Some years ago, two design-inquisitive minds met. Officeinsight founder and editor Brad Powell and Sally Augustin, an environmental psychologist specializing in person-centered design, and a principal at Design With Science, struck up conversation at an A&D event of some flavor and quickly found common ground in their passion for designing with the human condition at top of mind. Soon after, Dr. Augustin began contributing regularly to officeinsight, filling a void in the industry where research, environmental psychology and design can converge.
Officeinsight readers now benefit every week from the intellectual partnership between Mr. Powell and Dr. Augustin, through Dr. Augustin’s weekly Research Design Connections column, as well as her longer column Concurrents, which appears every other week.
Dr. Augustin’s firm and career are each fascinating animals, and we wanted to share a piece of our history, and our bright future ahead, with the many officeinsight readers who regularly tune in to the research Dr. Augustin shares in our magazine.
Dr. Augustin founded her firm in 2001. At Design With Science, she integrates insights from environmental and design psychology, other social and physical sciences, and project specific research to inform the design of places, objects and services that support desired experiences. Her clients include manufacturers, service providers, design firms and individuals in North and South America, Europe and Asia. From day one, she quickly found herself working with an unusually diverse range of projects.
Design With Science digs deeper than the typical research-based design firm. Dr. Augustin, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, holds leadership positions in professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association (past-president, environmental psychology division), the International Association of Applied Psychology (environmental psychology division) and the Environmental Design Research Association (chair, work environments network).
On top of all that, she acts as editor of Research Design Connections, and writes widely on science-based design for a broad audience of people interested in the designed world. Her Research Design Connections blog is read by thousands of individuals each month. She has discussed using design to enhance lives on mass-market national television and radio programs and speaks frequently to audiences in North America, Europe and Asia.
While human-centered and research-heavy projects are quite common now, the opposite was true when Dr. Augustin made her start in the field.
“I’m really motivated by taking research that’s been in the peer review press and getting it out into the public,” said Dr. Augustin. “When I was in school, I saw that all of this information about how people experience the physical world was just rotting away in journals and libraries.
“It would have been wonderful to have more people in this field, and more research materials to work with when I got out of school. Now, there are. I don’t have to spend as much time explaining my work and my field to potential and current clients as I did when I began. Clients and I can spend more time talking through richer, more interesting topics. Many people know about design-related science now and believe in it.”
Dr. Augustin says that her work in consulting on the design of a diverse collection of places, objects and services is hugely rewarding opportunity, and the diversity of her practice is no accident. Too many interior designers know all too well the limitations placed on them once they begin in a certain market. In place types specifically, her firm is unique in the range of interior design market segments it works in. From retail to workplace design, healthcare and academic environments, to the occasional residential project, her work is a rare example of applying specific design and research principles, in this case, those of environmental psychology and cognitive science, to the broadest range of projects possible.
Environmental psychologists answer questions such as:
- What are the emotional effects of surface colors? Colors of light? How does where we grew up influence these responses?
- How do shapes (seen or felt) mold our experiences?
- How are personality and preferred design styles really related?
- How do we use our environments and possessions to communicate nonverbally? Why does that matter?
- How do sounds affect our mental state? What sorts of noises delight us? Frustrate us? Help us concentrate?
- How do room dimensions influence us psychologically?
- Why does smell matter? How can scents be used to help us learn (and remember) technical material? Exercise more vigorously and consistently? Avoid claustrophobia? Be creative? Feel healthier?
- How do textures influence us emotionally? Is it important whether we see them or feel them?
“I work in many contexts and across many place types, which means I get to resolve a wide range of issues, and I like the puzzle nature of many projects. It’s easy to get slotted into one thing or another, and I really wanted to avoid that. If you work in a variety of place types, each of those experiences makes you think about things in different ways.”
Object design has also come to Dr. Augustin in many forms. On a project for Kohler, she contributed to the design and engineering of a showerhead so that an optimal experience of standing underneath it would be achieved.
“I don’t do as much with tactile experiences, so the Kohler showerhead was a great opportunity. I had no idea there were so many ways to root water through a showerhead!”
Since Dr. Augustin helped pioneer the inclusion of environmental psychology principles and research into design and architecture, the evolution of research topics has happened before her very eyes. In color research, for example, the discussion has evolved from a focus only on color hues to more in-depth saturation and brightness analysis. We also pay much more attention to individual preferences, territoriality and privacy in research and practice now than in the past.
“We’re also much more focused on national culture, whether its German or French or what have you,” said Dr. Augustin. “People are actually probing those cultural differences and using that information in design. Many people are saying that cultural differences will disappear as we become a more global society, but the research says that’s not happening. Research shows that people maintain their cultural differences rather than shedding them. They define you as a person and sets you apart from a group.”
Design With Science moves research forward into interior design and architecture in a way that many firms can learn from. We’re happy to see firms such as Dr. Augustin’s flourish, particularly in the future as research becomes a crucial part of every project.