Eoghan  Conor  O  Shea;  Sara  Pavia;  Mark  Dyer  

A  participatory  approach  to  assessing  building  empathy  

(  2013  Cumulus  Dublin  2013  Conference  “More  for  less  –  design  in  an  age  of  austerity”  )  

INTRODUCTION  

The  design  of  buildings  and  spaces  is  a  political  act,  insofar  as  it  has  a  determining  effect  on  the  lives  of  people.  The  extent  of  this  determination  is  open  to  question.  For  de  Botton  (1),  even  “[t]he  noblest  of  architecture  can  sometimes  do  less  for  us  than  a  siesta  or  an  aspirin.”  At  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  Till  is  clear  that    “Architecture  is  political”,  in  the  original  intentions  of  politics  defined  by  an  ability  to  “…affect  the  lives  of  citizens”  (2).    There  is  a  political  and  ethical  responsibility  for  architects  to  design  buildings  that  are  safe,  comfortable  and  that  support  specific  sets  of  activities  for  people.  These  responsibilities  are  often  directed  by  regulation  that  force  them  to  become  characteristic  of  everyday  architectural  practice.    Architectural  practice  is  contingent  upon  these  applied  “social  norms”,  and  considered  as  a  group,  architects  respond  slowly  to  social  needs(3):  they  are  thus  deeply  embedded  in  the  process  of  propping  up  socially  constructed  identities  and  reinforcing  socially  reproduced  inequality.  

There  a  number  of  unequal  identities  created  by  society,  such  as  man/woman,  or  dis/abled.  Social  constructionism  (4)  places  the  physical  environment  as  the  space  of  disablement.  Buildings  that  afford  one  constituency  access  and  free  use  but  deny  a  second  constituency  begin  to  define  a  “disabled”  group.    The  nature  of  disability  is  thus  situated,  and  can  be  addressed  to  some  extent  through  removing  the  “disjuncture”  between  people  and  participation  in  the  activities  of  a  building  (5).    A  fundamental  understanding  of  disability  requires  a  situated  knowledge  of  the  specificities  of  a  place.  The  UN  Convention  on  the  Rights  of  Persons  with  Disabilities  (CRPD),    shies  away  from  defining  disability  or  a  ”person  with  disability”  because  such  a  definition  would  necessarily  be  exclusionary.      

This  understanding  of  disability  as  a  critique  of  the  limitations  of  designed  artefacts  led  Ostroff  to  characterize  people  with  disability  as  “user  experts”  (6),  experts  who  were  best  suited  to  analyse  where  improvements  could  be  made  to  buildings,  and  to  highlight  exclusionary  design  practices.  Nigel  Thrift  makes  a  similar  case  for  “edge  players”,  the  vital  group  of  people  who  are  most  attuned  to  the  potentials  of  real  or  virtual  spaces    (7).  One  key  concept  that  can  best  be  understood  “user  experts”  is  social  participation,  of  creating  places  that  are  not  separate  but  equal  e.g,  places  that  through  separate  specially  provisioned  entrances  allow  universal  access,  but  which  generates  a  differentiated,  and  potentially  stigmatizing,  experience  of  the  building.        

A  second  implication  of  disability  as  the  disjuncture  between  building  affordances  and  people’s  capabilities  is  the  possibility  of  disability  as  a  universal  experience.    Zola  suggest  it  is  time  to  “  …  acknowledge  the  near  universality  of  disability  “  (8)  when  people  are  considered  throughout  their  whole  lifespan  –  particularly  in  demographic  context  of  longer-­‐living  populations  with,  consequentially,  higher  rates  of  disability.    Duncan  (9)  conceives  of  a  universal  constituency  of  people  who  experience  disability  by  considering  “circumstantial  disability”,  situations  where  through  fatigue,  distraction,  or  any  number  of  incidental  causes,  an  environment  presents  itself  as  challenging  or  presents  a  real  difficulty  to  anyone.  

The  social  construction  of  disability  creates  groups  of  experts  (user  experts)  who  through  their  various  identities  (blind,  d/Deaf  etc.)  highlight  deficiencies  in  buildings  that  can  affect  everyone.    As  a  result,  the  users  of  universal  design  can  be  characterised  as  the  widest  conceivable  constituency  of  differentiated  experiences.  

