People-environment-activity interactions

We look at how people see, hear, touch, perceive and use their immediate environment and how changes made to the environment might work to generate a better quality of life for everyone, regardless of their current capabilities.

We collaborate with people from many disciplines – artists, neurologist, psychologists, musicians, architects, chemists, philosophers, ophthalmologists, audiologists, clinical scientists and practitioners. We also work with researchers all over the world – EU, Japan, China, Latin America – as well as in the UK. We have been involved in the design of operations for railway systems, and the design of trains, streets and urban spaces, as well as changing the way sciences such as ophthalmology, audiology and psychology work in the real world.

Much of this work is undertaken in the controlled environment of PAMELA (Pedestrian Accessibility Movement Environment Laboratory) which allows us to construct life-sized environments and test them with potential passengers. PAMELA is currently being expanded into a new facility called PEARL (Person Activity Environment Research Laboratory), expected to open in late 2018.

Typically we study how multiple senses apply to the way we interact with the environment. We are interested in how a future city – say in 200 years’ time – will be enabled to support a society in which people can thrive equitably, socially and with a greater quality of life than at present.

Person-Environment-Activity interaction research involves testing people in real-world situations so that we can study how they might respond to different aspects of the environment. To do this we created a laboratory where we can build different environments, and study people’s physiological, sensorial, neurological, physical and emotional responses to different aspects of the design.