taking in/ and preferring nature.” We don’t tend to look at blank things, and when it comes to designs that mimic nature, ones that replicate its fractal qualities, of repeatable, scalable patterns, and aren’t too dense or sparse, will be preferred.
“Thankfully, both methods can be used to promote a healthy environment,” she said, actual nature and designs that mimic natural patterns. And why is using biometrics with social media helpful? “This combination can become a powerful tool in understanding and influencing human behavior for better experiences in our built environment.”
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Our thanks to Amanda Grinley, BAC Master of Architecture student, for sharing this creative research, Spring 2021. All images courtesy Amanda Grinley.
It doesn’t matter where they are—city, state, country, continent, it makes no difference. When it comes to big and boxy glass buildings, the human brain is hardwired to take them in the same way: as not much. Here are photos of towers in New York City, Boston, and Toronto. Below are the heatmaps, generated by biometric software, predicting where people will look at first glance, or within the first few seconds, before their conscious awareness is activated.
The heatmaps glow red where people might look most, fading to blue and then black in the areas that are ignored. What’s stunning about the images is how much of the buildings is initially not considered; our brain focuses on the edges, areas of high contrast, and ignores the buildings’ core. Wherever we may encounter massive, glassy boxes, we process them in the same way.
The same is true with blank walls; human instinct is not to look at them. These findings can help explain an interesting phenomenon, why wall art helps revitalize blighted urban areas, as seen in these pictures from downtown Cincinnati:
Note how attention shifts to engage with the wall once it has colorful art, rather than focusing on its edges and the parked auto when the wall is blank. At the far right, top level, regions of interest (ROI) diagrams indicate with red contours that 88%–96 % of predicted views will fall in the center of the building’s new mural, the area that is most ignored when the wall is blank.
Welcome to our New Age of Biology, as the OECD, or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, labeled the 21st century in 2012, where new insights in life sciences, paired with new technologies, have transformed not only what we do, but how we see ourselves and reframe understandings of what we need to see and be around to be at our best.
The tech tool here is 3M’s Visual Attention Software (VAS), which arrived in 2011 and became a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in 2020. (There are similar biometric tools on the market now, including attentioninsight.com.) VAS developed from over 30 years research at 3M, studying human responses to visual stimuli. The software simulates the first, subliminal phase of vision, which is before gender, age, or culture affects our attention, and also before conscious awareness sets in. Initially used to inform advertising, website, and signage design, VAS is now working its way into urban planning and architectural research and curricula. 3M promotes it as a “spellcheck” for all types of design, since, after all, the human viewer and the biology of our visual perception remain the same.
“The students are very excited by this software,” says Catholic University of America architecture professor Robin Puttock, RA. Her students used VAS for the first time to analyze new construction on their Washington, D.C., campus this spring. “I see so many ‘a-ha’ moments on their faces when they understand what it does and what it can do. They want to run photos of their latest design boards to learn what people will see first, and start brainstorming other ways they can use it.”
VAS made her and students see buildings differently, she said. “It has been interesting to note time and time again in our research that simple glass facades are just not seen by us precognitively. Humans seek visual interest, patterns, edges, nature and most of all, other humans. This has made me think more critically about what kind of buildings support our well-being.”
When it comes to understanding how ornament and detail, as well as organized complexity, matter in building facades, VAS can make the case quickly. For instance, because humans are hardwired to ignore blank spaces, the brain directs a viewer to look around Cincinnati’s modern art museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, by Zaha Hadid (completed in 2003), rather than at it. Note how, in the images below, the VAS Visual Sequence diagram goes around the new building, while staying in the center of neighboring 19th-century building facades, shown above it. No surprise: A decade after opening, Metrobot, a sculpture in the museum’s collection by Nam June Paik, was installed permanently outside the museum’s front door in 2014. And VAS’s Visual Sequence suggests how the sculpture is, actually, truly magnetic, making the museum door easier to find.
Ironically, high-tech tools like VAS allow us to confront something designers often neglect: consideration of our animal nature and how evolution, and the struggle for survival that made us, preset human visual biases. The fact is, these visual proclivities all remain ancient, making us Stone Age creatures, not modern at all. It’s something we may struggle to accept, but something we should understand: how buildings impact our behavior, our stress levels, and, ultimately, our overall health.
“Our visual system very rapidly computes edges, brightness, local intensity contrast and color contrast, as well as the presence of facelike geometries,” says Alexandros Lavdas, a neuroscientist using this biometric tool to research the built environment. “This rapid computation has a survival value, as it allows for quick reactions to be initiated, even before the nature of the stimulus has been consciously understood.” Evolving in the wild, we essentially still remain wired for that ancestral place.
