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Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is being used in a wide range of fields such as medicine, gaming, psychology and sociology. The use of VR is promising in the field of education and requires investigation, but research on the use of VR in education is still limited. This enables the exploration of new territories, and design education is one of them. Design education, an important part of the curriculum of architecture students who aim to conceptualize problem-solving, is still taught using traditional methodologies with touches of digital technologies. Thus, there is limited research into the implementation of VR. This study proposes using VR in basic design education and focuses on the usability of VR, especially for problem-solving activities. It presents the literature on basic design education of digital approaches, VR technologies, usability criteria and the technology acceptance model. In order to analyse the usability of VR, we conducted an experimental study with 20 first-year interior architecture and architecture students. We found that, statistically, there is a significant difference in terms of 'the intention to use' and 'the perceived enjoyment' between the VR group and the paper-based group. Moreover, there is, statistically, a difference in effectiveness within the paper-based group and the VR-based group when one compares the success of two types of design problems in the same group. Thus, one can summarize that using VR can strongly enhance problem-solving activities in interior architecture and for architecture students and that one can consider it to be a promising and complementary tool in basic design education.

Aim: This study aims to shift views away from negative perceptions towards aging by exploring the following research question: How are the multiple levels of the gerotranscendence theory influenced by the sustainable behavior and attitude toward the biophilic design of older adults? Background: Improving perceptions of aging is vital for positively impacting both the biological and societal aspects of the global aging phenomenon. Methods: The study utilized a mixed-method design. Initially, 300 older Turkish adults completed self-reported measures including the Gerotranscendence Scale (GS), Pro-environmental Behavior (PB), Environmental Identity Scale (EID), Biophilic Design Importance Level (BDI), and Inclusion of Nature in the Self Scale (INS). Subsequently, the second phase involved diary logs from 30 participants who volunteered during the initial phase. Results: Results indicated that a higher importance level placed on biophilic design was linked to a greater inclusion of nature in the self. Moreover, a stronger interest in nature correlated positively with the gerotranscendence experience. Conclusions: The results bring significant attention to biophilic design, especially its relevance in supporting sustainable environmental behaviors and positive aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In architectural design education, the most significant part in the curriculum is the design studio, where students learn how to design. Critique has a crucial role in the design studio, and in determining the best and most beneficial critique type for the architectural design education process. Student attitudes toward critiques and student satisfaction level with each critique technique are also significant. To that end, this article explores design studio learning by reviewing the design learning process and types of design critiques. Focusing on three critique techniques used in design education (desk critiques, pin-up critiques and group critiques), the article analyses correlations between student attitudes toward each technique and its contribution to the design process. Research was conducted with 84 third-year interior architecture students from the 2014-15 Fall semester at a university. No statistically significant differences were found between group and pin-up critiques in terms of students' preferences and their final performance scores; however, there was a statistically significant relationship between student preferences toward desk critiques and student success. Furthermore, the contribution of a critique technique to the design process was found to be highly correlated with student preference for this technique.

Background: Fall hazards in bathroom spaces constitute one of the most critical issues in the daily lives of older adults. Bathroom falls are somewhat different and constrained in nature than those in other parts of a home environment. Objectives: This study aimed to adopt a user‐centred approach to explore older adults' general bathroom needs, with a specific focus on showers and bathtubs as the designated activity area. Methods: The authors employed an extended importance–performance analysis (IPA) with a mixed‐method research design. Three hundred and eleven older adults participated in a face‐to‐face IPA questionnaire for the quantitative phase of the study. The authors gathered the qualitative data through open‐ended questions from 59 older adults. Results: The authors found positive correlation between older adults' attitudes towards an older‐friendly bathroom and the potential for their bathrooms to be fall‐free. The IPA calculations identify three key items with higher ratings in both importance and performance: The presence of appropriate artificial lighting, efficient mechanical ventilation and an accessible inside towel rail. Thematic analysis yields four themes: comfort, ease of access, error‐proof design and emergency management. Conclusions: The IPA calculations and thematic analysis confirm that older adults' rankings of importance and performance and their corresponding priority levels within the overarching themes indicate the need for these aspects to perform well and justify ongoing investments. The study concludes that addressing fall prevention requires not only designing specific solutions but also utilising appropriate technology in bathing and toileting activities. Implications for Practice: Practitioners in geriatric and gerontological nursing, design, architecture and health care can use the importance and performance priority levels of older adults to guide the development and implementation of fall‐free bathroom design. Policymakers