POSITIVE USER-DESIGN INTERACTION THROUGH IMPROVING USABILITY, TEACHABILITY AND SPATIAL CONFIGURATION OF GREEN BUILDING PRODUCT DESIGN

Abstract

Green building product designs, which interact directly and extensively with building users through active operation (e.g., operating of a solar shade, windows, light switch) and/or aesthetic or creative features of the designs (e.g., decorations showing sustainability concepts), represent a critical link between users and buildings. Yet, the user-design interaction has received little attention in the green building design practices as shown from existing green building rating systems, which rely largely on scores obtained from simulation models without incorporating the human factor, leading to unsatisfactory performance. In this paper, we identify three factors which are important in the user-design interaction: 1) “usability” for measuring the utilitarian purposes fulfilled by product design for a green building; 2) “teachability” for evaluating the effectiveness of using a green building product design as a teaching medium; and 3) spatial configuration for assessing the spatial layout of products designed for promoting usability and teachability. Selection, weighting, and measurement of indicators for each aspect are developed through literature review, Delphi survey and analytic hierarchy process. A software tool is developed for data entry, processing, and visualization which can be adopted by the design community following two hypothetical case studies.