Speaking of Psychology: The psychology of design, with Sally Augustin, PhD

The spaces we are in every day influence our mood and well-being whether we are aware of it or not. Creating spaces to make us feel our best is a hot topic – in community planning, in the office and on HGTV. Sally Augustin, PhD, an environmental psychologist who is a principal at Design with Science, a design consultation firm, discusses how to design spaces to optimize well-being.

Sally Augustin, PhD, is a practicing environmental/design psychologist and the principal at Design With Science. She has extensive experience integrating science-based insights to develop recommendations for the design of places, objects and services that support desired cognitive, emotional and physical experiences. Her Design With Science clients include manufacturers, service providers and design firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Augustin has been interviewed by international and national media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Forbes, Huffington Post and design publications worldwide. As the editor of Research Design Connections, Augustin has written widely on science-based design for a broad audience of people interested in the design world. Augustin is the author of "Place Advantage:  Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture" and, with Cindy Coleman, "The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research:  Applying Knowledge to Inform Design."

Kaitlin Luna: Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association. I'm your host Kaitlin Luna. Before we dive into our conversation I want to remind you that we love to hear from you. If you have any comments, questions or ideas for us please email me at kluna@apa.org, that's kluna@apa.org. Now on to the conversation.

The spaces we are in everyday influence our mood and well-being whether we're aware of it or not. Creating spaces to make us feel our best is a hot topic in community planning, in the office and on HGTV. Here to talk about designing spaces to optimize well-being is APA fellow Dr. Sally Augustin, an environmental psychologist who is a principal at Design With Science, a design consultation firm. Welcome Dr. Augustin.

Sally Augustin: Nice to be here.

Kaitlin Luna: So the start of 2019 brought us the Marie Kondo effect, that’s what I'll be calling it, she's the famous Japanese professional organizer whose show on Netflix called “Tidying Up” has been wildly popular. So Americans seem hungry for this type of program to show us how to declutter our lives and our homes and as a design psychologist what are your thoughts on the response to the show?

Sally Augustin: I think the response to the show indicates how burdened so many of us are by all the things in our physical environment. We have books, we have tchotchkes we have all sorts of stuff that surround us and all those materials create an environment that's really very complex visually, and when we're in a complicated visual environment we feel stress. So I think the success of the Marie Kondo show indicates that people really really need to tone back all the visual activity in the spaces that are around them, and they need to create a space that has about the same number of colors, shapes, patterns, etc. as they're likely to find in an interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Kaitlin Luna: Can you explain more why clutter makes us stressed? I mean we seems like Americans tend to have too much stuff and it makes us stressed but giving it away and getting it getting rid of it is difficult. So can you talk about why clutter though is still stressful for us?

Sally Augustin: Clutter is stressful for us because whether you realize it or not, you're always surveying the environment around you. This is because our mental apparatus evolved millennia ago and we're still using the same sort of brain systems to assess our world now that we did in the past, so when we were young as a species it was very important for us to be continually looking around our world making sure that nothing that found us tasty was approaching, and when there's more going on around us visually it's harder to spot tigers whatever that might be lurking out there. So and when we're in a space that's more complex visually we get stressed out.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah that's really interesting how like how it goes back so much further than just the current day how it's a part of our biology. 

Sally Augustin: Yeah it really is intriguing to think about all the vestiges of our primordial selves if you will that continue to be important in our world.

Kaitlin Luna: And can you talk about your work you do at design with science? How did you get started and what type of clients do you work with?

Sally Augustin: Well I have an MBA as well as a PhD, and I got involved in retail design projects as the sort of management type if you will when I graduated from business school and was intrigued by how the physical environment in stores influenced what people think and behave. That led me to go back to school to study environmental psychology and led me to my current practice where I work with people who are designing places or objects or services and I make recommendations based on environmental psych research that make desired activities, outcomes, etc. more likely. So I will make suggestions about what colors walls should be painted in order to enhance creative performance in a space or how ceiling heights come into play, how the textures we feel make a difference in our lives and I work with people all over the world to get environmental psych research out of all sorts of journals and into the world where it can make a difference in people's lives.

Kaitlin Luna: It seems like more businesses and people are interested in designing good spaces today is that true or is that just has it always been an interest?

Sally Augustin: I think at one level it's always been an interest you know since the you know first you know person tried to sell something to some other person that you know they've been motivated to create an environment conducive to that. I have seen increased attention to applying environmental psychology in the last few years because people are becoming more aware that there is a science that can be used to design environments and make particular outcomes and situations more likely.

