Title: Human-centred architectural design: a novel design method focusing on prospective episodic memories

Authors: Yasuhiro Mitsui; Yukari Nagai

Addresses: School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advance Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), 1-1 Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan ' School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advance Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), 1-1 Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan

Abstract: In conventional architectural design, the planning of a project depends on the building type, which in turn is framed by the design of past and present buildings. To meet the requirements of contemporary users, which may be specialised and diversified, innovation in the design of building types is crucial. To realise this, obtaining sufficient user involvement and making the design process human-centred are essential. The problem is that there is no adequate method to bring the viewpoint of the user into the planning process. In this study, we propose a new method to realise human-centred design. The method extracts the design parameters of the future building from the stakeholders as a series of episodes. From those episodes we can realise the logical design of the new building. The method is applied to a real house building project and we discuss the findings of this explorative study in this paper.

Keywords: architectural planning; human-centred design; creative design; episodic systems; episodic future thinking; architectural design; episodic memories; user involvement; building design; house building projects.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2014.064238

Journal of Design Research, 2014 Vol.12 No.3, pp.221 - 238

Received: 03 Jul 2013
Accepted: 06 Feb 2014
Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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