Why does embracing our animal nature and using biometric tools to track it matter in architecture? “Because it gives objective data on issues that were considered subjective,” Lavdas says. Biometrics like VAS “provide an evidence-based tool, and it makes it more difficult to defend forms that do not visually engage the viewer.” And with powerful data points on how engagement actually happens, we can better explain human behavior in all kinds of built environments, such as why a facelike façade in the Harvard Lampoon building in Cambridge, Massachussets, is so often photographed and a frequent stop for tour groups.
Of course the travel buses stop here; they have to. The tower grabs people subliminally, anchoring them in the space and making it memorable. Exactly the opposite experience people have with the glass towers, as seen above. And it doesn’t matter that this brick tower is over a century old—it will have the same affect on people a century from now. The fact is, our perceptual system, unchanged for some 40,000 years, will remain essentially the same for a long time.
And that may be the surprising take-away from this biometric tool and architectural research: Helping people understand they are not as different as they think. Asked how VAS changed her perspective, Puttock said: “I find it fascinating that we are all essentially the same. We see the same things precognitively based on our shared evolution.” And what could be a more fitting finding for the start of the 21st century than the Age of Biology? Understanding how we look at buildings helps us to see ourselves.
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This article, by GoD-bloggers Ann + Janice, originally appeared in Common Edge, June 8, 2021. Our thanks to Martin Pedersen, editor, for suggesting, editing and publishing it.
Welcome to the New Age of Biology where students familiar with biotech tools change design outcomes. That’s what happened this spring, when architecture students at Catholic University of America, suggested changes to a new dining hall on campus and used biometric software to make their case. “The students were the jurors,” said Prof Robin Puttock, who procured renderings of the new building as part of her class, Human-Centric, Evidence-based Design for WELL-being.
The students reviewed the new venue under construction, then modified the design to be more welcoming, reduce stress, and promote wellbeing, Puttock explained. Their “Reinvention” (see drawings below right) included adding skylights, hanging plants and installing red awnings over the food service locations. They Photoshopped in the changes and ran the ‘Reinvention’ and the original design through 3M Visual Attention Software (VAS).
VAS predicts how viewers take in a scene at-first-glance, in the first-three-to-five seconds before conscious viewing comes online. It creates heat maps, which glow brightest where viewers likely look most, (see images below), fading-to-black in areas ignored.
The software also outlines hot spots, showing the areas that garner the most attention as a percentage; in the images above we see how 71% of views are predicted to fall on food serving area immediately once it has red awnings, versus only 39% in the original design, without them. Red awnings in a dining hall may seem counter-intuitive – but by improving way-finding can make it easier to move through a space, reducing visitor anxiety.
CUA students Madison Schneider, Sean Devlin, Tim Lampert, Holly Thompson and Nolan Brockmeyer Photoshopped changes to the original dining hall drawings provided by architect Perkins-Eastman. Click on images to enlarge.
The design architect and the university architect agreed the student recommendations were “all positive suggestions” that would improve the look and feel of the place; the school might even incorporate the red awnings, CUA officials said. This project “really empowered 20-year-olds,” Prof Puttock noted. “They loved it!”
The idea that better understanding of the human experience promotes better design appears to be gaining traction—particularly now with software that reveals our subliminal visual experience and how it directs our behavior in and around buildings. VAS became a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop in October 2020, so the story here may be a harbinger of things to come in project reviews. It also suggests how the next generation of architects may lead the profession towards more empathetic, human-centered design.
For more information on VAS explorations of architecture, these by students at the Boston Architectural College (BAC), check out these links:
This free webinar, hosted by The National Arts Club, featured Nikos Salingaros, PhD and Ann Sussman, discussing the importance of patterns and ornament in architecture and their impact on our health and well-being. The speakers reviewed the science of natural patterns, including fractals, and how humans evolved to see them to successfully secure themselves in a space and regulate their own emotional states. The talk will reveal why modern 20th-century architecture lost the connection to nature with unnatural patterning and how to bring it back along with design that promotes well-being.
Nikos Salingaros is a professor of Mathematics at University of Texas, San Antonio. Ann Sussman, an instructor at the Boston Architectural College (BAC) is president of The Human Architecture + Planning Institute, Inc (theHapi.org). Both speakers are contributors to the new book, Urban Experience and Design, Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm (Routledge 2021).
Curious to understand how we see the world like animals? Want to learn how evolution presets what we focus on, and how we take in our surroundings? Here’s link for public media event from WSKG, an NPR-radio affiliate in New York, that first aired, April 13, 2021:
The talk, by Ann Sussman, builds on Freud’s insight from years ago, that the mind is indeed “like an iceberg,” with most of its activities below our awareness, yet invisibly directing our experience and behavior. It’s important information that can help you not only better understand your life but also more accurately forecast the success of a design before you build.
Apple reached a $2 trillion market valuation last summer, a clear marker of its tech prowess. But when you look at its retail store design, you see the company also excels at something else entirely: understanding people—and how to capture and manipulate their attention subliminally.