can leverage the insights from this research to inform guidelines and regulations related to building codes, accessibility standards and healthcare policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose: This study investigates, through structural equation modeling, the direct and indirect effects of blended learning on overall course satisfaction and student performance in interior architecture. Background: For critical education contexts, it is important to analyze student satisfaction with blended learning as well as its effects on student performance. In the context of teaching design, there is a need for in-depth research to understand what factors determine satisfaction with blended learning and how these factors affect performance in design courses both directly and indirectly. Methodology: To explore the student experiences of blended learning and its effects on the relationship between overall course satisfaction and student performance, data was collected through a survey instrument from a randomly selected 306 undergraduate students, 220 female and 86 male, each enrolled in four daytime blended learning sections of a design course. Contribution: Different than other studies, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the direct and indirect effects of a blended learning environment on the relationship between overall course satisfaction and student performance in the interior architecture context, rather than solely focusing on satisfaction or performance. Findings: The findings show that satisfaction with blended learning has a significant and direct influence on performance. Different than the studies in blended learning satisfaction literature, the study found blended interpretation and experience as significant contributors to impact blended learning satisfaction in design courses. Recommendations for Practitioners: The findings in the study are intended to assist design instructors in improving student satisfaction of a blended design course in order to enjoy the possibilities of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as to serve as a basis for developing an effective course mechanism in a blended design curriculum. Recommendations for Researchers: The study focused on the mediating effect of only one variable, which was performance, but researchers could investigate more variables, such as experience, learning strategies, and retention as having mediating effects on student satisfaction in different blended learning models in design courses. Impact on Society: This study emphasizes that students' satisfaction with blended learning in challenging learning environments like interior architecture provides learners with choices to develop more student-centered instruction and increased performance and engagement. Future Research: It is advisable to (i) explore the blended learning behavior of international design students compared with national students and (ii) investigate potential implications of computer-mediated feedbacks on student creativity.

This study explores how blended learning can contribute to interior design students' learning outcomes, their engagement with non-studio courses and affect their learning achievements. Within the framework of the study, a blended learning experience was carried out in "IAED 342 Building Performance" module at Bilkent University, Turkey. A total of 120 interior architecture students were surveyed about their experiences on five fields of instruction: (1) course design, learning material and electronic course environment; (2) interaction between students and instructor; (3) interaction with peers; (4) individual learning process; and (5) course outcomes. Frequency distributions, chi-square factor and regression analyses were calculated. Four blended learning factors were developed and their contribution to learning outcomes was analysed. The results showed that teaching both online and face-to-face can create an effective learning environment for non-studio classes, while contributing to a considerable value for the interior design education in terms of teaching process.

Background: As the world’s aging population increases, care of older adults has become inevitable. Regarding older adults’ care, mobility is the biggest struggle for older adults, whose bones and muscles deteriorate. The solution is to provide independence in built environments where older adults live and experience during their daily lives. Technological investigations raise the focus on care services within social assistive technologies. With the increasing need for older adults’ care faced by governments, understanding practical solutions is crucial for social robot development. Aim: This research aims to examine the impact of the appearance of mobile service robots, explore changes in older adults’ attitudes, and assess the potential mediating factors in the relationships between age and education. Another objective is to analyze the mobility tasks for daily life activities on the attitude of older adults towards service robots. Method: A survey design was created, with a sample of 19 from Antalya and Kocaeli, aged over 65, divided into 12 women and 7 men. First, older adults conducted a survey to elaborate on their mobility problems. Later, older adults were asked to complete another three-part survey to assess their attitudes toward mobile service robots and their daily activities. All data were collected by using self-reported questionnaires in their residential environment. These data were analyzed through descriptive analysis to create Interpersonal Circumplex. The relation between age and attitude was calculated through the Pearson Correlation. Independent Samples t-Test explored older adults’ attitudes toward service robots in daily activities. Findings: The findings revealed that the mobile service robots’ appearance affected the older adults’ attitudes, whereas age was the mediator that impacted older adults’ attitudes, unlike education. Results: Moreover, the results demonstrated that older adults having difficulty in daily activities needed more privacy and were more distant from the mobile service robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To live in a good mood is not only a key consideration for future age-friendly communities, but also a critical necessity for positive ageing. Despite growing