Data-driven thinking for measuring the human experience in the built environment

This article introduces a methodology to implement Data-driven Thinking in the context of urban design. We present the results of a case study based on a 7-day workshop with 10 participants with landscape design and architecture background. The goal of the workshop was to expose participants to Data-driven Thinking through experimental design, multi-sensor data collection, data analysis, visualization, and insight generation. We evaluate their learning experience in designing an experimental setup, collecting real-time immediate environmental and physiological body reactions data. Our results from the workshop show that participants increased their knowledge about measuring, visualizing and understanding data of the surrounding built environment.