As humans our brains are designed to adapt to the every day things really quickly.
How to tie up shoelaces.
The unending beeps from the microwave.
How to screw on the milk bottle lid.
The sound of traffic past your house.
After time we also get used to the little problems we face each day. The ones that were a cause of frustration when we first experienced them and now we have adaptively learned to ignore.
Peeling the sticker off the fruit before you can eat it.
Getting into a hot car after it has ben parked in the sun.
Never having the right lid for the available tupperware.
Sweeping dirt into a pile and then having to use another tool to collect it from the floor and into the bin.
We either become numb to them and don’t even notice them or simply accepted that it is a problem and placed it at the back of our minds. As designers should see those things and find solutions for them. Evolutionarily, our brains encode the everyday things we do into habits so we can free up space to learn new things. We call this ‘habituation’. It can be good – I’ll remind you of the traffic past your house situation, although now that you’ve read this you might notice it again! However, if habituation stops us from noticing problems, we are unable to fix them.
In the context of education and learning space design, we need to notice problems in what we teach, how we teach and how students learn in order for the system to be as effective as it can be. In a more focused context of learning spaces, I can imagine how valuable it would be to critically analyse how students use the space and what issues they may experience in their everyday so we can find solutions for them. Perhaps it is access to resources. Perhaps the lights create excess glare and reflect off surfaces. Perhaps there is not enough space to move around the classroom freely. Perhaps the noise or colours in the space hinder concentration.
We must reject the statement “But that’s the way we’ve always done it”. We should always aspire to make changes to improve a person’s experience.