Designing Healthy Homes

“设计健康之家”项目是对家庭设计与日常健康和幸福实践之间相互作用的调查。住宅的概念是一个包含和保护居住者的技术外壳，以及一个特殊地方的社会文化创造。从理论上讲，这拒绝了住宅的二分法：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围绕一系列住宅设计的讨论，而不是基于技术惯例，将这种分歧的双方结合在一起。参与者将被精心挑选为三个小组中的一员，每个小组都需要重新考虑他们的家和他们的日常幸福之间的关系，因为他们的生活中最近或即将到来的过渡阶段。将通过关系良好的非学术合作伙伴（包括一个住房协会和一个职业治疗师团队），从三个小组中每组招募三到四名参与者。第一类是有新生儿的家庭；第二种是经历过使人衰弱的疾病或受伤的人；第三，考虑搬家的老年人。这些参与者每个人都对其国内环境有特殊的抱负和关切，由于需要对过渡阶段的生活进行反思，因此对其有了清晰的认识。在可能的情况下，每个参与者家庭将通过使用创新的研究方法来跟踪他们的过渡，这些方法避免了研究人员长时间亲自出现在他们家中的需要。一个“文化探测器”将被设计并留在每个家庭，作为他们记录自己的想法和活动的手段。这些物品的包装旨在吸引人性好奇和顽皮的一面，作为一种保持对研究项目参与的方式。它将包括数码相机，房屋平面图，日记，剪贴簿和一系列发人深省的活动供参与者完成。然后，这将形成一系列对话的基础，在这些对话中，户主将能够查询和澄清一些故意模棱两可的请求。虽然对一个人的家进行长时间和密集的访问可能是侵入性的，也不太可能提供正常活动模式的准确记录，但围绕目标事件进行的定期短期访问更容易被接受。因此，在一年或更长时间内，将在用餐时间、家庭访问、早晨例行程序等活动中进行一系列商定的家访。随着来自文化探索的信息，这将提供一套丰富而详细的数据特征，良好的社会科学研究。作为他们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，并通过草图、剪贴簿和讨论产生设计。然后，每个设计都将被建模用于雷丁大学的CAVE——一个3D全尺寸交互式虚拟现实环境。设计师将能够在家中移动，并对饰面，家具的位置，灯光效果等进行调整。这将与较少的技术设计相结合，包括照片、剪贴簿和日记条目，作为健康家庭的整体代表。他们的设计将展示给来访的行业专业人士和医疗保健从业人员，并将成为经验丰富的参与者和技术专家之间讨论的基础。通过这种方式，该项目将促进用户参与和非专业人士与名义专家之间的对话，希望能够更好地理解家庭设计与健康和福祉实践之间关系的新见解。

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.