Browsing by Subject "environmental design"
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Item Design for the Frail Old: Environmental and Perceptual Influences on Corridor Walking Behaviors of Assisted Living Residents(2010-10-12) Lu, ZhipengRegular walking has several physical and psychological benefits for frail older people. However, many residents in long-term care facilities are too sedentary to achieve these benefits. Indoor walking appears to be a feasible way to promote active living among these residents and yet, there is little research that has been done in this regard. The researcher conducted two studies in Central Texas to explore how corridor design features influenced indoor walking behaviors among assisted living residents. In the first study, the researcher carried out six focus groups with 50 assisted living residents, discussing how they perceived the indoor corridor as "walkable." Residents reported that a walkable corridor should be safe, comfortable, and having beautiful/interesting things to see. In the second study, the researcher further examined the relationship between the built environment and walking behaviors among 326 residents from 18 facilities in a major city of Texas. The results indicated that 'perceived looped corridor' and 'number of stories' were significantly associated with residents' frequencies of indoor recreational walking. In addition, the availability and quality of sitting space around mailbox areas influenced the number of "walking to mailbox" trips. This research provides empirical evidence to develop activity-friendly facility design guidelines, and to create environmental interventions to facilitate active lifestyles among long-term care residents.Item Principles of Green Design: Developing a Framework for Product Testing(2012-10-25) Esposito, Nicole EliseA problem exists that many eco-friendly products on the market today are not widely accepted by consumers. Three pilot experiments were conducted to examine a few causes of poor eco-friendly product acceptance. The first two experiments involved the testing of alternative products to disposable plastic water bottles. Two hypotheses were developed- the attitude hypothesis and the user activity hypothesis. The attitude hypothesis states that a person with a positive environmental attitude will lead to better eco-friendly product recommendation and rating, greater product uses, and a greater chance of continued use. The user activity hypothesis states that a product with difficult set-up or cleaning will lead to a worse product recommendation and rating, fewer product uses, and a smaller chance of continued use. Participants took home a product to test for one week and then returned to complete two surveys- a demographics survey and a product evaluation survey. These surveys measured variables such as environmental attitude, product recommendation and rating, number of uses, continued use, and many others. The results of the experiments show a relation between environmental attitude and the participants? future usage with the eco-friendly product. In addition, the data shows that difficulty of product set-up and cleaning relate to the users? opinion of the product. Since this methodology of testing has not been documented before, the lessons learned from these pilot experiments will help to develop a framework for product testing with human ubjects. The third pilot experiment tests the design method of defaults, which may be a powerful tool when designing eco-friendly products. The theory behind the default option is that people typically choose the default setting on a product, regardless if it is the best option. This theory was tested with the use of automatic paper towel dispensers. The lengths of the paper towels that the machines dispensed were changed periodically and the paper towel usage was measured. The results from this experiment indicate that users obey the rule of defaults, unless their needs are not being met at an extreme level.