14
Developing a Person-Centric Design Philosophy

Jill Pable

Introduction

The literature suggests that the creation of environments for vulnerable populations such as the poor, the homeless, the elderly, the displaced, and the disabled is a critical imperative that has not been fully embraced by the design community (Gamez and Rogers 2008; Hosey 2008). This movement, sometimes called “design for social justice,” “socially conscious architecture,” “public architecture,” or “humanitarian design,” promotes the idea that architecture and design can – and should – respond to the social concerns of disadvantaged users and, in so doing, substantiate the value of design by addressing the social compact it holds with the public (Anderson, Honey, and Dudek 2007; Sinclair 2008).

In this essay I argue that design professionals can benefit from intentionally adopting a philosophy that views human beings as cognitive, sensory-influenced, and emotional beings. Further, I will share my personal pursuit of such a philosophy.

Developing a Person-Centric Philosophy

When exploring various research questions, strategies, and tactics I have found it helpful to adopt a “person-centric” philosophical framework – one that lies outside of traditional design knowledge. My intent is not to suggest that this approach is appropriate for everyone, nor to direct others toward a specific worldview or system of inquiry. Instead, my intent is to suggest that a firm, intentional grounding in a relevant, person-oriented philosophy may be an invaluable orientation tool in the establishment of a research agenda. Further, I believe such an approach can provide balance to the full spectrum of human experience that designers must consider.

Framing the Question: The Needs of the Disadvantaged

How does one go about investigating the complex issues that face those who are disadvantaged? For example, the homeless, the mentally disabled, and victims of domestic violence face not only physical challenges, but significant psychological ones as well. Although all these groups fall under the social betterment umbrella, their needs vary greatly. In the case of the homeless, for example, they are typically under a state of heightened emotional crisis, are without substantial coping resources, and may fear interaction with others because they have been physically or mentally abused. They may exhibit defense mechanisms including anger, withdrawal, or denial. Stripped of the schedule of typical daily life, they may be out of touch with time.

All of these things may be aggravated by substance abuse issues or mental disabilities such as paranoia, depression, or schizophrenia. In some cases, the experience of “living rough” (essentially living outside) or life on the urban streets may have convinced a homeless person that she or he is not only invisible but less than human, and therefore deserving of the mistreatment she or he experiences (Burt, Aron, Douglas, Valente, et al. 1999; Rog and Buckner 2007).

In the case of creating built environments to accommodate the homeless, for example, it quickly becomes clear that a deep understanding of the lived experience of being homeless is critical to crafting an effective design response in either research or practice. Designers must understand the situational components that contribute to being homeless (e.g., domestic violence, mental disorder, lack of income, etc.). The lived experience of a person enduring a life crisis, such as homelessness, is characterized by their own perceptions of reality – something that an outsider's casual inspection of the situation can easily miss. Without this understanding, a gap is created between the designer's intuitive comprehension of the design challenges and the ability to effectively address the needs of disadvantaged populations.

Lack of an in-depth understanding of the human experience can be costly in design, a point long accepted by environmental behaviorists. Architects and designers who do not grasp the psychological scope of the experience and perceptions of their users run the risk of producing expensive built projects that fail. The need to understand the human experience is widely recognized in interior design programs of study, as evidenced by its inclusion in the accreditation standards established by the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (2011).

An often referenced example of a built environment that did not acknowledge the human experience and consequently failed is Pruitt Igoe, a low-income housing development in east St. Louis built in 1956. Its high-rise construction style ignored the residents’ need for community and safety. While there were other issues and concerns also in play in the doomed Pruitt-Igoe project, its modernist architectural design is widely blamed for its failure (Montgomery 1985).

A smaller, but no less important, example comes from my own work with low-income housing. While working with a government agency that assists developers, I became aware of a project where all the low-income apartments had been sequestered together inside a larger residential development. In so doing, the developer failed to address the low-income residents’ need for “normalcy” and “being just like everyone else.” As a result, there was a perceived stigma and the low-income residents were less likely to be seen as part of the community.