evidence of correlations between contact with nature and stress reduction, little is known about the effect of nature integration in indoor environments. Thus, this study aimed to answer the following research questions: (a) How do biophilic characteristics of home environments correlate with older adults' experience of the multiple levels of the theory of gerotranscendence? and (b) What is the relationship between these experiences and the mood states of these older adults? The study was based on a comparative analysis to scrutinise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these questions. The data were gathered through questionnaires with 450 older adults aged between 65 and 95 years, and stratified by the biophilic characteristics of their living environments: indoor biophilic, outdoor biophilic and non-biophilic. Two sets of data were collected with the same participants, respectively, before the COVID-19 pandemic (June to October 2018) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (June to October 2020). It found that the biophilic characteristics of home environments are correlated dynamically with older adults' ageing experience and mood states. The study indicates that outdoor biophilic features facilitate the recovery of tension mood effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas indoor biophilic features facilitate recovery from depression and anger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessibility is a critical interior design consideration that increases performance level and allows older adults to be independent and physically active in their daily activities. This study used a case study to present a new method of combining ageing simulation with personas through importance-performance analysis (IPA) and supporting the basic activities of daily living (BADL). This study developed a prioritized persona-based (PP-B) model to create accessible interiors in senior housing environments for healthy ageing. This model was constructed based on an ontology framework. The data that was gathered through the self-assessment accessibility questionnaire by 60 older adults and it was depicted in the IPA matrix, which later translated into personas. These personas were simulated with an ageing suit by interior architecture students based on the BADL of accessible senior housing environments. This study was an initial attempt to deal with the complex nature of accessible interior design and its attributes for ageing studies, which are often considered as theoretical concepts and standards. The main innovation of this developed PP-B model was to synchronize interior design knowledge on accessibility attributes and users' BADL performance along their accessibility importance rankings. Findings are beneficial for interior designers to make human-centred interior design decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates daylight performance in an art museum in İstanbul, Turkey to analyse the effects of daylight design features on visitors’ satisfaction in art museums. The study is based on users’ data obtained through a survey and daylight simulation achieved by Autodesk 3D’s Max 2014. A three-part questionnaire was conducted with 100 participants in overcast- and clear-sky conditions to rate visitors’ satisfaction with the museum and their importance level of daylight design issues in museums. The museum’s daylight illuminance data were measured on a scaled model by a computer simulation program. The statistical results and simulation renderings show that daylight design is a multi-parameter task. There are statistically significant correlations between visual comfort and visitor satisfaction. The study finds two essential daylight considerations for a practical guide to promote healthy and effective daylight use in museums: (i) that certain design aspects in a museum, such as location, window size and window distance from partitions or displays, are important regardless of weather conditions and that (ii) glare prevention from openings such as windows and skylights is also a crucial aspect in visual comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines the neural activity patterns to scenes from built environment categories and their modulation by behavioral tasks, addressing several gaps in the literature with an interdisciplinary approach. We study the often-overlooked built environments where we spend most of our time, use a principled categorization method from the architecture literature, employ multiple behavioral tasks, and apply various analysis techniques. Methods: FMRI data were collected from 23 participants (12 females) as they viewed scenes and performed two tasks. Scene categories were architectural elements and functional facilities common to all public environments. Architectural elements consisted of areas that allow us to access (entrances-exits) and circulate within (stairs, corridors, etc.) buildings. Functional facilities consisted of places that serve human needs (restrooms, eating, and seating areas). Behavioral tasks consisted of a categorization task where participants decided which of the two main categories the presented stimulus belongs, and an approach-avoidance task which aims to measure initial processing regarding a scene with subjective enter-or-not decisions. Further, we conducted a localizer session to define scene-selective regions of interest (ROIs): parahippocampal place area (PPA), retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and occipital place area (OPA). Results: Univariate whole-brain analyses did not reveal significant differences between the tasks. Searchlight-based MVPA revealed that not tasks but categories are decoded at the wholebrain level at the lingual and parahippocampal gyri, the supplementary motor area, and the occipital cortex. Further, we performed a model-based representational similarity analysis (RSA) to examine neural modulations in the scene-selective regions. Comparing task, category, and visual similarity models to neural activity patterns in these regions, RSA demonstrated that scene-selective regions were strongly correlated with the task model only. Conclusion: Results indicate that neural responses to built environments are modulated by scene category at the wholebrain level and task at the ROI level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]