In the understanding of Design as an interdisciplinary practice and an agent of positive change, I am focusing my design practice around the subconscious element of influence environmental and biological factors hold on people in the aim of designing for better environments and ultimately human wellbeing.
The influence human senses exert on the human experience was considerably taken in account whilst researching for this dissertation, leading to focus in the areas of human behavioural sciences and the design of experiences through environmental design.
This Image describes Fear of Crime and its many factors such as social & personal as well as environmental, it also describes its effect on the population. This was assembled from the Literature Review conducted prior to research.
I decided to focus my Master's dissertation on investigating the emotional (emotional response, sentiment) and cognitive (physical/visual information present in the environment) aspects of Fear of Crime and its implications for the built environment. Demonstrating the design problem, research, and providing interventions based on empirical evidences.
This dissertation's research was restricted to Loughborough University's campus. The aims and objectives (diagram below) led to the development of a photo ethnography (N=18), interviews conducted with members of campus security (N=2) and review of the crime datasets provided by members of security staff.
This led to deliverables per methods. The photo ethnography led to the development of sentiment scapes such as a map of positive and negative sentiments on campus as well as a table of environmental features per sentiment. Designed from the data acquired during the interviews (including crime datasets) was a concept map of strategy used on campus to counter crime as well as a reported crime map (Jan 2020-Jun 2021). The compiled data described both positive and negative sentiment scapes to intensity of reported crime.
Sentiment-Scape of the University built from data collected from the Photo Ethnography study (N=18). This illustrates sentiments participants experienced through campus (from very positive to very negative) and its built environment during the study.
Numbers of Sentiment associated with Environmental Features of the University built from data collected during the Photo Ethnography study (N=18). This illustrates the number of types of sentiments per environmental features (coded through visual cues in gathered pictures) participants experienced through campus and its built environment during the study.
The Concept Maps of Security's strategy on campus, as well as the factors influencing criminogenic spaces on campus, developed from Interviews (N=2) carried out with the campus Security team. This illustrates the main types of crime occurring on campus and the strategy in place countering them as well as the criminogenic spaces present and factors influencing/allowing crime.
The Reported Crimes map on Loughborough University's campus from Jan2020 to Jun2021 was developed from datasets of reported crime gathered from Interviews (N=2) carried out with the campus Security team. This illustrates types of reported crimes occurring on campus and their location.
The Positive and Negative Sentiment-Scape of Loughborough University's campus relating to Reported Crime (Jan2020 to Jun2021) were developed from datasets of reported crime gathered from Interviews (N=2) carried out with the campus Security team in relation to participants' Sentiments gathered from the Photo Ethnography (N=18). This illustrates the intensity of crime and types of crime compared to types of sentiments experienced through the built environment available on campus.
The compiled results demonstrated that overall the campus is safe and perceived safe yet design interventions are relevant in tackling fear of crime and crime itself.
The emotional factor indicated both presences of positive and negative sentiments. Positive sentiments tend to correlate with environmental features such as visibility, prospect, playfulness of the built environment, presence of nature and pro-social environments. Negative sentiments tend to correlate with environmental features such as the unpleasantness of the built environment's aesthetics, need for maintenance, visual similarities between areas of campus leading to confusion (visual mind-map), lack of visual presence of university and annoyance due to lack of commute space (space for walking pavement) and prospect on such commute routes.
Criminogenic spaces (situational crime) were discovered in areas of pro-social environment and social cohesion.
A set of interventions were generated to fit the needs of Loughborough University's campus (situational crime prevention, increase prospect through maintenance) as well as more experimental and creative potential interventions to alleviate fear of crime in areas where less social cohesion occurs (such as coloured lighting improving mood and illumination).
Interventions such as those listed contribute to behavioural change through design with a persuasive objective. With an in-depth understanding of how people feel and evolve throughout their environment, designers are able to control and create behaviours with the aim of making human-centred environments; for example better lit, more pleasant and mindfulness-inspiring environments.
This Concept map of the Dissertation's result demonstrates factors in relation to the campus' built environment such as emotional and criminogenic. This also lists the main designed interventions to the built environment which could help alleviate FoC and crime levels as well as meliorating users' experience of the campus.