Architects  need  to  have  a  role  in  facilitating  this  critique,  and  establishing  an  empathetic  understanding  with  potential  range  of  experiences  of  places  they  help  to  create  or  have  a  role  in  refurbishing.      One  design  approach  which  can  guide  architects  in  critiquing  and  redressing  the  deficiencies  of  previous  and  current  building  design  practices  is  Universal  Design  (UD),  defined  as  “...    a  process  that  enables  and  empowers  a  diverse  population  by  improving  human  performance,  health  and  wellness,  and  social  participation”  (10).    UD  aims  to  foster  enabling  practices  that  allow  people  to  participate  to  the  extent  to  which  they  are  capable.  This  paper  outlines  a  methodology  for  assessing  buildings  through  the  lens  of  UD,  involving  at  one  level  an  assemblage  of  techniques  involving  participants  who  carry  out  their  own  investigations  and  act  as  proxy-­‐researchers  reporting  on  the  situated  experience.      These  act  as  generative  surveys  that  can  query  or  validate  the  aspects  of  space  presented  through  UD  and  accessibility  design  specifications.    The  next  section  discusses  briefly  the  idea  of  empathy,  followed  by  sections  outlining  of  the  methodology  employed,  before  a  brief  discussion  of  the  results  and  the  main  conclusions.  

EVALUATING  EMPATHY  THROUGH  UNIVERSAL  DESIGN  

Roberta  Null  emphatically    stresses  the  role  of  empathy  within  UD:  “The  universal  design  process  begins  with  empathy”  (11).  For  Null  the  very  definition  of  UD  is  premised  on  an  “…informed,  empathic,  creative  activity  focused  on  altering  the  known  environment”  (ibid.)  and  as  such  is  “essentially  participatory  design”.    Empathy  belongs  at  the  heart  of  socially  responsive  design  thinking,  which  demands  “…greater  understanding  of  the  people  by  those  who  practise  design  and  more  insight  into  the  design  process  by  the  public”  (12).    Empathy  can  be  considered  as  an  ‘intuitive  ability  to  identify  with  other  people’s  inner  states  based  upon  observation  of  their  outward  expressions,  their  behavior’  (13),    and  Fulton  Siri  lists  three    methodological  approaches  for  exploring  and  enhancing  a  designer’s  empathy.  The  first  involves  engaging  directly  with  users  and  observing  the  sites  of  investigation  as  they  are  used;  the  second  involves  a  communicative  engagement,  where  users  document  their  interactions;  the  third  involves  simulating  people’s  conditions  through  imaginative  exercises,  such  as  creating  personas.      

There  exists  a  strong  advocacy  in  design  studies  of  participative  and  codesign  approaches  that  are  founded  on  generating  empathy  with  users  of  designed  artefacts  (14,15).  Despite  a  similar  level  of    importance  placed  on  the  user,  the  active  participation  of  users  as  codesigners    is  not  apparent  in  UD  literature  (16).    Soliciting  of  participants  in  evaluating  existing  environments  is  better  documented,  although  there  is  a  tension  between  the  resources  required  to  design  and  implement  participant  exercises,  and  the  expedience  of  a  practical  evaluative  tool.    One  solution  is  based  on  Froyen’s  (17)  advocacy  of  a  meta-­‐framework  for  recording  the  results  of  observation  and  participant  responses,  which  he  terms  universal  design  patterns.  Such  a  framework  -­‐  if  restricted  to  local  contexts  -­‐  can  be  deployed  as  the  basis  for  a  more  directed,  qualitative  instrument.    The  following  section  describes  the  methodology  use  to  inform  a  generative  framework  for  universal  design  evaluation.  

