Neuroaestetics; the hidden aesthetic

As presented in class, I am deeply passionate about our subconscious connection with our surroundings and the impact it has on our behaviors. Back in 2022 I received my masters degree in Human Factors, which is essentially the study of design and human performance, and how to best design for humans. I tailored each an every assignment during this degree to study space station design and human habitation in space as I was fascinated by environments completely man made. 

I found that the study of human factors only considered the human physical and cognitive attributes, but did little to recognize the truly human aspects of being human; there was a deafening disregard for human emotion. And thus, my novel field of psychoergonomics was born with the sole mission to enable human emotion and psychological processes to be included in an engineering and design context. 

Many times, design is tossed to the side and called fluff or “extra” despite its demonstrable effect on human behavior, health, and performance. I believe that part of this disregard for the human essence is due to the fact that engineering is is built on measurable constructs; function can be deduced to requirements which can be shredded to distinct engineering constraints. Design and emotion however are not as cut and dry as human anthropometrics or cognitive capacity, and thus, challenge the traditional engineering methods. I too struggled with defining how to contextualize the interplay between human behavior and design, and left my final capstone paper with multiple methods but no clear answer. 

Then we get to present day, where we have begun to learn about aesthetics; this completely changed my view of how the multidimensional dynamic and socio complex nature of design can be leveraged for engineering. Aesthetics, as described in Palmer et al (2012) is anything that elicits a human response, this can be of joy or even disgust; point being, it is powerful enough to make the human, consciously or not, react to the sight, sound, texture, or smell of the design.

For this project, I first considered trying to perform research to categorize design aesthetics into emotional groupings; I quickly found that this was far too difficult as each persons response to a design is different and is a product of their unique experiences. I thought I hit a standstill until I found something called Neuroaestetics. 

Neuroaestetics is the study of the underlying neural and psychological processes which cause our emotional response (Thompson & Jaque, 2017). In industrial design, neuroaestetics is used to design for the function of the space; for instance, it leverages certain colors which can calm us, and geometries which can elicit similar responses to our natural world (Wellness design consultants). 

One of my favorite examples of neuroaestetics is the Maggie Center; when Maggie Keswick Jenks received her cancer diagnosis, her and her family were left to deal with this heart wrenching news in a cold, dimly lit hospital room (Gould, 2017). As a designer herself, this experience inspired her to leverage her architectural skills and develop spaces which would not only be more comforting to the patients during this time, but be therapeutic themselves. Hundreds of Maggie Centers now exist across the globe and inspired other developments like prescriptive art centers and the use of expressive arts for healing (Ross & Magsaman, 2023). 

In summary, I plan to explore the design aesthetic of neuroaesthetics for my upcycle project, and investigate how I can leverage this function driven psychologically stimulating design guidelines for my own mental benefit. 

References

https://medium.com/the-omnivore/how-architecture-plays-a-role-in-bringing-hope-to-cancer-patients-a33aa223015

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/neuroaesthetics

https://biofilico.com/news/neuro-aesthetics-in-wellness-interior-design-healthy-buildings#:~:text=Harmony%20and%20balance%20in%20design,a%20sense%20of%20well%2Dbeing.

https://www.yourbrainonart.com/