Kaitlin Luna: And now I want to get into more of the design details how they influence us. Can you talk about how our emotions are influenced by colors, patterns, lighting and texture?

Sally Augustin: Sure, I'll start with color because this is what I'm asked about most frequently. Color has three attributes. You know there's hue, which is the name we give to a collection of wavelengths, and there's also saturation and brightness. Saturation is how true a color is, so like a khaki green is less saturated than a kelly green. You may also might think of saturation as how much gray there is in a color with less saturated colors having a more gray component to them. And brightness is you know surprisingly enough exactly what sounds like. It's really you can think of it as how much white there is mixed into a color.

So colors that are not very saturated but are relatively bright relax us, so like a sage green that has lots of white mixed into it so it's a light color well we would find it relaxing to look at a color like that. Where a color that is more saturated but not as bright, something like oh I'll say a kelly green, well we find that really energizing to experience. But there are a couple hues that have very particular effects on us like seeing all sorts of different greens makes it more likely that we'll think creatively, and seeing Reds for example degrades our analytical performance, just for just for starters.

And um there's a lot of other interesting research that we can talk about. For example when people are sitting on a cushion of some sort, you can think that is a haptic experience a touch-based experience, they are less likely to drive as hard a bargain as when they're sitting on a harder surface. When we smell a particular sense even if they're very subtle and we've been being exposed to them for, and we've been exposed to them for a long time well they have significant influences on what goes on in our heads. For example when we smell lavender we're more likely to trust those who are nearby and smelling lemon is likely to enhance our cognitive performance. So you know we can work our way through the senses one by one and see how various different stimuli influence how we think and behave and we can also think about more psychosocial type factors such as you know humans need for privacy, their need for control over their physical environment, you know basically everything you can see, hear, feel etc. around you has some influence on what goes on in your brain.

Kaitlin Luna: What about patterns? Are there any particular patterns that are more maybe jarring or upsetting than other patterns or more soothing?

Sally Augustin: Well it's interesting to think about patterns because you know they're composed of different shapes and colors and types of lines and things like that, and something that's really significant to consider when you're choosing a pattern for a place in your life is the relative number of curving lines versus the number of straight lines. You know and no pattern or place is entirely curvilinear, I mean that seems like a cartoon, or entirely rectilinear, you know a place it's all rectilinear makes you know that that's like an awful spaceship horror movie type interior. So when we're exposed to relatively more curvy lines we think a space is more comfortable where when we're seeing mainly rectilinear lines, you know straight lines meeting at right angles for example, well thoughts of efficiency come to mind. So you know these sorts of lines along with color etc. are important considerations when patterns are being selected.

Kaitlin Luna: It's so fascinating that this is all happening really us being cognizant of it I think for the most part. Lighting too I mean for example I don't really like fluorescent lighting and I use a lamp in my office so lighting is an important component to me. Can you talk about the you know what it means to other people and what lighting is beneficial what lighting is difficult for people?

Sally Augustin: Sure. When we're thinking about lighting it's really important to align with whatever people are trying to accomplish and what sort of experience people are trying to have in a space. So if you want to relax or think creatively, a warmer light can really work out well. You know and this should would be no surprise to people because you know what do we do when we want to relax and hang out with people and have a good time, we tend to light a fire and you know bring out the candles, all of which produce warm light. But there's a time for cooler light, and cooler light is good when you're trying to do something a little more analytical and also when you need to rev yourself up and give yourself a boost of energy. So you know if you are trying to work out, you want to turn on the lamps in you know whatever space you're working out in that have the cooler colored lightbulbs.

Kaitlin Luna: And what about, how to sound play into all this because you know noisy spaces for some people can be really aggravating but for other people they can really thrive in a noisy environment.

Sally Augustin: Sound has a lot of subjective elements to it. When we feel more positive about the people making the noise or the noise itself has good associations to us we're less likely to be aggravated by it. But generally we are distracted in workplaces and things like that by conversations, and particularly conversations that seem like they might have some relevance to our life, but we also never want to be in a space that's completely silent. I mean you know first of all it's impossible to create a space like that in everyday life, but also that's just plain weird to us, that isn't where our ears and you know brains developed you know the space is where we spent our early days you know wasn't silent there was always a little bit going on. And some interesting recent research indicate a relatively recent research indicates that caring nature sounds the sorts of sounds that you might hear in like a meadow on a lovely spring day, well that is cognitively restorative to us. So you know if we become mentally exhausted doing work that requires concentration or focus, if we hear sounds like gently rustling leaves or a burbling brook etc. we can restock our mental processing power and also you know we become a little less stressed.