 

METHODOLOGICAL  PLURALISM  

The  built  environment  is  a  network  of  complex  interactions  between  people  and  purposefully  designed  artefacts.    Knowledge  of  the  built  environment  carries  different  epistemological  viewpoints  depending  upon  the  source,  requiring  a    triangulation  of  methods  to:  “create  a  methodological  strategy  that  adds  rigour,  breadth,  complexity,  richness,  depth  and  creativity  to  the  research”  (18)  involving  visual  methods,  interviews,  focus  groups  or  participant  observation.    Both  quantitative  and  qualitative  methods  are  necessary  “because  theory  building  require[s]  ‘hard’  data  for  uncovering  relationships  and  ‘soft’  data  for  explaining  them”  (19).    To  access  this  knowledge,  we  moved  beyond  questionnaire  or  interview  approaches  (20)  and  carried  out  investigations  using  proxy-­‐researchers.  Three  office  buildings  were  chosen  for  the  study  in  Dublin  city  centre,  each  with  different  degrees  of  public  access  and  circulation,  scales  and  user  populations.    An  important  focus  for  this  study  was  to  ask  people  to  research  their  own  lives.    This  involved  investigating  two  broad  perspectives  of  the  situated  experience  of  the  building:  the  habitual  user  perspective,  which  seeks  insights  from  people  who  work  there  every  day,  who  have  a  deeper  “situated  knowledge”  of  the  building  from  carrying  out  daily  practices  within  it;  and  the  visitor  perspective,  which  allows  a  diverse  population  of  participants  to  be  solicited  to  interpret  the  building  on  limited  exposure.  

 

Figure  1  Building  Probe,  probe  contents  and  diary  instructions  

 

Habitual  users’  perspectives  were  accessed  using  solicited  diaries  and  self-­‐directed  photography.  Each  habitual  user  worked  or  researched  within  one  of  the  three  buildings.  Diaries  have  the  advantage  of    accessing  “social  contexts  that  are  often  not  accessible  to  researchers”  (20)  and  because  diaries  was  filled  over  a  one  week  period,  a  longitudinal  study  of  building  encounters  is  described.    Each  diarist  was  given  a  “building  probe”,  a  designed  package  containing  the  diary  and  a  disposable  camera.  On  the  inside  cover  of  each  diary  was  printed  a  set  of  loose  instructions,  explaining  the  performative  nature  of  the  diary  exercise.    The  camera  was  provided  to  record  the  non-­‐discursive  aspects  of  their  experience  

with  the  building  through  photographs.    These  became  invaluable  artefacts  during  the  post-­‐diary  interview,  and  moving  through  the  photographs  lent  a  loose  but  useful  structure  to  the  interviews.  

Visitors’  perspectives  were  recorded  during  touring  interviews.  The  three  case  study  buildings  were  chosen  because  of  their  proximity  to  each  other  so  all  three  buildings  visited  over  the  course  of  an  extended  interview.    The  interviews  were  recorded  using  voice  recorders  and  wearable  video  cameras.    The  visitors  were  chosen  because  of  the  diverse  range  of  perspectives  they  had,  each  a  user  expert  in  different  aspects  of  the  building  experience.    

The  participant  knowledge  was  intended  to  be  used  to  confront  data  relating  to  UD  and  accessibility  located  in  technical  design  guidance  and  standard  documents.    The  project  was  structured  upon  the  travel  chain  through  a  building  allowing  participant  studies  and  the  quantitative  data  from  literature  to    confront  each  other,  resulting  in  a  process  of  coding.            

DISCUSSION  AND  ANALYSIS  

The  observations  are  based  on  transcriptions  and  notes  taken  during  the  interviews  and  analysed  alongside  the  diary  text,  photos  and  photo  captions.    Initially  these  observations  were  located  in  the  different  activity  settings  in  the  building,  which  were  broken  down  to  specific  building  features  as  shown  in  table  1.  

