CHAPTER 8

 

OBSERVING PHYSICAL TRACES

 

roundings to find reflections of previous activity that was not produced

in order to be measured by researchers. Traces may have been uncon-
sciously left behind (for example, paths across a field), or they may be conscious
changes people have made in their surroundings (for example, a curtain hung
over an open doorway or a new wall built). From such traces designers and
environment-behavior researchers begin to infer how an environment got to be
the way it is, What decisions its designers and builders made about the place,
how people actually use it, how they feel about their surroundings, and gener-
ally how that particular environment meets the needs of its users. Observers of
physical traces also begin to form an idea of what the people who use that place
are like—their culture, their affiliations, and the way they present themselves.

Most people see only a small number of clues in their physical surround—
ings; they use only a few traces to read what the environment has to tell them.
Observing physical traces systematically is a refreshing method because,
through fine-tuning, it turns a natural skill into a useful research tool.

A simple yet striking example of the use of this method is Sommer’s obser-
vation of furniture placement in a mental-hospital ward and corridor (1969). In
the morning after custodians had straightened up and before visitors arrived,
Sommer found chairs arranged side—by-side in rows against the walls. Each day,
several hours later, he found that patients’ relatives and friends had left the
same chairs grouped face-to-face in smaller clusters. Among the inferences this
set of physical-trace observations prompted Sommer to make was that custodi-
ans’ attitudes toward neatness and their beliefs that furniture ought to be

0 bserving physical traces means systematically looking at physical sur-

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