A User-centric Approach to Optimize Visitor’s Experience in Exhibition Spaces Using Parametric Spatial Analysis

Abstract

Being the main user of any architectural product, the user's role in the designing
 process should be significant, especially in complex spatial spaces such as
 hospitals, museums, offices, and public-use buildings. This gives the users meta-
 roles such as communicators, performers, and interpreters.
 User-Centered Design (UCD) tries to optimize the fit of the spaces with how users
 can, want to, and need to use in these spaces, rather than forcing the users to change
 their behavior to accommodate the architectural spaces or designing dysfunctional
 spaces. Such spaces were designed neglecting the human factor and only using
 building regulations.
 The visitor’s parameters, profiles, spatial experiences, and the architectural
 configuration are what can affect the experience in architectural spaces.
 This paper explores a different UCD (user-centered design) approach in the
 evaluation of the built environment which is the parametric spatial analysis
 approach. The approach studies the spatial pattern of human behavior of a random
 selection of users, so it could represent any potential users in the buildings. Aiming
 to intensively engage users in the design process, the approach uses parametric
 spatial design in analyzing the visitor's behavior and deducing some design patterns and configurations that focus on different ways of user's engagement. This approach compares the definition of users, their roles, and the type of space
 envisioned and produced as well.
 This paper describes an approach that attempts to bridge the gap between
 parametric geometry modeling and methods for measuring the spatial properties of
 this geometry.
 In exhibition spaces with their different spatiality, visitors tend to have some
 indicators which can be measured. Accordingly, designers create functional spaces
 that suit the different types of visitors using parametric components that study the
 collective human behavior (organizational behavior). These functional spaces are
 designed through observation, user surveys, and interviews to simplify the
 complexity of decisions regarding the design process and visitor’s parameters, and
 to embed them into an algorithm that can solve the complexity of the visitor’s
 parameters.
 Analyzing visitors’ behavior and the spatial morphology improves the visiting
 experience and provides better interpretations. The analysis makes the designers
 aware of visitors’ circulation, visiting styles, behavior, patterns, tendencies, and
 trends within a wide diversity of spaces. Moreover, this analysis can be combined
 into an evolutionary algorithm to help solve problems.