Ep 6: The Evidence Gap with Kati Peditto and Stacey Root

There is a gap between what design teams know about human behavior and what actually ends up in a building. Research exists. Tools exist. The problem is getting evidence into the process before it is too late to act on it. In this episode, design researcher Kati Peditto and architect Stacey Root dig into how that gap closes.

GUESTS

Kati Peditto is Principal Researcher at Built Experience Lab, where she studies and consults on the intersection of human behavior and the built environment. With a PhD in human behavior and design, Kati has worked across healthcare, K-12, and higher education projects at multiple firms, bringing research into the design process at every phase from pre-design through post-occupancy. Her work focuses on turning evidence into design decisions that produce measurable outcomes for patients, staff, students, and communities.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katipeditto/

Stacey Root is Health Practice Leader for the Denver Office of Cannon Design, with deep experience in healthcare architecture, IPD, and design-build delivery. Stacey returns to the conversation to offer the practitioner's perspective on how research integrates with the realities of project teams, budgets, and client expectations.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceymroot/

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why evidence-based design is not about finding articles that validate decisions already made, and what real evidence actually looks like on a project
• How design researchers work across pre-design, schematic design, and design development, and why post-occupancy evaluation only works when research starts at the beginning
• Why research fees get cut from project budgets even when the return on investment is documented, and what it would take to change that
• How real-time research methods are beginning to replace the pause-and-study model, and what that means for how design teams make decisions under pressure
• What happens to the cognitive health of designers when budgets are tight, schedules are compressed, and competing priorities never stop
• Why healthcare led the adoption of evidence-based design, and where K-12 and higher education are catching up

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Introductions and what brought Kati and Stacey into this conversation
01:48 - Kati's background: why a PhD in human behavior landed her in architecture, not a lab
04:36 - The difference between evidence-based design as a marketing term and as an actual practice
06:02 - How architects and researchers work together without getting in each other's way
09:12 - Why every evidence-based design conversation eventually comes back to ROI
09:44 - What a research scope looks like across pre-design, schematic design, and design development
12:03 - Owner timelines and the pressure to compress the front end before research can do its job
13:40 - Researching in real time: why the linear model of study-then-design is giving way to something faster
17:29 - What it would take to connect visioning session data directly to real-time design decisions
18:01 - The owner's role in enabling research and why pulling clinical staff off the floor is the real obstacle
21:28 - The long view: why operational costs over a 50-year building life dwarf pre-project planning and design costs, and why owners still struggle to get there
22:43 - Why healthcare adopted evidence-based design first and where K-12 is now following the same path
24:38 - A current project: a vulnerable California school district and what a post-occupancy study reveals about design decisions made years earlier
27:49 - How to scope a research plan when the options range from cortisol studies to something a school board will actually approve
33:00 - What architecture schools are not teaching designers about cognitive load and task switching under pressure
45:13 - The cognitive health of design teams: what Stacey's office is actually doing about it, not just talking about it
51:30 - Why leadership has to be the one to break the cycle when neither the client nor the firm will

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Evidence-based design: a framework for informing design decisions through research, lived experience, stakeholder engagement, and measurable outcomes. Grew from evidence-based medicine and is most developed in healthcare design. Learn more at the Center for Health Design: www.healthdesign.org
• HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems): a national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients' perspectives of hospital care, developed by CMS and AHRQ. Referenced in the episode as an example of owner-side outcome metrics that evidence-based design directly influences. Since 2012, HCAHPS scores have played a role in hospital payment through the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program. Learn more: www.cms.gov/medicare/quality/initiatives/hospital-quality-initiative/hcahps-patients-perspectives-care-survey
• AIA Framework for Design Excellence: a ten-principle framework defining design excellence in the 21st century, including a dedicated principle for well-being that addresses physical, mental, and emotional effects of design on occupants and communities. Referenced in the episode in the context of health and wellbeing goals that appear in firm frameworks but are not always reflected in curriculum or fee structures. Learn more: www.aia.org/design-excellence/aia-framework-for-design-excellence/well-being
• Kati Peditto's evidence-based design newsletter (free): https://newsletter.katipeditto.com/

WHERE TO FIND KATI

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katipeditto/
Newsletter: https://newsletter.katipeditto.com/

WHERE TO FIND STACEY

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceymroot/
Cannon Design: https://www.cannondesign.com