 

Table  1  Structure  of  built  environment  used  in  study  

The  diarists  had  a  positive  response  to  being  in  the  Long  Room  Hub.    One  diarist,  “Liam”  feel  privileged  to  be  there,    and  he  remarked    in  his  diary  “I’ll  take  some  pictures  of  the  beautiful  views  from  here,  the  ones  that  made  me  feel  that  I’d  made  it!”  The  building’s  full  height  windows  allowed  him  to  see  himself  in  relation  to  the  leafy,  historic  surroundings  of  Trinity.  “Liam’s”  desk  at  the  top  floor  removed  him  from  the  quotidian,  reinforced  by  the  caption  “ivory  tower  view”  shown  on  the  photograph  in  figure  2.    For  “Fiona”,  a  visitor  with  vision  impairment,  the  same  windows  represented  a  different  experience,  particularly  because  material  uniformity  between  walls  and  floors  blurred  the  distinction  between  surfaces:    

In  here  because  it  is  quite  open  and  it  has  a  lot  glass  –  that  would  confuse  me…  [t]here‘s  light  and  then  there  is  suddenly  darkness.  

Instead  of  centring  her  in  her  surroundings,  the  windows  and  materials  created  confusion.    “Charlotte”,  who  used  an  electric  wheelchair  found  the  same  windows  enabled  her  to  “pierce”  through  the  thick  walls:  

I  like  the  big  windows  because  the  view  is  so  good,  I  can  really  approach  the  windows  and  go  right  up  to  them  and  see  out.  

 

Figure  2  Liam's  captioned  photo  and  images  from  Charlotte's  and  Fiona's  wearable  cameras  

 

The  touring  interviews  reinforced  observations  in  literature  on  building  entrances,  bit  could  not  properly  account  for  the  awkwardness  of  the  lift  entry.    Fiona,  who  also  had  difficulty  walking,  had  an  emotional  response  to  what  she  saw  as  a  segregated  entry  sequence,  resenting  being  dependent  on  people  to  enter  and  navigate  the  building  –  other  people  used  the  stairs  and  could  wander  freely  through  the  building.    “Jane”,  who  carried  out  the  tour  with  her  son  “Gary”  in  a  buggy,  observed:  

I  do  think  the  lift  makes  it  universal…  I  like  it…  

This  was  a  far  less  emotional  response  to  the  lift,  because  it  satisfied  an  immediate  need.    For  her,  it  was  not  viewed  in  the  context  of  a  life-­‐span  of  difficulties  in  buildings,  and  therefore  was  not  seen  as  indicative  of  social  attitudes  toward  her.  

CONCLUSION  

The  output  for  the  participation  studies  was  a  generative  methodology  for  a  quantitative  instrument  for  evaluation.  Generally  observations  from  the  studies  augmented  rather  than  challenged  observations  harvested  from  literature  –  that  features,  such  as  the  windows  and  the  lift  entry,  were  considering  enabling  for  some  users,  and  as  a  disjuncture  to  the  experience  of  others.  To  address  this,  weighting  was  added  to  the  instrument.  

Some  of  the  difficulties  and  limitations  of  the  approach  related  to  soliciting  participants  –  some  of  the  exercises  were  demanding  in  time  and  energy.  During  the  project  this  was  addressed  by  giving  modest  gifts  to  participants,  and  by  designing  the  building  probe  an  interesting  artefact    in  itself,  modelled  on  Gaver’s  cultural  probes  (21).  However  a  more  rewarding  formula  for  participants  needs  to  be  explored,  and  a  more  enticing  way  of  selling  the  project  would  have  been  more  effective  get  people  to  give  the  time.    

One  tentative  conclusion  was  that  both  people  who  reported  as  having  a  disability,  and  those  who  didn’t,  did  respond  emotionally  and  deeply  to  their  environments,  but  often  about  different  things.  Participants  with  disability  were  more  likely  to  describe  functional  aspects  of  the  building  in  emotional  terms.  This  can  be  seen  as  adaptive  behaviour,  lived  experience  that  informs  a  deeper  understanding  of  how  these  elements  affect  everyday  life.      The  use  of  different  methodological  tools  on  the  same  locations  helped  generate  a  richer  sense  of  how  these  places  were  experienced,  allowing  a  limited  generalisation,  in  a  restricted  geographical,  temporal  and  typological  context.      

 

REFERENCES  

1.     De  Botton  A.  The  Architecture  of  Happiness.  Australia:  Hamish  Hamilton;  2006.  278  p.    

2.     Till  J.  Architecture  Depends.  The  MIT  Press;  2009.    

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