The Usability Study of a Proposed Environmental Experience Design Framework for Active Ageing

• Main Authors: Masa Noguchi, Nan Ma, Catherine Mei Min Woo, Hing-wah Chau, Jin Zhou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-11-01
• Series: Buildings
• Subjects: architectural design thinking; user-centric building design; environmental experience design; residential aged care facilities; design for active ageing
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/8/12/167

Growing ageing population today may be necessitating building design decision makers to reconsider the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) standards in a way that accommodates senior occupants’ diverse and individual needs and demands. An experience design approach to rationalising and individualising end-user experience on how to utilise tangible products may serve to reflect user perceptions. Generally, architectural design practices tend to incorporate neither IEQ monitoring and analysis data, nor environmental experience design today. In response to the need for filling this gap, the authors of this paper conducted a feasibility study previously that led to structuring and defining an ‘Environmental Experience Design’ (EXD) research framework. Based on the previous case study on the collective spatial analysis and IEQ monitoring results, this paper further explored the usability and applicability of this proposed EXD framework particularly to the previously documented aged care facility in Victoria, Australia, which has been stressing active ageing agendas. This EXD framework usability experiment helped to build the capacity for engaging the subjectivity and objectivity of end users’ expectations, desires, and requirements in the architectural design thinking process. Nonetheless, due to the limitation of this initial and fundamental usability study’s resources and the objective, the necessity of adjusting the scale and scope of EXD analyses emerged. Moreover, the universality of this EXD research framework usage under various architectural typologies and user conditions yet require further attempts and investigations.