Kaitlin Luna: And I want to go back to what you talked about before about scent and how important that is. I mean it's pretty widely known that scent plays an important part of memory recall, but how can scent be used to help us remember to be creative? And you said lemons play an important role, can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

Sally Augustin: Sure. Lemon is linked to enhanced creative performance, but there are two sorts of different scent-related experiences. There some that seem pretty universal like the ones I was talking about with lavender and trust and lemon and cognitive performance, but there are others that are unique to each individual. So you know if you had lovely conversations with family members on your grandmother's front porch and your grandmother cultivated all sorts of different kinds of honeysuckles or whatever honeysuckle plants and they you know surrounded that porch, you'll have all sorts of positive associations to the scent of honeysuckle that are unique you know to you and your family. So you know we need to think about more general responses to sense as also as well as more idiosyncratic ones.

Kaitlin Luna: Is there a scent thing and help us learn better?

Sally Augustin: Yeah generally a scent such as a floral scent that is likely to be perceived as pleasant and boost our mood would be a good sort of odor to smell while we are learning new material. You know anything that will boost our mood makes it more likely that we'll have productive educational experiences, get along with others etc.

Kaitlin Luna: And how can a furniture be arranged to create a certain feel? I mean this might be difficult because it's such a broad question but if you're trying to create comfort how can you arrange furniture if you're trying to create more of a serious office environment how can you arrange furniture?

Sally Augustin: Sure. When you're arranging furniture you need to think about what's going to happen in this space and who's going to be there. For example we've all had the experience of walking into a classroom and finding the chairs arranged in a circle for example or sitting at a roundish table where everybody can make a ready eye contact with each other. People generally are more likely to participate in a conversation etcetera when they can make eye contact with others but there are some cultural components to eye contact. Those of us who were raised in the West or a lot more into making eye contact and maintaining it than people who have grown up in other parts of the world. So I'm if you're creating a space where people from many cultures are likely to be present it can be a good idea to have some sort of low like focal point like flower arrangement in the middle of a table that people can gracefully divert their gaze to when they need an eye contact break from others.

You know also we have to think about things like interpersonal spaces when we're arranging furniture. You know some of us based on our culture, personality, etc. like to be closer to each other than others do. Also personality influences the sorts of seats people prefer just as an example. People like me who are extroverted are a lot more positive about sharing a sofa for example with others than people who are introverted. So there are a lot of factors that go into furniture selection and where furniture is placed in an area.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah it does really sound like it, and you know going from my own experience of home decorating that can be a challenge of how to make the space appear larger, I mean we can use mirrors maybe to help make a space feel larger?

Sally Augustin: Yeah I mean you know one of the most straightforward ways to make a space seem larger is to paint the walls a lighter color. Walls that are a lighter color seem a little further away than they actually are which is often a good thing. Very few of us live in homes or work in environments where the rooms are too big for us.

Kaitlin Luna: Right yeah most of time you're just trying to make it look bigger, but so it's bright it's probably not a good idea to paint the ceiling dark color because it can probably make it feel like the walls are closing in.

Sally Augustin: Oh if you paint the ceiling a dark color it does seem to move down on you and that can really get to feeling oppressive.

Kaitlin Luna: So I watched this documentary a while ago called “City in the Sky” about how airports are designed in such a way that allows people to find their way without signs. And it's fascinating because a lot of these cues were all subconscious and subtle but they worked they directed people in a specific direction. So can you talk about how that works?

Sally Augustin: You know humans have this tendency to always be looking through the world around them, and they also desire to move through spaces in particular ways. For example those of us in the West, particularly who drive on the same side of the road that we do in America, tend to you know travel you know towards the towards the right. We tend to keep going in a straight line unless there's something that diverts us. We tend to stay on the same material underfoot, so if we're walking on a carpeted path a carpeted surface we're unlikely to leave that carpeted surface unless we have good reason to do so. And this kind of proclivity here if you will among people can be used to design environments that make it more likely they'll travel to one space or another. There's other things that come into play as well like we tend to walk towards bright lights or a window. This is another example of the way an environment can keep people moving with a desired goal.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah it's really fascinating just to think about all the things you just do take in as you're you know walking through a space to help you find your way, wayfinding.