Although in-depth reviews of the literature on disadvantaged populations, site visits, observations, and interviews are undoubtedly helpful in connecting designers to the lived experiences of disadvantaged populations, these things alone are not enough. They may get at the effect, but have less to offer in terms of understanding the cause.

For example, in my own research I have observed that homeless persons are sometimes critical of others as they wait to see if they will be admitted for the night. An understanding of the root of that behavior provides insights into ways to counteract this issue through the design of the space; that is, in this example, by creating thoughtful seating in small, non-confrontational arrangements.

Interior designers must regularly draw upon information from other fields in order to devise localized, specific solutions such as this example suggests. Because of this, I propose that a more foundational, broad level of understanding from other fields is necessary to achieve thoughtful and even-handed design outcomes.

A Case for the Intentional Person-Centric Philosophical Framework

I argue that data-gathering tactics such as observation, interview, and other research tools address small, isolated consequences or effects of the lived experience, while leaving out necessary, fundamental understandings about where the disadvantaged are “coming from.” Further, I argue that these things alone overlook those choice-driving forces that are seldom easy to observe.

This being the case, I believe it is important to develop a philosophical design framework that speaks to people's holistic well-being. Questions such as the following underpin such a philosophical framework:

What is a person's potential to be happy?
How can people be emotionally complete and well-adjusted?
How should aberrant or anti-social behavior be viewed, or to what should it be attributed?
How should we view the built environment with regard to its potential to better the human experience?

I maintain that adopting a philosophical framework such as this will help ensure that design research includes an intentional “person-centric” approach to human mental and emotional well-being. The identification of one's philosophical world view is not a new idea, of course. A statement of philosophy that identifies one's values, priorities, and driving forces has for some time been considered an important component of a designer's portfolio (Bender 2008). Similarly, “mission statements” are commonly developed and promoted by interior design firms so that their clients can determine if there is a good match with their own priorities (such as expressing a commitment to sustainability or holding a global-scope perspective).

The philosophical framework I propose represents a step beyond these cursory conclusions, compelling the researcher/designer to craft their intent in an informed, thoughtful way, considering deeper questions such as those about human behavior, the nature of emotion, the source of aberrant action, and/or the nature of linear time.

A person-centric framework can spring from a number of fields and points of view including, but not limited to, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. For example, the school of ecological psychology places central priority on the influence of human beings’ context or environment – that is to say, to fully understand behavior a full exploration of the environment where behavior takes place is necessary (Gibson 1979). Within this broad theory is the concept of “situated cognition,” which claims that cognition, or knowing, cannot be separated from, and is heavily influenced by, environmental context, activity, people, culture, or language (Greeno 1989). These, along with other opportunities to form a person-centric design framework, open the door to a better understanding of perceived reality, and can broaden designers’ understanding of ontology (the nature of reality) and epistemology (how we know).

A defined person-centric framework can ground a designer and/or design researcher, while at the same time providing an element of credibility to their work. Adopting a person-centric framework from a field outside of design can strengthen design decisions and conclusions because, as Cross explains, “[other fields] have much stronger histories of inquiry, scholarship and research than we have in design. We need to draw upon those histories and traditions where appropriate, while building our own intellectual culture, acceptable and defensible in the world on its own terms” (Cross 2001).

Of no less importance is the fact that the adoption of a person-centric framework provides a pathway for connecting design to other disciplines and moving design research toward its logical place as an “interdisciplinary discipline.” According to Cross, this idea is the central challenge for design research, and mirrors the trend of design practitioners to collaborate with other disciplines (Council for Interior Design Accreditation 2010; Cross 1999).

I argue that a person-centric framework provides a lens through which human experience, behavior, and need might be holistically viewed. In addition, such a person-centric framework helps address the nature of research questions, strategies, and tactics. Thus, a person-centric philosophical framework can operate alongside other choices in a research study, as shown in Figure 14.1.

The Personal Nature of a Person-Centric Framework

Although seldom discussed, it is usually the case that one's philosophical approach to a research problem is typically in agreement with one's personal worldview. How one believes the world works could and should encompass how one views truth, the nature of knowledge, and beliefs about how human beings interact with these concepts. Perceptions concerning these issues vary widely.

