Comparison of design education documents and the disconnect between designer priorities, tools, and occupant assumptions

While low-level physiological human-factor design strategies have long been discussed in the literature, these design methods are infrequently seen in architecture education and licensure requirements–leaving designers to think about future occupants on their own. In this paper, we study underlying causes of perceptions–and misperceptions–as to the role human factors play in the design process. We present findings from a large-scale textual analysis supported by two studies: (1) building users assume a higher integration of human factors in design tools than how designers perceive the integration and (2) designers place higher importance on less tangible design concepts than building users. Our findings suggest design tools that can augment the knowledge of designers with respect to human physiology and crowd simulations are pertinent to current workflows. We also infer there are likely additional important-to-explore disconnections between users and designers.