Sally Augustin: Yeah people are really cool.

Kaitlin Luna: Our brains are really interesting. There's been a lot of talk about the open office concept being dead and really not working out for a lot of people, so what advice do you have for clients about creating an office space that allows for collaboration, creativity but also allows for privacy.

Sally Augustin: Sure. The open office is really evolving from what people classically think of an open office to what's known as an activity-based workplace. And in an activity-based workplace there are a range of different sorts of spaces that people can use at different times, and activity-based workplaces really seem to work out, if you don't mind the pun, pretty well for users because when people are doing something that doesn't require quite as much concentration or focus they can hang out in a place like a sort of at-work lounge or coffee area for example but when they really need to concentrate either alone or with others they can move to another sort of space. So you know having flexibility in terms of the environments available and the ability to control where we work is great for our performance, our mood you know so all things good flow out of control.

Kaitlin Luna: So having a hybrid if you will of like some places where you can have your privacy but you can also have these open areas for collaboration is probably the best suggestion.

Sally Augustin: Yea, and that's what an activity-based workplace really is. It's a variety of different sorts of mini work environments all combined into one corporate or organizational area.

Kaitlin Luna: And I want to go back to a concept you talked about in the beginning about how space can be designed to increase sales. So are stores set up in a particular way to motivate us to buy?

Sally Augustin: Yeah there's all sorts of things that happen in retail environments that encourage people to make purchases. You know for example, you know color selection can be an important way to you know drive sales. You know if you've got more of an impulse purchase type good you make an environment a little more energizing. If consideration is required to select among goods available you want the environment to be a little less energizing for example. You know and all this gets down to really thinking about what sort of shopper you're dealing with. Some people are at particular points in time much more utilitarian, focused in their shopping. You know they you know have to buy you know milk and bread you know as quickly as possible and get out of the store for whatever reason. And other people are more recreational type shoppers, you know they're on a Saturday afternoon with their friends. So you know you need to consider the shoppers and what their goals are when you're creating a work environment. I mean you need to consider the shoppers and their goals when you can when you're designing a retail environment.

Kaitlin Luna: Is there a reason why typically at the end of the aisle there's those impulse-like purchases. A lot of times you know at the grocery stores you see candy, at a store like Bed Bath and Beyond you see a bunch of little knickknacks you probably don't need maybe you do but you see them as you're waiting in line. Is that just to subconsciously drive people to you know make those last-minute purchases before they go to the register?

Sally Augustin: Well those sorts of end caps or at register displays bring people’s attention to those objects and make them really pertinent in ways that might not otherwise be the case. You know if you're in a store you might not travel down an entire aisle or even turn down an aisle but you know often you can't help but walk by the end cap and you certainly you know have to pass through some sort of you know register area in order to leave the store. So you know placing impulse type purchases in these areas makes shoppers aware of them. You know and particularly in a checkout area it gives them the opportunity to consider these items while they're wiling away their time in line waiting to pay.

Kaitlin Luna: And design is a big concept in urban planning, and so cities planners and developers are going toward a mixed-use development type of style where you'll have, just to describe it quickly, a large building with say restaurants, shops, a gym on the bottom floors on the top floors you'll have condos or apartments. Is this a conscious effort by planners to try to address some of the loneliness and isolation people are feeling?

Sally Augustin: Loneliness and isolation and countering loneliness and isolation are something that, are topics that environmental psychologists think about you know all the time. And creating spaces that will have other people in them that individuals need to pass through or by can help to some extent to counter feelings of loneliness, so you know they're being implemented more frequently in our cities and elsewhere.

Kaitlin Luna: And is this is a new concept or is this a retooling of sorts of the planned community concept we saw in the last century?

Sally Augustin: In many ways it's a retooling of something that's even older. You know hundreds of years ago people often literally lived above the shop or the workshop, etc. So combining more commercial areas with more residential areas is something that's been important to us for a long time, it's more resource efficient for example and just you know can streamline life.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah it seems like there's a tendency now to bring people into a space whereas I think in the past it was sort of like people wanting more space out in a suburban community, a larger home. But now it's people are wanting, especially in a city like Washington DC where we are here, there's this tendency of people to want to be brought into those city centers again, or even if you're out in a small another community you must still want an area that can be like the town square if you will.

