Finding Nature

You might be familiar with the term ‘ergonomics’ from ads for cars or in relation to office chairs, but it is a broad subject that can be applied to many aspects of our lives. Essentially it’s about designing for people to improve, amongst other things, wellbeing. This often takes place at work, but can be anywhere that people go, and involve anything that people do – or you’d like them to do.

When people interact with a system, which could be a museum, urban park or network of paths through woodland, there is a need to ensure the design complements their abilities and strengths. Ergonomists do this by applying their knowledge of people to design, so that products and places make sense. Ergonomics can also be applied in a subtlety different way, the knowledge and skills about people can be used to change behaviour through design. Continue reading →

In 2011, P. Wesley Schultz wrote an essay in Conservation Biology stating that conservation can only be achieved by changing human behaviour. He also noted the difficulties of changing conservation behaviour through education owing to our bias to short-term thinking, the social norms that guide us and our disconnect from nature. A recent research paper, ‘There is an I in Nature’, considers connection to nature and conservation in a study with farmers. Continue reading →

A couple of recent research papers have considered the role of nature’s beauty in nature connectedness and the associated benefits of well-being and pro-social behaviour. The first looked at how a connection to nature is related to well-being. In two studies the authors found that the positive relationship between a connection with nature and satisfaction with life was only significant for those people attuned and engaged with nature’s beauty. Or in other words, people who experience positive emotion when seeing beauty in nature have higher well-being. Continue reading →

Urban environments shape and define us more and more. From a past embedded in the natural world, our innate design skills, driven by an imaginative mind, have allowed us to settle and farm the land. Then, further advances saw people leave the fields and villages for a contrasting life in towns and cities where most of us now live. This growing disconnection from nature can be linked to the wider state of nature and research has also shown a health gap between people living in rural and urban locations. It has been suggested that the reason for this difference is down to environmental factors such as pollution and unhealthy behaviours. However, recent studies have found a strong link between health and the availability and access to green spaces. Continue reading →

This is a new blog and there are things to catch-up with, so this post is about two related research papers I tweeted earlier in the year. A more appropriate title would have been, ‘Meaning in Life and Connection to Nature’, but I felt that was a rather challenging title for a first post! Continue reading →