Measuring the impact of dynamic life cycle performance feedback on conceptual building design

Decisions made in the early design stages critically determine a building's life cycle environmental impacts and costs. Dynamic building performance feedback has the potential to improve design decision making, but the best means of providing such feedback is not well understood. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of three visualization tools in helping designers make sustainable building design decisions. A charrette was conducted in which participants were tasked with minimizing carbon emissions and cost of an office building based on feedback from a scatterplot, histogram, and tornado diagram. Results demonstrate that designers achieved significant improvements in solution quality when feedback was present, with the scatterplot achieving a 20% improvement over conventional methods. The research quantifies the effectiveness of various visualization methods in helping designers create low-carbon, high-performing buildings and suggests that quantity and type of feedback should be carefully considered during the early stages of the sustainable design process. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.