Sally Augustin: Right. People are social, and they need the opportunity to interact with others when they choose. And also as we develop more tools, we need to spend less time doing some sort of we might call them like you know life tasks than we needed you know in the past. So in the you know years ago decades ago, doing laundry was a much more difficult process. Now many of us have access to machines and that frees up lots of time where we can engage in other activities that are meaningful to us and often those other activities involve other people one way or another.

Kaitlin Luna: And in your world what is the attitude about the trends you're seeing in urban design and planning. Are they being successful, is it something that's still being decided if it's successful?

Sally Augustin: I think design and design research is always evolving and we're always learning new things and also being confronted by new issues. So I think we're effectively dealing with concerns such as loneliness, but we have challenges that remain that relate to things like equity. So we make some progress and other issues remain.

Kaitlin Luna: And are there any basically overall design no no’s if you will that you could summarize for people if they're thinking about designing their home, an office space, that sort of thing.

Sally Augustin: Something that people often don't consider are the nonverbal messages set by a space, and these are really important in terms of our stress levels, our quality of life, etc. For example we like to live in a home that says the things about us that we value. So we like to have objects out that indicate like we're a sports person if we you know are proud of our ability to do different sports or we're concerned about our family if that's really important to us.

Also in our workplace for example we do our best work in spaces that indicate that our employer respects us and the contribution we make to the organization. You know the employing organization can indicate respect by doing things like giving people some control over their environment and also really listening and understanding what employees do so that a space clearly aligns with what individuals and groups need to accomplish during the course of the day. So I think that we always need to be considering what a space is conveying symbolically if you will to users and making sure that those silent conversations are productive and positive.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah absolutely. And you've also done interviews about how indoor plants can make us more creative, and I want just to throw that in there, two kind of like last fun kind of questions for you, but so how do, how does having a plant in your home make you more creative?

Sally Augustin: Well when you add green leafy plants to your home your stress levels come down and you are more likely to think creatively and there's probably several different factors that come into play. Plants are often green. As we were talking about before, green has been linked to signal color green has been linked to enhance creative performance. Also green leafy plants tend to have curving stems and that indicates comfort and relaxes us to a certain extent. So you know having a few plants in a space is a good idea. You don't want to add too many, you don't want to create an indoor jungle if you will, that really increases the visual complexity, something that we were talking about earlier. And the research indicates that the best results are found with green leafy plants as opposed to things such as cactuses. So you know the effort that's required to keep a ficus or some sort of plant like that alive is worth it from a psychological perspective.

Kaitlin Luna: And one last question for you. So you were interviewed for a story at the start of the year about how keeping Christmas lights up past the holidays, a little past the holidays, is good for our mental health. So can you talk about why that is the case?

Sally Augustin: Sure. I think that when people have positive associations to things such as Christmas lights, you know they've had great experiences over the holidays in previous years, keeping the lights around for you know until they feel like they don't want them around anymore, can give individuals a psychological boost. You know part of the basic story that we're uncovering in environmental psychology is that people need to be true to themselves, what makes them feel good and to their humanness, their human attributes.

Kaitlin Luna: And so having Christmas lights could be that if you're into the holiday spirit and seeing them in the you know early parts of the winter where the days are short and where it is cold and everything.

Sally Augustin: Right and right now we're just talking about the associations people may have to the Christmas lights, but you can also think about how the various colors of the lights may influence how people think and behave. For example if lots of the lights are emitting a golden warmer light, you know that can know directly help people relax, feel comfortable, get along with others, etc. like we were talking about candles earlier.

Kaitlin Luna: So this gives us a little excuse to maybe keep them up a few weeks longer if you want, if it’s helping your well-being it's okay. Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Augustin, I really appreciate your time.

Sally Augustin: I was glad to be able to spend the time with you.

Kaitlin Luna: If you've been a longtime listener or are new to our podcast please consider giving us a rating in iTunes, and if you have time write a review we'd really appreciate it. Also as I mentioned at the top of the show, we’d love to hear from you directly so if you have any questions, comments or ideas to share please email me at kluna@apa.orgrg, that's kluna@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is part of the APA podcast network which includes other great podcasts like APA Journals Dialogue about new psychological research and Progress Notes about the practice of psychology. You can find all our podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to our website speakingofpsychology.org to listen to more episodes. I'm Kaitlin Luna with the American Psychological Association.