The architectural practice has always been rooted in what people now call “human-centered design”. The term, coined by Irish engineer Mike Cooley in his 1987 publication “Human-Centred Systems” describes a design approach around identifying people’s needs and solving the right problem with simple interventions. Architecture balances between being aesthetic art and practical design. With multiple collaborators and goals for the project, the needs of the end-user often get compromised in the design process. To help architects better design for people, new methodologies may be inspired by human-centered design techniques developed by user experience (UX) designers.
Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem-solving, tailoring creations around the deeply-researched needs of the end-user. The process emphasizes a built empathy between the designers and the users to generate ideas and prototypes for innovative solutions. The approach is popularly used by UX designers to create digital worlds and extends itself to other fields in interaction design such as service design, systems design, and product design. In architecture, it may appear as a system to optimize the relationship between people and buildings to attend to a community’s needs.
Both architects and UX designers create experiences - one being physical and the other, digital. UX designers are involved in the process of acquiring and integrating a digital product, dealing with aspects like visual design, branding, usability, and function. The ideation processes highlight similarities between the disciplines - starting out with in-depth research on the site, context, and spatial demands; or users, business targets, and the product. Architects use this information to sketch out ideas in the form of spatial layouts, sections, or master plans and later develop prototype 3D models. UX designers would use the attained data to wireframe the design concept and develop basic layout blocks to outline the product flow.
The crossovers between the fields make it easy for professionals to switch career paths in either field and bring their learnings into new territories. Techniques from the relatively new digital design branch can be used to disrupt how one of the oldest and more traditional forms of design is practiced.
Data-Driven Design
UX designers heavily rely on data to establish a foundation for their design strategy. To create the most optimal product for users, they delve into quantitative data like who, what, and where, and qualitative data like how and why. The collected information on the user group is extensive and can be used to understand the user and their deeper needs. Every design decision is backed by information, creative effective user-centric designs that leverage data to drive innovation.
Architects also collect lots of data about the site, bye-laws and standards, movement patterns, and climate patterns. With all this information, the end-user and their needs typically get lost in the process. Traditionally, user needs have also had to battle the architect’s vision and structural limitations for a place in the final design. Unlike UX designers, architects tend to engage in more shallow research on the user group, limited to their spatial needs, aesthetic desires, and ergonomic standards.
Data-driven architecture can enable faster decisions and happier inhabitants. In a time when architects were eager to impose their artistic vision on a client, Austrian-American modernist Richard Neutra prioritized his client’s needs. The architect would provide them with a detailed questionnaire, and study it along with their diaries, autobiographies, and childhood anecdotes. The information would unveil his client’s desires and motivations, defining their ‘real needs’.
In New York City, spatial design firm Co-Office employs a bottom-up data-driven design process similar to UX designers. While traditional architects start with program and form, Co-Office starts with human behavior. They carry out intensive research and let the data inform their design strategy. For an office revamp project in New York, the team discovered that the space was being used only 15% of the time, opening up ideas to use it more effectively. With an emphasis on collecting quantitative data to support their design intuition, the team aims to improve client engagement in the design process. Their method allows them to intelligently gather insights and take feedback from clients in a productive manner.
Agile Processes
While the conceptual phase of building and UX design is similar, the methodology of arriving at the design differs. Architectural design generally follows a linear process - it goes from design development to construction documents and from permissions and costing to construction administration. The practice follows what is termed as “waterfall project management”, where the project is mapped into distinct sequential phases that begin only when the previous one has been completed.
The UX world adopts “agile project management”, a more repetitive methodology where the team goes through short delivery cycles to quickly learn, adapt and iterate on their mistakes in each subsequent cycle. Through this methodology, a design is quickly produced using regular feedback from the users to direct the project.
The design-and-build process can be rigid in terms of schedules. Each stage is heavily dependent on its precedent, and irregular changes in the design phase affect all the following stages. Stakeholders like MEP consultants and structural engineers can enter the process at different junctures and provide conflicting feedback on the development.
Iterating design prototypes is much easier in digital design, not in construction where the end product is a static, physical entity that is expensive to build. Technology could solve this problem and enhance the architectural workflow. Ollio Consultancy offers their clients to experience the designed space in VR to test for functionality before initiating construction. This allows all the stakeholders to reach a common understanding faster, and iterate options based on user feedback.
Design is Human-Centered
In a Venn diagram comparing architecture and UX design, humans occupy the intersection. Both design processes have evolved to prioritize human needs, each taking its own path to the same goal. Approaching architectural design with a UX designer’s mindset would ensure a more holistic approach to designing the experience of using a building. From the outset, a stronger understanding of the user would enable human behavior to dictate the design to a greater degree. Whether a building, a website, a logo or a pair of pants, designing for people is what all design is about.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on September 19, 2022
