1.1 Context and Motivation

We are usually not aware that a large part of our environment consists of objects that are designed. This includes buildings, infrastructure, utensils and sometimes seemingly natural phenomena such as landscapes, rivers or woods. Mostly, the fact that these objects are designed is not obvious when they look and perform as expected. Occasionally, a design is more conspicuous, especially if it is exceptionally beautiful or ingenious, or, on the other hand, if design decisions have been made that interfere with the expected appearance or process of use. The latter will not necessarily be a problem. Shortcomings are, to a certain extent, tolerable and people can adapt to suboptimal conditions. Nonetheless, as shown by the following examples, design decisions can have consequences that are more serious.

Case 1. Government office building

After a major renovation, the office building at Rijnstraat 8 in The Hague was reopened in 2017 to accommodate 6000 employees of 3 ministries of the Dutch government (Fig. 1.1). For reasons of efficiency and of cost reduction, a choice was made for open spaces with 4400 multifunctional and flexible workplaces (about 3200 desks and various other spaces, such as meeting rooms, concentration zones and open areas for social interaction). After the building was occupied, a number of problems emerged. According to the evaluation report by Beijer et al. (2018), there appears to be a lack of workplaces: often employees cannot find a place that fits their activities, and when they leave the place for some time, they are inclined to claim it using territorial markers. The building is very crowded with queues at the entrance, toilets and lifts. The tight positioning of workplaces, movements, the noise and the absence of acoustic barriers interfere with the need for concentration and for privacy during meetings or phone calls. The building has an impersonal character both inside and out. Floors and corridors look similar and signs are often absent or hard to read so that wayfinding can be difficult. These and other problems (with furniture, indoor climate, cleaning and means of locating colleagues) cause feelings of uneasiness and tiredness among employees and reduce job satisfaction, cooperation and productivity. According to a later audit, the fact that users were not involved in the project (in time) is a major cause of the problems (Auditdienst 2019).

Fig. 1.1
figure 1

Government office building Rijnstraat 8 (Ministerie BZ 2017)

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Case 2. City district

In the second half of the 1960s, the city of Amsterdam tried to counteract the housing shortage by building a new district in the Bijlmermeerpolder. The project was based on the modernist ideas of urban design, with strict separation of functions like working, living, recreation and traffic. High-rise blocks provided housing for 40,000 families and large green areas in between were meant for recreation (Fig. 1.2). Elevated roads and parking garages, connected to the blocks by covered walkways, separated cars from bikes and pedestrians on the ground level. This should enhance the well-being of residents with respect to safety and clean air. However, these ideas did not work out well (Mentzel 1989; Mingle et al. 2019). The large dwellings were meant to attract middle-class families, but those families preferred detached houses with a garden, the advantage of parking the car near their front door, and more services and shops. As a result, the Bijlmermeer had a high vacancy rate. Rather soon, dwellings were rented out to lower income groups or they were occupied by squatters and illegal immigrants. The number of unemployed rose and the crime rate increased. Due to a lack of social control in the green areas and walkways, loitering teens and junks caused much nuisance. Buildings and public spaces showed signs of vandalism and dilapidation, and there were strong feelings of insecurity. To turn the tide, a huge investment was necessary. High-rise blocks were torn down, functions and traffic modes were mixed again and the amount of services was increased. Currently, the district has regained certain livability.

Fig. 1.2
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Bijlmermeer high-rise (Janericloebe 2010)

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Case 3. Warning light

In 1979, there was a partial meltdown of one of the reactors in the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg (Fig. 1.3). This resulted in the leak of radioactive gases and iodine into the environment (Wikipedia 2019). At first, there were problems in the mechanical system during the cleaning of the water filters. Accidentally a valve stayed open that should have been closed, which led to a considerable leakage of nuclear reactor coolant. As a result, the core partially disintegrated. The operators could have dealt with this situation properly if they would have had the correct information. However, a warning light, that should have been on to show that the valve was open, stayed dark, implying that the valve was closed. Actually, the light did not indicate the position of the valve but the power status of the solenoid attached to the valve. The operators were not aware of this ambiguity in the indicator panel and thus of the possibility that the valve might still be open. Consequently, the leakage of coolant was not detected in time. This flaw in the user interface of the power plant, and an insufficient training of the operators, led to serious ecological and health risks and increased concerns about nuclear energy. The cleaning process lasted until 1993 and took about one billion dollars.

Fig. 1.3
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Three Mile Island control room in 1979 (NRC 2012)

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These examples show that situations in which a design has an undesirable effect can be quite diverse. This does not only concern old cases, but also more recent ones, and they can involve very different kinds of objects and scale levels (buildings, neighborhoods or user interfaces). The effects can be diverse as well. There may be functional consequences for the process of use (e.g. the efficiency of work), or physical influences on one’s health (radioactive gas), the use of senses (loud noises) or movements (standing in queues). Social effects can be revealed, for example, by problems with privacy and with social interaction. Psychological influences can become manifest on a cognitive level (e.g. problems with wayfinding or problem solving) or as emotions (such as feelings of insecurity). This can result in dissatisfaction and a reduced mental well-being. In addition, there can be economic consequences. These mainly consist of so-called failure costs, which are expenses for improving the design and object or for repairing the possible damage. There may also be legal costs related to claims, and losses because of reputational damage. Failure costs are likely to exceed additional investments at an earlier stage to prevent these problems.

