Designing Healthy Homes

“设计健康住宅”项目是对住宅设计与日常健康和幸福实践之间相互作用的调查。住宅的概念既是容纳和保护居住者的技术信封，也是一个特殊地方的社会文化创造。从理论上讲，这否定了房屋的二分法：家是技术专业人员和日常使用体验之间的分界线。该项目通过促进参与者基于经验而不是技术惯例来讨论一系列住宅的设计，从而将这种分歧的双方聚集在一起。参与者将被精心挑选为三个小组中的一个，每个小组都面临着重新考虑他们的家庭和他们日常幸福之间的关系的需要，因为他们生活中最近或即将到来的过渡阶段。三个小组中每组的三到四名参与者将通过人脉广泛的非学术合作伙伴招募，包括住房协会和职业治疗师团队。第一组是有新生婴儿的家庭；第二组是经历过虚弱疾病或受伤的个人；第三组是考虑搬家的老年人。由于需要反思过渡时期的生活阶段，这些参与者将各自对其国内环境有特定的抱负和关切，并以敏锐的眼光看待这一点。在可能的情况下，将通过使用创新的研究方法跟踪每个参与家庭的过渡过程，以避免研究人员长时间亲自出现在他们的家中。将设计并留给每个家庭一个“文化调查”，作为他们记录他们的想法和活动的手段。这套物品旨在吸引人性中好奇和嬉戏的一面，作为保持对研究项目的参与的一种方式。例如，它将包括一台数码相机、一份房屋平面图、一本日记、一本剪贴簿和一系列发人深省的活动，供参与者完成。这将成为一系列谈话的基础，房主将能够质疑和澄清一些故意含糊的要求。虽然长时间和密集的家访可能会侵扰他人，不太可能提供通常活动模式的准确记录，但围绕有针对性的活动定期较短的探访更容易满足。因此，在一年或更长的时间里，一系列商定的家访将在吃饭时间、家庭探望、早上例行公事等活动中进行。连同来自文化调查的信息，这将提供优秀社会科学研究所特有的丰富而详细的数据集。作为参与这项研究的关键部分，参与者将被要求反思他们对健康家庭的概念，并通过素描、剪贴簿和讨论来产生设计。然后，每个设计都将被建模，以便在雷丁大学的洞穴中使用--一个3D全尺寸交互式虚拟现实环境。设计师将能够在家里四处走动，并对饰面、家具位置、照明效果等进行调整。这将与技术含量较低的设计相结合，包括照片、剪贴簿和日记条目，作为一个健康家庭的整体代表。他们的设计将展示给到访的行业专业人士和医疗从业者，并将成为经验丰富的参与者和技术专家之间讨论的基础。这样，该项目将促进用户参与，并在一个既不享有特权的论坛上促进非专业人士和名义专家之间的对话，希望能够更好地理解家居设计与健康和福祉实践之间的关系的新见解。

The 'Designing Healthy Homes' project is an investigation of the interaction between the design of the home and everyday practices of health and wellbeing.The home is conceptualised as both a technical envelope containing and protecting the occupants, and the socio-cultural creation of a special place. Theoretically, this rejects the dichotomy of house:home as a division between technical professionals and the experiences of everyday use. The project brings together both sides of this divide by facilitating a discussion around the design of a series of homes by the participants, based on experience rather than technical conventions.Participants will be carefully selected for their membership of one of three groups, each faced with the need to reconsider the relationship between their home and their daily wellbeing as a result of a recent or imminent transitional phase in their lives. Three or four participants from each of the three groups will be recruited through well connected non-academic partners, including a housing association and a team of occupational therapists. The first group will be households with a new-born baby; the second, individuals who have experienced debilitating illness or injury; and third, elderly people who are considering moving. These participants will each have particular ambitions and concerns for their domestic environment, brought into sharp perspective as a result of the need to reflect on a transitional life stage. Where possible, each participant household will be followed through their transition, by using innovative research methods that avoid the need for the researcher to be personally present in their home for long periods of time.A 'cultural probe' will be designed and left with each household as the means for them to record their thoughts and activities. This package of objects is intended to appeal to the curious and playful side of human nature, as a way of maintaining engagement with the research project. It will include for example, a digital camera, a house plan, a diary, a scrapbook and a series of thought-provoking activities for the participants to complete. This will then form the basis for a series of conversations where the householders will be able to query and clarify some of the deliberately ambiguous requests.While lengthy and intensive visits to a person's home are likely to be intrusive and unlikely to provide an accurate record of usual patterns of activity, regular shorter visits around targeted events are more easily accommodated. A series of agreed home visits over a period of a year or more will therefore be carried out at events such as mealtimes, family visits, morning routines etc. Along with the information from the cultural probe, this will provide the rich and detailed set of data characteristic of good social science research.As a key part of their engagement with this research, participants will be asked to reflect on their concept of a healthy home and produce a design through sketches, the scrapbook, and discussion. Each design will then be modelled for use in the University of Reading's CAVE - a 3D full-scale interactive virtual reality environment. The designers will be able to move around the home, and make adjustments to finishes, the position of furniture, lighting effects and so on. This will be combined with the less technical designs, including photographs, scrapbooks and diary entries as a holistic representation of a healthy home. Their designs will be presented to visiting industry professionals and healthcare practitioners, and will form the basis for discussions between the experienced participants and the technical experts.In this way, the project will facilitate user-engagement and conversations between lay people and nominal experts in a forum which privileges neither, in the hope that new insights into the relationship between the design of the home and practices of health and wellbeing can be better understood.