My own way of seeing such things is somewhat conventional, and predicated on my overt selection of a philosophical framework. Specifically, I am willing to accept that human perceptions vary, but ultimately the world possesses certain objective truths, some of which human beings have license to perceive and respond to in their own way. That is, certain properties do not rely on the cognizance of human minds to exist (e.g., the existence of gravity).

This being said, it is still true that subjective experience is compelling and at times cannot be captured by objective research approaches that discount these perceptual variations. As American philosopher Thomas Nagel artfully explains, “It is objectively impossible to describe what it is like to be a bat – one has to be a bat to really understand the point of view” (Nagel 1974). Put another way, one's consciousness has an inherently subjective nature to it. Thus, I accept that perceptions matter deeply to those that hold them, and as I am compelled to serve my clients (who hold these perceptions) in my design research, this fact must at times take precedence.

For me, this grounding in the nature of reality leads to a certain pragmatism when considering qualitative and quantitative methodologies for a study. While my primary research training was in quantitative methods, my personal evolution has led me to conclude that this approach sometimes lacks the richness of human experience that can lead to the discovery of important, often intimate human–environment points of view. Thus, my refusal to succumb to either wholesale qualitative or quantitative methods has led me to embrace a system of mixed methods as a means to determine and strengthen conclusions.

This decision, along with active searches of various theories, solidified my core belief in a person-centric framework and led me to my current research focus on homelessness. After much thought, I chose “humanistic psychology” as the person-centric framework to shape my research. This has proven to be a good choice for my worldview, as it is sufficiently universal to be applicable to a range of studies and, much like a design concept in an actual construction project, smooths the selection of future research studies.

What is Humanistic Psychology?

Sometimes called the “third wave” of psychology, humanistic psychology differs from the deconstructive psychoanalytic emphasis of Freud and his colleagues. It also offers a different view from the “black box” behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, which tied behavior to predictable responses prompted by stimuli (Bugental 1964). Humanistic psychology attempts to look beyond these strictly medical models of psychology and their reliance on controlled, clinical studies to a stance that concentrates not on the pathological aspects of the human condition, but instead the potential for good health.

This new point of view seeks to holistically explore the complexity of human beings and to serve as a science of the lived experience (Aanstoos, Serlin, and Greening 2000). Central to humanistic psychology is organismic theory, the idea that the total person is the natural unit of study (Hall and Lindzey 1978). The key components of humanistic psychology that are at the heart of my personal belief about human beings and their potential are listed below:

Human beings are more than merely the sum of their parts. They cannot be reduced to component parts or functions.

Human beings exist in a uniquely human context, as well as in a cosmic ecology.

Human beings have some choice, and with that, responsibility.

Human beings are intentional, aim at goals, are aware that they cause future events, and seek meaning, value and creativity (Bugental 1964).

Art, poetry, literature, and philosophy are important to our understanding of the human experience and for healing and enriching one's inner life (Elkins 2009).

My initial exploration of humanistic psychology revealed that it had a significant impact on various disciplines including education, social work, and nursing (Elkins 2009) – fields that, like interior design, seek to offer positive progress relative to social betterment issues. In the words of prominent psychologist David Elkins, “Humanistic psychology is a psychology of liberation focused on change and growth, a passionate vision that all human beings have dignity and worth” (Elkins 2009).

After adopting humanistic psychology as my foundation, it was necessary to identify specific theories in humanistic psychology that could play a more visible and prominent role in my own research agenda. One such theory was self-actualization, a concept proposed by Abraham Maslow in his “hierarchy of needs” theory.

Self-actualization essentially holds that all human beings are capable of realizing their full potential, and that negative “psychopathologizing” experiences can hold people back from this full sense of being. As Søren Kierkegaard explained, self-actualization is the view that “a person [can] be that which one truly is” (Ewen 1984).

