Transdisciplinary Research ● Strategy ● UX Research
If anxiety is a significant contributor to health risk, understanding its origin through geolocated cognitive measurement can facilitate its collective management.
Lily Kwong had a botanical installation at Cadillac House called Summer in Winter. The installation consisted of a high density of exotic plants creating a jungle ecosystem of sorts. It featured over a hundred different species and over a thousand plants.
The botanical installation featured a high contrast between the indoor jungle and the multi-functional high-end commercial lounge.
To access Lily’s plant installation, visitors must first channel down an isle displaying an array of shining Cadillac cars placed between columns covered in digital screens, mirrors, and neon lights.
Amid this disorienting ricochet of flashes visitors are invited to engage with the very different atmosphere of Lily’s lush green space.
The contrast provided a unique opportunity to study the impact on the transition on the human physiology and psychology. We decided to design a pilot project to guide our investigation.
The traditional paradigm of study takes place in a science laboratory. Participants are shown static images of urban and natural spaces and asked to self-report their experience.We were interested in bringing the experiment outside the laboratory.
We researched possible metrics and narrowed possibilities with a wristwatch sensor collecting physiological data, including skin conductance, a well-tested emotional indicator. We also geared participants with a chest-mounted camera to track GPS location and asked participants to gesture and point to the interesting features during the visit. We asked participants to travel from the lounge showroom to the plant area, and back to the lounge showroom. We designed questionnaires for them to self-report before and after the walk.
We recruited fourteen volunteer participants through Lily Kwong's instagram platform.
Over the course of four weeks, we guided their taking part in the study. Our findings verified the idea that each of us make sense of the world differently.
Below is a visualization of data collected from two very different participants, X and Y. Their contrasting physiological and psychological data is a testimony to their contrasting personal history.
Someone with a background and skills in architectural design, prefer contemporary architecture, might show many spikes in the showroom area. Someone who grew up in a tropical island, the visual contact with certain plants (though exotic to others) might trigger a familiar theme from the childhood memory, therefore, many spikes in the plant area.
In their post-walk interview, both reported having enjoyed the visit and said they found the plant area most peaceful and comfortable.
The skin conductance data illustrates a finer granularity than the verbal report. This granularity can generate a toolkit enabling individuals to develop new judgement and behaviors in response to biophilic or natural stimuli.
The diagram displayed below is a sketch of how this growing dataset could be visualized to provide feedback.
The top row displays individual data with a smart line.
The bottom row displays visualizations based on multiple individual datasets to create a heat map indicating which areas of a space are more prone to peaks in skin conductance.
At the scale of the individual, this visualization could enable personalized emotional learning.
With a large dataset,artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms could enable the visualization of a heat-map that predicts how people are going to feel. Imagine a software that providing scientific feedback on how specific design gestures make people feel! This could be particularly useful for decision making in large scale urban interventions.
We could event imagine a future in which nature, paired with swarm intelligence, could respond to individual psycho-physiological states. Urs Firscher could maybe take up the challenge with a gallery installation.
The project was presented and discussed at Columbia GSAPP in April 2019. Subsequently, the study was summarized for scientific conferences and publications.
This pilot study was designed to demonstrate spaces as stimuli that evoke the continuity of personal experiences by exploring the emotional quality of different spaces via an individual’s psycho-physiological changes. That data was collected by fourteen participants through a biosensor and a body camera while walking and exploring in an indoor multi-functional public space in Manhattan. The finding verified the idea that each of us makes sense of the world differently. What underlies the reading of skin conductance responses told the granularity of our personal emotional experiences beyond verbal expression.
'Le chêne,' pronounced [leuh-sheh-n' means oak tree in French, my native language.