The examples also show that these situations can be very complex. There are several parties involved, each with their specific contribution, and the context plays an important role. The problems at Rijnstraat 8 are to some extent attributable to choices made by the government. The population in the Bijlmermeer could have been different if there had been less detached houses in the surroundings, so that middle-class families would have been more likely to choose the Bijlmermeer as their residence. Also, a suitable training of the operators might have prevented the nuclear accident. The problems can therefore not be attributed to the design alone. It is evident, however, that deficiencies in the design can have an important impact.

It seems that in a design sometimes too little account is taken of the users of the object in question and of the interaction between the object and its users. Possible reasons for this lack of attention, in relation to buildings, are discussed by, among others, Sommer (1983), Zeisel (1984), Norman (1988), Popov (2002), Sanoff (2003) and Gifford (2007). First, there are architectural styles that assign no or only a marginal role to the users (e.g. formalism, modernism). Buildings are seen as works of art with the focus on aesthetic shapes and structures, materials and construction rather than utilization or user needs. The recognition of architects is attached to the former aspects. Similar opinions also sometimes characterize courses in architecture. As a result, these architects can have a lesser understanding of the possible problems of users. In addition, users can play a minor role when designers work for paying clients (e.g. developers or governments). In that case, the users may be unknown and there can be other priorities, such as building and maintenance costs (see case 1). Furthermore, users can be excluded if designers rely on their own expertise or on their own experience as a user. They may think that the input of users as laypersons has limited added value. Sometimes, the input of users is even seen as a threat to creativity (Heijs 2007). Insufficient exchange of information between designers and paying clients on the one hand and using clients on the other is referred to as the user-needs gap and the client-client gap respectively (Bell, Greene, Fisher and Baum, 2001).

Conversely, many designers recognize the importance of the functionality of buildings and a proper interaction between buildings and their users. In the past decades, this has become more important in the field of the built environment. Improvement of the interaction is pursued, for example, by involving users more in the design process (see Chap. 2). The striving for a proper interaction requires knowledge of, among other things, user needs and aspects of the environment that influence the functionality of a design and the quality of the interaction. In addition, designers must have appropriate methods at their disposal to study this, to promote the process of involvement and to apply the information in a design. This calls for an extensive cooperation between design disciplines and the social sciences. However, there seems to be an application gap between these fields (Bell et al. 2001). This implies a lack of communication and unfamiliarity with each other’s data and methods. Judging from the more recent examples of less fortunate design decisions, that gap probably still exists.

1.2 Purpose and Structure

This book tries to contribute to closing the application gap from the field of environmental psychology that has ties with the design disciplines. The focus is on a method to carry out user needs analyses, create programs of demands and perform post occupancy evaluations, and on the theoretical perspective and the conceptual framework that underlie the method. This approach is called USE (User needs by Systematic Elaboration) because it concerns the elaboration of user needs and related demands for a proper interaction in a series of methodical steps.Footnote 1

The perspective and conceptual framework are described in Chap. 3. It contains the line of reasoning and the guiding principles of the method. The method is explained in Chaps. 4 and 5. The main purpose is to translate the interaction between buildings and their users in a program of demands for a design that attempts to prevent adverse effects and failure costs. It builds on methods in social design (see Sect. 2.2.1) and adds several new elements. These chapters take the form of a manual for the practical application of the method. The perspective and method are preceded by a description of the disciplinary and methodological background in Chap. 2. The method has been developed in the Real Estate Management and Development group of the University of Technology in Eindhoven. It was part of the curriculum and it was used in contract research and graduation projects. Some of these studies are discussed in Chap. 5 to show how the method can be adapted to specific conditions and situations. The final chapter offers a review, which includes a comparison with other methods and an outline of possible future developments. The book as a whole can be used as a basis for lectures on this subject. It has three appendices. The first contains the instruments for the practical application of the method, the second consists of questions and assignments related to each chapter, and the third provides some thoughts on the possible implementation in a renovation process of problem neighborhoods.

The target group of the book comprises all those who are interested in the creation of environments for people (users, designers, policymakers, real estate managers; students and scientific staff). The accent is on buildings, but the subject matter may also apply to other objects of design (ranging from utensils to outdoor spaces).Footnote 2 The interaction between buildings and users may further improve if the essential knowledge and abilities do not only originate from the cooperation of designers with social scientists but belong to the expertise of designers themselves as well. This can promote the awareness of the possibilities and benefits of user-oriented research in that occupational group. Thus, designers are a special audience, for whom the book may serve as a guide and a starting point for relevant theoretical and methodological background information.

To end with, the perspective and the method explicitly take account of the creative freedom of designers. User needs analyses, programs of demands and post occupancy evaluations do not pose a threat but rather a challenge to creativity. They serve to make user needs and related characteristics of the environment visible, so the designer can find appropriate solutions for complex situations. This is in agreement with Sommer’s (1983) statement that social design can be regarded “as an invitation to a greater rather than a lesser vision of architecture”.