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.