Maslow identified self-actualization as the central goal of therapy and suggested that “any means of any kind that helps to restore the person to the path of self-actualization and of development along the lines that his inner nature dictates” is a positive action (Maslow 1968). Implicit in this line of thinking is that elements of a human being's experience, including the built environment, can be agents of supportive therapy that assists one to self-actualization, or destructive to one's progress toward self-actualization.

Viewed in this light, physical environments for the homeless become much more than shelter, but rather a potential instrument of betterment. I suggest that in this realization lies the potential utility of humanistic psychology in design research (and more broadly, the usefulness of a human-centric framework to guide one's research agenda).

If we examine the example given earlier of the homeless person's anger toward others in the waiting room from a humanist psychology viewpoint, this anger can be seen as an expression of fear. Therefore, rather than being just managed, it is possible to eradicate it (Hall and Lindzey 1978). This fear can be treated as part of a process of healing; in this case, through the sensitive realignment of interior components in the waiting room. Thus, the full potential of the power of a person-centric framework can be seen. That is to say that not only can such a framework drive the nature of research questions, but it also becomes the means through which questions are answered.

Research Strategies and Tactics and Their Interface with the Person-Centric Framework

With regard to specific research strategies (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, logical argumentation) and tactics (observation, interview, etc.), the humanistic psychology framework permits freedom in methodological choices, embracing both qualitative approaches that capture lived experience and quantitative a posteriori strategies that allow an idea to be considered without unduly generalizing the phenomena (Giorgi 2009). Essentially, the methodological pluralism of humanistic psychology provides a validated freedom to choose a research strategy that is based on the nature of the research questions. Such pluralism is in agreement with the authors of design discovery, who see design as different than either the objective/science paradigm or subjective/art paradigm and argue that a diversity of research methods has complementary strengths that have a better chance of serving the range of design activities (Cross 2001; Dorst 1997).

Another research strategy is to combine systems of inquiry within the same study; that is, to use a specific approach where it is most helpful, or as a means to triangulate findings. Johnston and Onwueguzie advocate this “mixed method” approach on the grounds that it can produce a more workable set of conclusions and gain a more balanced perspective on an issue (Johnston and Onwueguzie 2004). Equally important, having multiple strategies brings credence to intuitive processes which can then be subjected to verification by experience testing (Huitt 1998). This is a particularly useful strategy in cases with a small sample.

The Person-Centric Framework: Two Examples of Its Application in Design Research

The following examples of research studies were developed in response to the framework-methodology structures previously discussed. Both rely on humanistic psychology for their grounding, and demonstrate a range of methodologies. For clarity, these studies’ methodologies are diagrammed using Wang's design diagramming method (Wang 2007).

Study #1. Design-Decision Research: Design of a Prototype Check-in Patio for a Homeless Shelter

The first study springs not only from the general, subtle philosophy of humanistic psychology, but also uses the work of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow as its guiding principle for synthesis of tangible design guidelines (Maslow 1968). The study's focus was the design of a homeless shelter's intake patio. Its methods were akin to design-decision research that both assesses design decision-making and the actual implementation of those design decisions (Farbstein and Kantrowitz 1991). That is, the main goal of the study was to “develop a device that can inform reflective thinking about design action” (Groat and Wang 2002) by combining various theory systems into a “theory-to-action grid.” Thus, the study occurred in two parts: first, the development of the theory-to-action grid as a design tool, then the application of the theory-to-action grid's recommendations in an applied design. Figure 14.2 graphically depicts the study's strategies and tactics.

The primary theory in the theory-to-action grid was Maslow's self-actualization theory (Maslow 1968). For example, Maslow asserts that a self-actualized person expresses interest in the social well-being of others. In the case of the homeless, one can assume that these individuals are in crisis and therefore not on a path toward self-actualization. This characteristic is described in the theory-to-action grid (i.e., a person may feel animosity, frustration, or distrust of others).

This insight from Maslow's theory was coupled with ideas about ways that the built environment might counter these qualities from sources such as Alexander's A Pattern Language and Crowe's Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977; Crowe 1991). Each of these theories supports the tenets of humanistic psychology of (1) self-determination and (2) the potential for betterment. The theory-to-action grid served to identify similarities in each theory system that then informed a set of specific and tangible design goals, as seen in Figure 14.3.

