Influences of visual preferences expressed by participants on early stage of learning space design: An interactive parametric modelling study

Designing learning spaces in the context of contemporary higher education is increasingly participatory as the users’ learning needs and preferences are ever more diverse. This paper presents a study of the influences of visual preferences expressed by participants on early stage of learning space design. The hypothesis is that designers' decision-making in shaping learning spaces may differ if visual preferences expressed by participants are made accessible at early stage of the design process. Employing Web-based 3D parametric modelling, we carried out a participatory experiment involving 186 participants from five countries to interact with a set of visual parameters and alter how the interior of a learning space should look like. Aggregates of the participants' expressions were then made accessible to 18 design practitioners partaking in the second stage of the experiment. ‘Positional change’ is proposed as a schema to characterise the influences as manifested in the design practitioners' responses. The study shows that the design practitioners generally agreed that the visual preferences expressed by the participants had influences on them. The 3D parametric virtual Environment (p-VE) developed for the study is described in some detail, which can be further extended to facilitate user-designer partnership in co-design of learning spaces.