Thinktank - Defined Services

By Topic:

1. Urbanism, Ecology, and Biocities

2. Spatial Equity, Participatory Design, and methodologies

3. Artificial Intelligence generative models and architecture

4. Citizen Science and co-creation mechanisms

5. Emotional Design

A. Strategic Brief-building

Curate briefs that prioritize the emotional and psychological needs of the users. By leveraging insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, and emotional design principles applied to design at the interior, architectural, and urban scale.

• Identifying workable human metrics

• Formulating objectives and design goals with optimal impact

• Creating strategic full briefs that reverse engineer design decisions based on their emotional impact, while maintaining functional, operational, and regulatory measures.

Projects:

1. Creating neurodiverse playful learning environments for underprivileged children in Brooklin, NY.

2. Equitable spaces for healthcare and wellbeing, a new spatial strategy for a human-centric user journey

B. Experiment Design

• Designing necessary variables and setting up relative experiment scenarios

• Resource allocation and phasing. Curating the process through recruiting the right hardware, software, and methodologies in the right part of the process.

• Establish clear KPIs for experiment evaluation and validation

Projects:

3. The impact of audiovisual art on the subjects’ emotional state

4. Urban EEG data collection for creative application

C. Emotional Mapping

Mapping emotional states, through various metrics is key to creating an evidence-based process.

• Collecting, visualizing, and analyzing up to 8 emotional metrics, 3 cognitive metrics, and 2 physiological metrics.

• Providing a full data package, mapping documentation, visualizations, and basic data analytics based on functional typology

• Timestamped user journey experience video

Projects:

5. The impact of forests on the emotional state and way-finding - Evaluating emotional states within a private forest retreat.

6. Mapping wayfinding, emotional, cognitive, and physiological metrics at the Museum of Civilization

7. Measuring interest spots and the impact of color on the front facades of retail design, using sentiment analysis from biosignals and indirect user engagement

D. Insight Reports

Bridging the gap between experience and spaces by overlapping data, associative analysis processes, and quantifying both the human experience and environment through specific parameters. Insight reports are created for the main purpose of presenting a comprehensive analysis of otherwise complex and technical data and translating findings to guidelines and design action

• Translating findings from experiments, emotional data mapping, and research into actionable design insights

• Design workflows based on emotional mapping that consider cognitive processes, sensory perception, and emotional triggers aiming at spaces that resonate with the human psyche.

• Correlational analysis and associative visualization of spatial parameters and user parameters to draw and understand how the human experience is affected by different spatial elements.

• Recommending emotional design strategies, that evoke certain feelings, such as stress reduction, with a strong emphasis on mental well-being.

Projects:

8. Analyzing user journey and experience in exhibition spaces, the case of Disseny Hub

9. Collaborative study on the impact of spatial parameters on human experience inside architectural icons in Barcelona: MACBA, Sagrada Familia, and the Barcelona Pavilion.

10. The impact of light on the cognitive states of inhabitants

E. Informed Design

Realizing full design projects built upon human-space conversations through the processes described in this document, from brief building to design realization. At the design stage, we have designed tools, applications, and spaces that

• Designing with the brain in mind, at the interior, architectural, and urban scales.

• Using all steps including brief building, measuring, simulations, and insight translation to produce designs that perform as healthy spaces

• Deploying typology-based research and design processes

• Delivering a comprehensive design package including analysis, findings, process, and final design outcome following a defined strategy.

• Impact assessment on prospective key indicators such as productivity, attention, inclusion, etc.

Projects:

11. Enhanced Engagement in fitness spaces through the use of color, form, and material.

12. Urban Sentiment Analysis Tool: Assessing the Index of Happiness and Emotional Context in Urban Environments through Online Text analytics from online platforms such as Google Maps.

13. A collaborative and gamified urban mapping platform for cognitive mapping through engaging different stakeholder groups

14. Towards an Inclusive and Patient-centric Approach to Healthcare Spaces, an ai-driven feedback design process using facial emotions and eye tracking.

F. Responsive Environments

“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us” S. Winston Churchill, October 28, 1943

Designing responsive environments that evolve with the user’s experience.

Responsive environments are spaces that are in permanent mutation with their inhabitants, spaces that are continuously shaped by the users. Responsiveness, whether virtual, augmented, or physical happens across an array of spatial parameters that are quantifiable and tangible, such as the amount of light, tone of light, amount of noise, colors and materiality, textures, form and edges, etc.

• Designing closed-loop responsive systems that integrate emotional triggers and spatial parameters at stake.

• Visualizing through simulations and variable control potential impacts of spatial parameters

• Establishing responsiveness domains, based on desired mental state outcome

Projects:

15. Architectural spaces as BCIs -Brain-Machine Interfaces: Responsive light and sound spatial behavior based on occupants’ unconscious emotional state.

16. Adaptive form for an optimized experience: using unsupervised learning models to create spatial optimization workflows for iterative formal parameters for optimizing user experience.