This study aims at investigating how consumers experience the retail environment visually, thus establishing a foundation for deeper insights into visual merchandising strategies. Specifically, we experimentally recorded and analyzed the visual attention and emotional arousal of the consumers in a test setting and examined the influence of various elements as well as gender differences in the recorded consumer responses. We conducted an experiment utilizing eye-tracking and virtual reality to analyze visual attention and emotional arousal in response to spatial and design elements in an immersive retail environment. We examined real-time measures of consumer interest and emotional responses during the retail experience. Valid gaze data from 24 male and 22 female participants were used for the analysis of total dwell time (TDT), total fixation count (TFC), and average pupil diameter (APD). The visual attention and emotional arousal of consumers showed different responses to specific areas of interest according to different spatial arrangements in the sales and service areas. This study statistically analyzed gender differences in consumer responses and performed a correlation analysis between visual attention and emotional arousal. Our findings provide insight into improving the design of retail environments for target consumers and contribute to building visual merchandising strategies.

This paper presents a method that combines visibility graph and isovist analyses to investigate the spatial and social properties of architectural plans for aged care facilities. The potential of the combined method is examined by measuring the properties of three sets of plans for residential aged care facilities. The first set is a pair of hypothetical, idealized plans, which allegedly reflect the “best practice” in the industry. The second set comprises a pair of plans for recent Australian designs, and the third set is a pair of plans for South Korean facilities. Results of the computational analysis of these six plans suggest that social and cultural factors may shape the design of aged care settings and partially explain their international differences. The application of this methodological approach contributes to the understanding of the relationship between spaces and their cultural and social properties in the design of aged care facilities

Elderly nursing homes in South Korea are vulnerable to evacuation in emergency situations such as fires. There are many elderly residents with reduced self-walking ability, so if a disaster such as a fire occurs, it is very likely to lead to a large number of human injuries. In elderly nursing homes, it is impossible for many elderly people to evacuate voluntarily without the help of staff. Therefore, it is very important to guide the behavior of staff when evacuating. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of evacuation behavior of staff on evacuation time in a fire emergency in an elderly nursing home by adopting an agent-based simulation approach. The effect of staff evacuation behavior on the evacuation time was investigated based on the results of a new agent-based evacuation simulation model. In the simulation model, there are conditions for caregivers to designate and evacuate the elderly, as well as to set the evacuation priority for the elderly. The results of this study show that having the elderly occupants designated by the staff according to their zones and evacuating them together was the most important in reducing the evacuation time. This study contributes to a new agent-based evacuation simulation model by confirming whether the evacuation behavior of employees affects the evacuation time.

This study aims to investigate the key attributes of a steadily growing hotel sector (lifestyle hotels), which has shown great success in the global competitive market, by analyzing user-created content on Instagram. The dataset used in this study were prepared from a total of 20,999 lifestyle hotel posts and 24,262 boutique hotel posts created from 2013 to 2020 and retrieved using a Python web crawler. The locations, hashtags, and image data were analyzed based on frequency analysis using social network analysis methods and computer vision technology, after which they were visualized with a geographical information system and Gephi. The results demonstrated that lifestyle hotels share key attributes that differentiate them from others in terms of physical, geospatial, and experiential contexts. Design, location, and management type are the main attributes that comprise the distinct identity of each lifestyle hotel. Moreover, a lifestyle hotel is distinct from a boutique hotel in that staying in the former means consuming experiences with continuous changes. The information and knowledge gained from this research will contribute to bridging the gap between theoretical literature and the practical development of lifestyle hospitality.

As the concept of prospect-refuge defines a preferred environment, the spatial elements that provide good conditions for the catalyst of the theory have been extensively studied. The well-known architectural element of this theory is the window that optimizes visual openness to outdoor or enclosure from outdoor. The aim of this paper is to develop a design method for prospect-refuge condition by adjusting window design attributes. A parametric design model that measures spatial conditions and presents design alternatives for the window is proposed in two major phases. First, this paper explains a parametric model to generate design alternatives for a window according to its size, aspect ratio, location, and shape. In the second phase, the parametric algorithm is defined for the measurement of prospect-refuge with 3D visibility. As a result, we explore the impact of window design variables on average visibility and difference visibility of prospect and refuge area. Using the parametric design technology, the proposed method presents analytical techniques, considering spatial characteristics.