The second phase of this research study was to put the theory-to-action grid into practice by applying it to design guidelines for an actual homeless shelter's check-in area. Adherence to tenets of human wellness extracted from the various theory systems resulted in elements that catered to its users’ psychological needs. For example, the intake area's enclosure had sufficient openness to permit a sense of psychological escape, a clock tower served as an anchor/organization device to provide the homeless with a reconnection to temporality, and seating placement acknowledged that users would prefer defensive protection. Figure 14.4 provides a perspective view of the proposed patio.

The resulting design for the space is not strikingly novel; however, it possesses numerous small features that are attuned to the needs of a person in crisis through its proxemics, treatment of color, spatial circulation, and integration of staff. The nuanced nature of the design is not surprising because the lived experience of space is often local.

Study #2. Case Study Exploring Family Perceptions of a Homeless Shelter Bedroom

The second study investigated further the “lived experience” of a homeless shelter. Like the first, the second study sprang from humanistic psychology; however, unlike the first study, the foundation of humanistic psychology more subtly underplays the research questions. That is to say, at its core the study explored the potential assistance that a built environment could offer to the homeless by, in effect, moving them toward self-actualization, but sought answers to questions that tested the specific means by which this might happen. The study's questions were crafted from informed a priori reasoning, gleaned from established psychological studies on crowding, sense of control, and helplessness. Focus groups of homeless residents at the shelter helped confirm the viability of questions before the study commenced.

Specifically, this study explored the “lived experience” of a bedroom for a homeless family and their perceptions of crowding, sense of control, and helplessness. The system of inquiry was both positivist, in that it included quantitative tactics, and naturalistic, in that it captured individual perceptions of the family using qualitative tactics. A pattern-matching case-study design was adopted, thus introducing qualitative measures in line with humanistic psychology. This design approach gathered data from a family occupying an altered bedroom and then measured effects against another “control” family, i.e., a family in an unaltered bedroom, over the course of six months. Differences in the two family's situations were acknowledged for the potential affect these might have on conclusions. Additionally, since the main objective of the study was theory-building, the limited generalizability of the small sample sizes was not considered significant.

Figure 14.5 provides a visual diagram of the study's overall method. The first of the two phases embraced literature review, focus group, and logical argumentation that resulted in guidelines that helped form the design priorities and features of the altered homeless shelter family bedroom. With the assistance of a $10,000 research grant, a bedroom at the shelter was renovated to include these new elements. Added features were intended to decrease sensations of crowding and increase sense of control.

The second phase of the homeless shelter bedroom study explored the families’ reactions to the bedrooms and used interview, observation, and participant photographs, along with a quantitative questionnaire, to triangulate findings. The case-study method permitted the gathering of deep, rich information and enabled participants to descriptively report how the altered room's design reduced their sense of crowding, and their perception of personal control. Further, the altered room's features reduced perceptions of crowding through the visual expansion of space.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In this essay I have argued that the adoption of a human-centric philosophical framework can assist design researchers who seek to embrace human welfare elements. This human-centric framework is particularly helpful when addressing disadvantaged populations whose life experiences are different from those of the researcher. I have further argued that the adoption of a philosophical framework supports the direction of design research and is in keeping with emerging trends in design practice.

In closing, I would like to leave the reader with three central points:

Elements such as safety, security, and privacy are critical parts of the human experience that must be acknowledged and planned for, and are critical to the lived human experience.
For staying power and full justification of the grounding for their work, design researchers must “leave the shallows” and recognize the foundations from which they design and reason, and on what basis they accept pre-existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. In effect, researchers must recognize that “knowing a fact is not something that one does; it is a condition one has come to occupy in relation to information” (Rescher 2003).

Deep systemic connections of person-centric philosophical frameworks from other fields coupled with design field-specific knowledge can help guide choices and approaches to knowledge generation – and help design scholarship make its unique contribution to the betterment of society.

