A new paper from members of the joint Users TCP and EBC TCP Human-Centric Buildings (HCB) Network tackles a fundamental question for our community: how do we meaningfully engage the people who participate in our research?
📖 “Ten questions concerning participant engagement in building energy research”, published in Building and Environment, brings together Sarah Outcault, Dorothy Johns, Garrett T Morgan, June Young Park, Jamal Russell Black, Emily Searl, Helen Stopps, Marianne Touchie and Luca Zaniboni to turn experience from field research into practical guidance.
The paper goes beyond seeing occupants simply as subjects, respondents or data sources. It asks us to consider how participant engagement can become more respectful, meaningful and mutually valuable.
Through ten questions, real-world examples of successes and failures, and actionable resources, the authors highlight both the ethical and practical value of better participant engagement — and propose ten tenets that researchers can bring into their own studies.
This matters enormously for human-centric building research.
As we move toward increasingly sophisticated sensing, field experiments, living labs, personalised comfort and occupant-responsive buildings, our methods must evolve not only in how we measure people, but also in how we engage with them.
👥 Human-centric research starts with humans — not just human data.