Healthcare, corporate, retail, hospitality, and other business sectors are embracing evidence-based design as a way of making intelligent decisions about how the planning, design, and management of hospitals, stores, housing, offices and other complex settings can help them achieve their business and organizational goals.
DEA has been at the forefront of this approach to design from its inception more than half a century ago. Its leading-edge multi-disciplinary faculty with expertise in the fields of design, human factors/ergonomics, economics, and environmental psychology are committed to integrating instruction, research, and outreach to address and help solve real world problems. These include studying residential communities that fight obesity by encouraging a more active lifestyle, offices that help attract and retain the best talent in the world, products that support specific activities and are safe and easy to use, hospitals that improve the quality of healthcare, construction practices that reduce waste and harmful human pollutants, designs and environmental practices that are sustainable and environmentally-friendly.
The connecting thread is a commitment to design innovation grounded in an understanding of the social, historical, technical, environmental and economic context and consequences in which organizations of all sorts plan, design, and use physical settings and the products and technology in them to full-fill their mission.
The combination of a friendly department in a small college in a world-class university led by faculty at the leading-edge of their fields creates an unparalleled learning opportunity and research environment.