References

Aanstoos, C., Serlin, I., and Greening, T. 2000. “A history of division 32 (humanistic psychology) of the American Psychological Association,” in D. Dewsbury (ed.), Unification through Division: Histories of the Divisions of the American Psychological Association, vol. 5. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 1–47.

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., and Silverstein, M. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Anderson, B. G., Honey, P. L., and Dudek, M. T. 2007. “Interior design's social compact: key to the quest for professional status,” Journal of Interior Design 33(2): v–xiii.

Bender, D. 2008. Design Portfolios Moving from Traditional to Digital. New York: Fairchild.

Bugental, J. 1964. “The third force in psychology,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 4(1): 19–25.

Burt, M., Aron, L., Douglas, T., Valente, J., Lee, E. and Iwen, B. 1999. “Homelessness: programs and the people they serve,” Summary Report – Findings of the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients. Washington DC: The Urban Institute.

Council for Interior Design Accreditation. 2010. CIDA Collaborative Strategies Report. Meeting conducted in Washington DC, November 12, 2010.

Council for Interior Design Accreditation. 2011. Professional Standards 2011. http://www.accredit-id.org/professional-standards. Accessed June 14, 2011.
Cross, N. 1999. “Design research: a disciplined conversation,” Design Issues 15(2): 5–10.
Cross, N. 2001. “Designerly ways of knowing,” Design Issues 17(3): 49–55.
Crowe, T. 1991. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Dorst, K. 1997. “Describing Design: A Comparison of Paradigms.” Doctoral dissertation, Technische Universiteit, Delft. Abstract retrieved from Proquest, AAT C627941.
Elkins, D. 2009. “Why humanistic psychology lost its power and influence in American psychology: implications for advancing humanistic psychology,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 49(3): 267–291.
Ewen, R. 1984. An Introduction to Theories of Personality (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.
Farbstein, J. and Kantrowitz, M. 1991. “Design research in the swamp,” in E. Zube and G. Moore (eds.), Advances in Environment and Behavior and Design, vol. 3. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 297–318.
Gamez, J. and Rogers, S. 2009. “An architecture of change,” in B. Bell and K. Wakeford (eds.), Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Singapore: Metropolis Books, pp. 18–25.
Gibson, J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Giorgi, A. 2009. The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A Modified Husserlian Approach. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Greeno, J. G. 1989. “A perspective on thinking,” American Psychologist 44: 134–141.
Groat, L. and Wang, D. 2002. Architectural Research Methods. New York: Wiley.
Hall, C. and Lindzey, G. 1978. Theories of Personality (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Hosey, L. 2008. “Toward a humane environment: sustainable design and social justice,” in B. Bell and K. Wakeford (eds.), Expanding Architecture Design as Activism. New York: Bellerophon Publications, pp. 34–41.
Huitt, W. 1998. “Measurement, evaluation, and research: ways of knowing,” Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/intro/wayknow.html. Accessed December 23, 2010.
Johnston, R. and Onwueguzie, A. 2004. “Mixed methods research: a research paradigm whose time has come,” Educational Researcher 33(7): 14–26.
Maslow, A. 1968. Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Montgomery, R. 1985. “Pruitt-Igoe: policy failure or societal symptom,” in B. Checkoway and C. V. Patton ( eds.), The Metropolitan Midwest: Policy Problems and Prospects for Change. Chicago: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, pp. 229–243.
Nagel, T. 1974. “What is it like to be a bat?”, The Philosophical Review 83(4): 435–450.
Rescher, N. 2003. Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. New York: Albany State University of New York Press.
Rog, D. and Buckner, J. 2007. “Homeless Families and Chidren,” in D. L. Dennis (ed.), Toward Understanding Homelessness: The 2007 National Symposium on Homelessness Research. Washington DC: Department of Health and Human Services and US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Sinclair, C. 2008. “I hope it's a long list,” in K. Stohr and C. Sinclair, Architecture for Humanity: Design Like You Give a Damn. New York: Metropolis Books, pp. 10–31.
Wang, D. 2007. “Diagramming design research,” Journal of Interior Design 33(1): 33–43.