Vellei and colleagues studied how preferred air temperatures vary from one time of day to another. They report that their efforts reveal “some evidence of a time-varying thermal perception by using: (1) data from about 10,000 connected Canadian thermostats made available as part of the ‘Donate Your Data‘ dataset and (2) about 22,000 samples of complete (objective + ‘right-here-right-now‘ subjective) thermal comfort field data from the ASHRAE I and SCATs datasets. We observe that occupants prefer colder thermal conditions at 14:00 and progressively warmer ones in the rest of the day, indistinctively in the morning and evening. Neutral temperature differences between 08:00 and 14:00 and 14:00 and 20:00 are estimated to be of the order of 2°C.”
Marika Vellei, William O’Brien, Simon Martinez, and Jerome Le Dreau. “Some Evidence of a Time-Varying Thermal Perception.” Indoor and Built Environment, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/1420326X211034563
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.
