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- All Subjects: urban climate
- All Subjects: human-computer interaction
- Creators: Middel, Ariane
- Creators: Walker, Erin
Outdoor human comfort is determined for the remodelled downtown of Tempe, Arizona, USA, an acclaimed example of New Urbanist infill. The authors desired to know whether changes were accompanied by more comfortable conditions, especially in hot, dry summer months. The physiological equivalent temperature provided an assessment of year-round outdoor human comfort. Building compactness and tree shade that became part of the changes in the downtown provided more overall daytime human comfort than open nearby streets; however some downtown sites were less comfortable at night, but below 40°C, a threshold for human comfort in this desert environment.
I conducted user study to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. Results show that users were able to identify relevant information more precisely via visual interface as compared to traditional list based approach. Network visualization demonstrated effective search-result navigation support to facilitate user’s tasks and improved query quality for successive queries. Subjective evaluation also showed that visualizing search results conveys more semantic information in efficient manner and makes searching more effective.
A magnetic wireframe tool has been used as a `make tool', and a sample project has been defined in order to see how the tool can create empathy among stakeholders. In this study fourth year graphic design students at Arizona State University (ASU), USA, are participating as users, faculty members have the role of clients, and Forty, Inc., a design firm in the Phoenix area, is the design team for the study. All of these three groups are cooperating on re-designing the homepage of the Design School in Herberger Institute for Design and Art (HIDA) at ASU.
A method for applying the magnetic tool was designed and used for each group. Results of users and clients' activities were shared with the design team, and they designed a final prototype for the wireframe of the sample project. Observation and interviews were done to see how participants work with the tool. Also, follow up questionnaires were used in order to evaluate all groups' experiences with the magnetic wireframe. Lastly, as a part of questionnaires, a sentence completion method has been used in order to collect the participants' exact thoughts about the magnetic tool.
Observations and results of data analysis in this research show that the tool was a helpful `make tool' for users and clients. They could talk about their ideas and also designers could learn more about people. The entire series of activities caused an empathetic relationship among stakeholders of the sample project. This method of using `make tools' in user experience design for web sites can be useful for collaborative UX design activities and further research in user experience design with empathy.
Urban climate conditions are the physical manifestation of formal and informal social forces of design, policy, and urban management. The urban design community (e.g. planners, architects, urban designers, landscape architects, engineers) impacts urban development through influential built projects and design discourse. Their decisions create urban landscapes that impact physiological and mental health for people that live in and around them. Therefore, to understand possible opportunities for decision-making to support healthier urban environments and communities, this dissertation examines the role of neighborhood design on the thermal environment and the effect the thermal environment has on mental health. In situ data collection and numerical modeling are used to assess current and proposed urban design configurations in the Edison Eastlake public housing community in central Phoenix for their efficacy in cooling the thermal environment. A distributed lagged non-linear model is used to investigate the relative risk of hospitalization for schizophrenia in Maricopa County based on atmospheric conditions. The dissertation incorporates both an assessment of design strategies for the cooling of the thermal environment and an analysis of the existing thermal environment’s relationship with mental health. By reframing the urban design of neighborhoods through the lens of urban climate, this research reinforces the importance of incorporating the community into the planning process and highlights some unintended outcomes of prioritizing the thermal environment in urban design.
Shade plays an important role in designing pedestrian-friendly outdoor spaces in hot desert cities. This study investigates the impact of photovoltaic canopy shade and tree shade on thermal comfort through meteorological observations and field surveys at a pedestrian mall on Arizona State University's Tempe campus. During the course of 1 year, on selected clear calm days representative of each season, we conducted hourly meteorological transects from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and surveyed 1284 people about their thermal perception, comfort, and preferences. Shade lowered thermal sensation votes by approximately 1 point on a semantic differential 9-point scale, increasing thermal comfort in all seasons except winter. Shade type (tree or solar canopy) did not significantly impact perceived comfort, suggesting that artificial and natural shades are equally efficient in hot dry climates. Globe temperature explained 51 % of the variance in thermal sensation votes and was the only statistically significant meteorological predictor. Important non-meteorological factors included adaptation, thermal comfort vote, thermal preference, gender, season, and time of day. A regression of subjective thermal sensation on physiological equivalent temperature yielded a neutral temperature of 28.6 °C. The acceptable comfort range was 19.1 °C-38.1 °C with a preferred temperature of 20.8 °C. Respondents exposed to above neutral temperature felt more comfortable if they had been in air-conditioning 5 min prior to the survey, indicating a lagged response to outdoor conditions. Our study highlights the importance of active solar access management in hot urban areas to reduce thermal stress.