Items where Author is "Snow, Steve"

Feeling drowsy at work? Despite findings that poor indoor air quality causes cognitive performance decline, the average office-worker has no access to information on the quality of air in the room until it becomes poor enough to cause discomfort. In this talk, I discuss our user-centred research from the REFRESH project, which joins the dots between the individual and social factors that affect perception of IAQ, and the human physiological responses to changes in air quality. This involves (1) physiological measurement such as (EEG) to detect the effect of air quality on drowsiness, (2) qualitative methods to understanding the social factors which influence air quality in offices, and (3) designing ambient technology which visualises CO2 of an office- an indicator of indoor air quality. At the end of the talk you will have some actions for how you can detect- and do something about- the air quality of your office; how easily you can incorporate qualitative methods into your research and use technology to understand your users’ needs.