Table 2 Environmental psychology concepts 13; Dak Kopec in 2012
From: Towards forming a socio-ecological action model for urban open spaces’ design in New Cairo, Egypt
| Key concepts | Relevance for design | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Reciprocal determinism, modelling | Encourages an understanding of established societal norms |
| 02 | Global environment, instigators, goal objects, supports and constraints, directors | Offers a holistic approach to design |
| 03 | Psychological reactance | Suggests that design elements lead to perceptions of control |
| 04 | Operant conditioning, interactional theory | Emphasizes that design is an important component of a setting that contributes to certain behaviours |
| 05 | Threshold, arousal, environmental load, overload, adaptation level | Hold that design styles can lead to over-or under-stimulation |
| 06 | Directed attention, attentional deficit, effortless attention, restorative experiences | Include views of green spaces for effortless attention within environments demanding much directed attention |
| 07 | Distal and proximal cues leading to cue validity and cue utility | Emphasizes that perceptual relationship between design and the human observer |
| 08 | Environmental layout, contextual cues direct perception | Highlights perceptual influences of design styles and probable dual uses of designs |
| 09 | Novelty, incongruity, complexity, surprise, hedonic tone, uncertainty-arousal | Claims that the joint nature of design elements merge to develop one overall impression |
| 11 | Pleasure, arousal | Offers a method to evaluate environmental designs |
| 12 | Coherence, legibility, complexity, mystery | Offers method for designing engaging environments |
| 13 | Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks | Offers a method to enhance an environment’s legibility |