Effectiveness of Design Standards in Improving Residence Hall Usability and Satisfaction

The designers of a university residence hall utilized a draft universal design standard during their design process. The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Design and the Built Environment (RERC-UD) conducted a post-occupancy evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the draft standards and help inform further standard development. This post-occupancy evaluation used three methods of inquiry: guided tours, online survey, and archival records.

The results provided insight into how well the two buildings suit occupants' needs, identified which features were most closely related to resident satisfaction, and helped evaluate the effectiveness of specific universal design standards, as well as the value of utilizing such standards in practice. The findings show that participants rated the new residence hall as more usable and more satisfactory than the comparison hall.

keywords: Design standards, Residence hall, Usability, Satisfaction, Post-occupancy evaluation