This presentation focusses on the analysis and design of human-centered, embodied, cognitive user experiences from the perspectives of spatial cognition and computation, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction research. Focusing on large-scale built up spaces (in particular hospitals), this presentation will particularly address:

‘how can human-centered cognitive modalities of visuo-locomotive perception constitute the foundational building blocks of design education, discourse, systems, and the professional practice of spatial design for architecture’.

The presentation will emphasizeevidence-based multimodality studies from the viewpoints of visuo-locomotive (i.e., pertaining to vision, movement, and wayfinding) cognitive experiences. Modalities being investigated include: (1) visual attention (by eye-tracking), gesture, language, facial expressions; (2) human expert guided event segmentation (e.g., coming from behavioral or environmental psychologists, designers, annotators); (3) deep analysis based on dialogic components, think-aloud protocols. We demonstrate (1–3) in the context of a large-scale study conducted at the Old and New Parkland Hospitals in Dallas, Texas.

This research (and symposium) calls for a tightly integrated approach combining analytical methods (rooted in AI and computational cognition) and empirical methods (rooted in psychology and perception studies) for developing human-centered architectural design technologies, and technology-mediated (architectural) design synthesis.