Large-scale experiment brings real world into lab to design better spaces

The project attracted participation from professionals in architecture, hospitals, transport, AI, property, video game design, dance, and museums.

The research team, led by academics from neuroscience, architecture, and civil engineering, are seeking to develop comprehensive data about how people navigate and experience spaces, that could aid the design of better buildings to improve health, learning, and living.

At a launch event and live experiment, over 100 people wearing a range of sensors walked through a maze-like environment, set up as an art gallery at UCL’s PEARL (Person Environment Activity Research Laboratory) facility, a unique space in East London created to explore how people interact with their environment.

The research project is set up to bridge the gap between tightly controlled lab experiments and field-based experiments with uncontrolled variables. The academics are hoping their findings, over the course of numerous experiments, will yield valuable insights for designing spaces such as transport hubs, hospitals, or offices, including making them more inclusive, while also informing AI and simulation software.

Lead researcher Professor Hugo Spiers (UCL Experimental Psychology) said: “To study how people navigate their environments and how their brains support this, we can do that in a research lab – but that’s not very realistic – or we can do that in the real world – but that’s harder to control or modify. Here, we are bringing the real world into the lab, in a massive space that could be set up as anything from a train station to a hospital or school, to facilitate research.”

Co-lead researcher Dr Fiona Zisch (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture) said: “When designing buildings and other spaces, you need to understand how people will move around the space, which can be surprisingly difficult in practice. Many spaces leave visitors lost, confused, or stressed, or lack accessibility for people with different mobility levels, health issues, or neurodiversity.

“If people cannot easily navigate a space, this can affect care outcomes in hospitals, efficiency in transport or logistics, or safety, particularly in the case of emergency evacuation, so it’s vital that we do more research to understand diverse requirements to make design more equitable.”

The study space, measuring 15 metres squared, has eight-metre-high curtains, acting as moveable ‘walls’, and was designed by the lead researchers alongside Professors Stephen Gage and Sean Hanna (both UCL Bartlett School of Architecture), to see how changes to the space alter how people move within it.

In the initial setup, the ‘art gallery’ includes projects on display from UCL Design for Performance and Interaction MArch students, that study participants perused at their own pace while wearing a cap containing a tracking device and a barcode for camera tracking, with the latter developed by George Profenza and Jessica In (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture). Some participants wore additional monitoring devices, such as mobile electroencephalography (EEG) systems to measure brain activity, made possible by Professor Klaus Gramann (Technische Universität Berlin). During the experiment, participants were given instructions at different points to complete tasks such as finding specific displays, congregating in groups, or evacuating the space.

Counsellor for Science and Innovation at the Embassy of Sweden in UK, Marika Amartey, spoke at the launch event about the importance of this research under a bilateral agreement between the UK and Sweden. The lead researchers, together with Carina Carlman, Director of Research and Business Development at the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), and neurodesigner and brain researcher Isabelle Sjövall (UCL Experimental Psychology and RISE), are establishing a new joint Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign.* This new centre will explore how the human brain interacts with built environments, and how understanding this can help design spaces that enhance people’s health and wellbeing.

The experiment at UCL PEARL forms an important step in the creation of this new Centre. Isabelle Sjövall said: “Our research at PEARL is important because it can generate highly rigorous new discoveries that change policies guiding the design for healthy cities.”

Carina Carlman added: “We are delighted at RISE to bring our experience with research and innovation to together with UCL to tackle some of the most important challenges we face in society.”  

The project received funding from the UK Government Higher Education Innovation Fund, alongside technical equipment supplied and run by Ubisense, Pupil Labs, Brain Products, and Artinis. Support for the launch event came from sustainable development consultancy Arup, who are exploring potentials in using the research to help design more accessible and inclusive spaces for business, governments, and other clients.

Brett Little, Arup’s People Movement Leader, said: "There are countless problems different people might experience when trying to find their way around anything from a train station to a museum. At Arup we're excited that this research will help us make huge leaps forward in understanding how to design buildings, cities, and spaces that solve those problems.

"This is the start of a journey that will take our understanding of how people move in the real world to another level and enable us to help create spaces that are accessible and work for all - no matter their background."

Professor Nick Tyler (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering), Director of UCL PEARL, commented: “We built UCL PEARL with a vision to create a better world with infrastructure that works for everyone, by facilitating research that fuses arts and sciences, and cuts across disciplines and sectors. By recreating large spaces like train stations, hospital wards, and town centres, but also trains, buses, streets, parks, supermarkets, concert halls, or theatres, and modifying them systematically, we can investigate people’s reactions to them in detail to transform research in design, engineering, and neuroscience, through a greater understanding of the brain in its ecological world.”

Links

• UCL PEARL
• Professor Hugo Spiers’ academic profile
• Dr Fiona Zisch’s academic profile
• UCL Experimental Psychology
• UCL Psychology & Language Sciences
• UCL Bartlett School of Architecture
• * More about UCL and RISE collaboration in NeuroDesign and NeuroArchitecture

Images

• Photos of the live experiment which took place on Wednesday 11 September. Credit: Sandra Ciampone.

Media contact

Chris Lane

tel: +44 20 7679 9222  / +44 (0) 7717 728648

E: chris.lane [at] ucl.ac.uk