Apple retail interior design reflects, not-so-much technology, but a deep knowledge and respect for our biology and the hidden evolutionary traits that make us. With that biological foundation in place, Apple feeds the client precisely the stimuli needed to get the results that spur stratospheric success. Apple does all this without most people realizing it—capitalizing on the fact it understands human nature much better than most do.
For instance, above is a photo of the entry to the Apple store in downtown Boston taken last year; there is one over-arching theme driving its design and layout which has nothing to do with technology, but is all about our biology. Can you find it? Below is the same store, in the interior, in a photo from 2018. In 2021, its layout remains the same.
What’s the big design idea here? That people, even if on a mission to purchase a tech device, are most attracted to look for and focus on other people. They simply can’t help it. As a social species, our brain is hardwired for social engagement, designed to look for and focus on others, and take in faces. We do this automatically because this behavior secured our past survival and still does today. So, Apple makes it easy to see people entering the store in Boston and watch them moving throughout the space; seeing people makes it more likely a another person will follow them. As a social species, we’re essentially built for taking others in. Naturally, Apple places large faces of people on its devices and wall posters too, since no other pattern can draw human attention as fast. We subliminally attach to these mages, making us more likely to linger around them. And, no surprise, Apple came up with the idea for a glass staircase (patented by Steve Jobs in 2001); what else could get people to walk up two more flights in a retail space than a glass staircase where it’s so easy to watch others moving up and down?
It’s not just our visual bias for watching people that drives Apple design, it’s understanding other hidden human habits, like our bias for feeling that whatever we touch belongs to us. Ever wonder why Apple places so many products on tables without packaging in sight? By making its products so inviting to touch, we’re more likely to begin to feel we own them. This phenomenon is called the Endowment Effect; in past millennia, it helped secure our ancestors’ survival. Today, it may be doing us in, getting us to purchase far more than needed. “You can take the person out of the Stone Age… but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person,” Nigel Nicholson, a UK psychologist noted in a Harvard Business Review article, ‘How Hardwired is Human Behavior?’
Apple stores use ‘The Endowment Effect’ to determine layout and drive sales
There is a huge irony here: How do you sell the most sophisticated tech-products on the planet today? By embracing the client’s most ancient and quintessential animal nature. Accept that humans haven’t changed as quickly as their technology; they can’t. Acknowledge our evolution and biology.
Other design fields would do well to follow suit; if you ever need a lesson refresher, or want to appreciate the strategy’s power, visit the local Apple store.
This talk was part of a WELLbeing Seminar Series, organized by Prof. Robin Z Puttock, RA of the School of Architecture + Planning at Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington DC.
In it Ann Sussman discussed how new findings about human perception – the fact we really do look at the world as an animal – change our understanding of how the built environment impacts people and even reframes the history of modern architecture.
The talk considers cartoons, such as this recent one from The New Yorker, to help explain a key fact about our brain, that it’s hardwired to be a “social engagement system” which means that it is built to connect to faces subliminally – whether real or inanimate, wherever they may be – without our conscious awareness or control.
The significance of understanding human perception as relational, no matter what we take in, will be explored further in this blog, including what it means for architecture and healthy place-making where people feel at their best and most at home.
With eye tracking we can ‘see’ how humans take in the world. This biometric tool gives an inside view of our remarkable subliminal activity, including what’s really going on when we do something seemingly simple, like walking down a city street…revealing there’s much more going on in our bodies and brains than most realize.
The following video shows data collected from volunteers wearing eye-tracking glasses as they walk down a street in Boston and view their surroundings.
Note the yellow dots and lines in the video (above); they reveal what eye tracking records—creating large yellow dots where the eye stops to focus, or fixate, with lines in between, or saccades, indicating motion between fixation points. Each image in the video shows eye tracking over a 10-second interval. Note how cars get so much attention; we focus on them. Our brain won’t let us do otherwise.
People also grab our attention. It is astonishing how much time we spend fixating on other folks—often without any conscious awareness or control. Seeing cars and people leads to something more—emotional arousal, a change in our subliminal internal state that can be monitored with another biometric tool called Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which measures changes in electrical activity resulting from changes in sweat gland activity. The graphs beneath each image in this post charts GSR peaks, or the intensity of the arousal experience as we take in a place. Seeing a car, a person, or people, usually generates a peak.
When someone walks toward you and says your name (as what happened to the volunteer in the image above), the response is greater, causing larger peaks. At the end of the study (above) when one of the researchers touched the volunteer’s skin to remove the sensing monitor, the tallest blue peaks formed (at right).Biometric tools tell us a lot about ourselves, in real time, helping reveal the complexity of our animal nature. Interested in learning more or conducting similar research? Reach out to theHapi.org, the nonprofit that conducted this study; its mission is improving the understanding of the human experience of the built environment and improving its design through education and research. Here’s the email: Contact@theHapi.org
The Genetics of Design 