Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Interdisciplinary Communication and Vocabulary

Comment by Jim Woods: The thing that I think is so exciting about where he’s going with this is addressing a little bit of the gap analysis that we talked about yesterday, that the physics in terms of parameters that we can design with are not there, and you know, we’ve got some information on the perception which may or may not be valid. And so you’re starting to address those things at a research level that we can put some certainty to or look at least at the uncertainties to it and have a foundation to work from.

Response by Bob Massof: Research versus common design.

Comment by [Participant]: I don’t think in the end you’re going to get a specification that says this is what it looks like. And unless you’re ready to give an order to say this is what it looks like, you aren’t going to be able to [complete in] a two-year research-worthy project, and I’m exaggerating of course, but to solve these problems on every single project. What I think this is getting to do is to try to really focus [and] maybe to assist us common practitioners, small businesses, who have to solve problems every day with an eight-hour day, 40-hour week draftsman who gets paid a certain amount of money.

Comment by Jim Woods: A basic problem that has come up in the discussions in the last day-and-a-half is that a lot of you talked about the necessity of measurement in order to give instructions, in order to set standards, in order to define objectives, in order to support regulatory activity.

And what we’ve heard from both sides is that the measurements aren’t compatible now, that we don’t have a way of expressing in the physical description of the environment the factors that are relevant for the performance of the individual, and that’s what we have to find in this mutual modeling exercise. It’s not a trivial thing, because what we are trying to do is look at the interaction of two existing bodies of knowledge and two sets of phenomena, and if we arrive at that, then we have the basis for a lot of thinking and a lot of activities beyond specific design.

I think what you’re suggesting about the 10 pictures, five good and five bad, is immediately tangible, practical and something that you could use in terms of getting the job done quickly make sense. But what we’re trying to do with this in parallel to that -- and I think maybe that should be another short-term activity, but what we’re trying to do here is lay the foundation for coherent communication between two bodies of knowledge and to allow for the construction of interaction of an understanding of individual human capacity as it may change and is changing, and of dynamic environments which can be modified and can be supportive or less supportive depending on how they’re designed.

And by taking pictures of what’s out there and what’s worked, it’s a rough-and-ready summary of what combination of things happened to have worked but it’s kind of an artistic approach rather than one of trying to identify what those specific relationships are and what the mechanisms of relationship are which we were trying to approach in the modeling.

Response by Bob Massof: Where the differences are derived, the physics of the picture are very different from the physics of the environment. So to get this picture and use it, looking at the simulation [is only a start].

Comment by Vijay Gupta: I’ve been thinking that it’s [encouraging] that the medical community and the engineering and design community [are here] and I think that’s a good solution right there. We need the support of the medical community to meet Marsha’s needs, and not only Marsha’s needs but to meet other needs. So the medical community and architectural and engineering community needs to get to get together.

Response by [Participant]: And we need to begin that vocabulary list.

Comment by Jim Woods: I think we said that yesterday and I think that’s got to be on one of our big list items here. We don’t have a common vocabulary list, just the way of speaking a language together besides the research, so we can understand some of what you’re saying and you can understand, and we can begin to talk more fluently on the subject.

Comment by [Participant]: Well, a final project would support continuous interaction between representatives of each of the communities and that would be in itself –

Response by Bob Massof: And maybe that’s part of what goes into this planning grant. We need to develop a common language.

Response by [Participant]: From our perspective, we really need you guys to help us and I think this would be a perfect collaboration to provide both directions.