Effects of Human Behavior Simulation on Usability Factors of Social Sustainability in Architectural Design Education

While the social sustainability of built environments is an essential aspect of architectural design education, systemic experiments still lack empirical pedagogy. Therefore, factors of social sustainability are hardly reflected in students’ projects seamlessly. To overcome such limitations, this study investigates the applicability and effectiveness of human behavior simulation. To ensure authentic architectural design, the projects were equipped with autonomous, rational anthropomorphic computer agents called virtual users (VUsers). This study compared the performance scores on social sustainability factors, assessed by the students who conducted design projects both before (without) and after (with) using the simulation. A one-way analysis of variance indicated that human behavior simulation promoted the performance of projects with respect to the parameters of accessibility and safety, ergonomic usability for heterogeneous users and supportability of social interactions. However, the simulation was not found to be effective in promoting the physical attractiveness of built environments and in ensuring the completeness of design solutions. Based on previous studies, the present study interpreted the reasons why the operability of VUsers and built environments, representations of emerging interactions of VUsers and whole-and-part analytics promoted explicit experimentation, but the factors of physical attractiveness and completeness were irrelevant to the rational examinations in the use of the simulation.