Comfort requirements versus lived experience: combining different research approaches to indoor environmental quality. (3rd July 2020) - Willems, S.
ABSTRACT: Buildings' indoor environmental quality (IEQ) affects people's comfort and well-being. However, even if comfort requirements for indoor environmental indicators are met, people are often not satisfied. Reducing this discrepancy requires reconsidering research methodologies. A scoping review examines how IEQ research and research about healing environments (HE) approach 'the environment', its 'perception' and 'experience', and how both approaches interrelate. IEQ research focuses on perception as a passive, causal process, sensations and satisfaction. Quantitative surveys and sensor measurements are often analysed statistically. On the other hand, HE researchers consider experience as the continuous interaction between mind, body and world. Perception, action, cognition and affection are dynamically intertwined. Insight is gained into sense perception and people's multi-sensory experience. Qualitative, in-depth data about the lived experience are constructed together with participants and interpreted by researchers. Combining both research approaches is expected to result in a more holistic understanding of IEQ, and thus in a more comfortable built environment.