Limitations on Model House Designs for Trust, Freedom, or Control

Abstract

Keeley and Edney (1982), among others, have noted that users' satisfaction is one benefit of having users participate in the design process. Moreover, they presented a model-house technique for gathering normative information on users which can then be employed to reflect desirable psychosocial concepts such as privaq, security, or social interaction in housing designs. The present study sought to extend this work by determining whether the additional factors of trust, freedom, or control could be reflected in the objective measures of the model-house technique. Subjects (20 men, 20 women) were undergraduates who participated in male/ female dyads. The procedure was that used by Keeley and Edney (1982) in which subjects were given 50 wood blocks (4 in. X 3% in. X in., 10.23 cm X 8.32 cm X 1.92 cm) to construct a model house on a 4 ft x 4 ft (1.2 m x 1.2 m) sheet of paper. Each dyad constructed three houses, in a counterbalanced order: one each to encourage trust, control, or freedom for those living in it. A multivariate analysis of variance showed no significant differences across trust, freedom, or control for any of the measures, number of blocks used, total number of rooms, number of shared spaces (e.g., dining and living room not separated by walls), shared spaces as a percentage of total rooms, number of neighboring bedrooms; total area of the house, area of the bedrooms, area of bedrooms as a percentage of total area. area of shared spaces, area of shared spaces as a percentage of total area, area of smallest room, area of largest room, range of room size; number of corridors, number of rooms visible from any one room, number of interior openings, number of external openings, number of external wall surfaces, number of rooms to travel through to go between the two most separated rooms, number of rooms leading off a common space, number of distinct areas, percent of curvature in the walls, and number of external features. Since Keeley and Edney (1982) found differences in the above dependent measures when comparing homes built for privaq, securiry, or social interaction, the present results suggest that their method may be limited to the type of psychosocial concept reflected in the house design. Subjects in the present study reported that the project was enjoyable, and they verbalized definite ideas they were trying to reflect in their designs. Such psychosocial concepts as trust, freedom, and control may simply be too