UX for Spaces™

This document defines UX for Spaces™, a design standard for how the technology layers of a space support what the people in it need, and the method that carries a project through it. The standard was authored by Jimmy Powers, Principal of Blend Technology, and Blend applies it on its own projects.

The method is called UX for Spaces™. Its working instrument is the UX for Spaces™ Framework, currently version 16.0, published as two workbooks, residential and commercial, with a Space Type Catalog shared by both. Its companion build standard, the Building Intelligence Standard, defines what the building's technology must be able to do to deliver what this standard specifies. This document explains the standard and its method so that architects, designers, builders, owners, and anyone researching it can understand it, apply its vocabulary, and cite it.

Four kinds of statement appear here, and they are labeled so the reader can tell them apart:

Every space is built for something. A primary suite is for rest and recovery. A study is for focus. A guest suite is for arrival and sleep. A dining room is for conversation. UX for Spaces™ begins by stating that intention plainly, before any product is chosen, and then designs every technology layer, and the building assemblies those layers depend on, to hold it. Two intentions show how the method runs.

A space for rest, recovery, and sleep. The intention is that a person lies down and the space holds dark, quiet, and a stable temperature until they choose to leave it. Every layer has a job:

• Lighting. Evening light warms and dims from the start of wind-down, to 10 lux melanopic EDI or less at the eye. During sleep, light at the eye is held under 1 lux melanopic EDI: indicators go dark, and the night path comes from amber or red sources only.
• Shading. Blackout seals at the edges. Shades close at dusk or at wind-down, and open at dawn, or at wake where dawn comes first, so morning light arrives with the wake ramp.
• Sound. Where noise still reaches the pillow, a soft, steady sound settles it, at or below 35 dBA. A wind-down soundscape can lead into it. Every speaker in the space sits in an isolated back box, so the audio layer never weakens the wall.
• Attention. The doorbell is tied between entry, security, and audio. While someone sleeps it shows as light at the entry and sounds at a gentle level only where someone is awake. Nothing in the space announces itself.
• Climate. Temperature holds within 1 degree of the sleeper's choice and corrects without a fan spinning up. Where the project chooses quiet air as its baseline, the steady floor at the pillow is NC-25 with no start, stop, or speed change audible above it, and the mechanical engineer has the night targets and schedules before the ducts are laid out.
• The drawings. Where isolation from an adjacent space is needed, the partition, the door, the floor, and the speaker back boxes are specified on the construction documents, because no scene can add mass to a wall after it is closed.

A space for work and focus. The intention is that a person sits down and the space supports attention for as long as the work takes. Every layer has a job:

• Shading. Privacy shades close the space to sightlines from outside, and glare control keeps direct sun and reflected glare off the task plane and the screen, while daylight is kept where it helps. Both are automatic once the focus scene is called.
• Lighting. Spectrum and level are set to keep the nervous system alert rather than drowsy: 250 lux melanopic EDI or more at the eye through the working day, from sources whose spectral data is on file, no bare source visible from the seated position, and electric light that compensates as daylight fades so neither the task illuminance nor the melanopic level sags through the afternoon.
• Climate. Temperature holds inside a tight band and corrects silently, with CO2 used as the ventilation trigger so the air is refreshed before it dulls attention.
• Acoustics. The space is designed so that speech from adjacent spaces is not intelligible at the desk, and its own noise floor stays below NC-30. Where an adjacent space cannot be quieted and the person wants it, a soft, steady sound covers what leaks in, at a tuned level under the focus ceiling of 40 dBA.
• Attention. During a focus scene or a video call, the doorbell does not sound in the space. The arrival is shown by a light indicator, a soft pulse on the keypad and the entry fixture, so the person sees it when they look up and is not pulled out of the task by a chime. Notifications hold until the scene ends.
• The drawings. If the space must be isolated from sound, that isolation is an assembly, and the assembly is on the MEP plans, not only on the architectural set. An isolated shell cannot be penetrated by a duct, a conduit, or a plumbing run without losing what it was built for, so it changes where the mechanical pathways go, where the return air comes from, and how the supply is lined and silenced. Those decisions are made at Schematic Design and confirmed at Construction Documents, or they are not made.

Both spaces follow the same chain: the stated need becomes a criterion with a unit, the criterion becomes coordinated behavior across every layer, each behavior is assigned to a trade and a drawing at a construction stage, the built result is measured against the criterion, and the record is adjusted in use. The rest of this document defines each link.

UX for Spaces™ exists because the layers that shape how a space feels are designed by different people who rarely design them together. Lighting, acoustics, HVAC, air quality, shading, and controls each pass their own specification. Nobody is responsible for how they behave in combination for the person in the space. The result is a space that meets every individual spec and still fails at what it was for.

The method fixes the responsibility gap. It defines what each space must do for the people in it, writes that as behavior the building can carry out, routes each behavior to the trade and construction stage that can deliver it, and then measures whether the built space does what was written.

It applies to residences, hospitality properties, workplaces, learning environments, retail and experience spaces, and performance spaces such as cinemas, studios, and listening spaces. The UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0 covers all of these in seventeen behavioral categories, described below.

The method covers:

• vocabulary
• space types and profiles
• experiences, scenes, and keypads
• turning human needs into a space brief
• writing behavior specifications
• resolving priorities and conflicts
• coordinating across trades
• timing decisions against construction
• documentation
• commissioning
• adjustment in actual use
• ownership and support
• version governance

It does not cover equipment selection, brand comparisons, or pricing. Equipment is chosen to satisfy the behaviors, after the behaviors are written, and it is not the subject of this document.

A UX for Spaces™ designer can carry the method through construction, calibration, and ongoing care, as Blend does on its own projects, or hand a completed design to a qualified integration partner. The method is the same either way.

These terms are used exactly as defined here throughout UX for Spaces™ documents. All are method definitions unless noted.

Every requirement in a UX for Spaces™ project travels the same six links. If a link is missing, the requirement is not yet designed.

Read left to right: a need becomes a measurable or checkable criterion, the criterion becomes a set of physical and programmed decisions, each decision is assigned to a trade and a drawing at a construction stage, the built result is checked against the criterion, and the record is adjusted in use.

The chain is also the test for whether a document is complete. A behavior with no criterion is a wish. A criterion with no trade assignment is a hope. A trade assignment with no verification is an assumption.

The brief comes first. Method: no behavior is written until every space it could touch is named in the brief and assigned to a profile, because every behavior must bind to a real space in the project.

Space types and profiles. Most projects have many spaces that need the same thing: eight hotel guestrooms, four secondary bedrooms, twelve meeting rooms. The method does not define each one from scratch. Method:

1. Name every space, usually from the floor plan.
2. Choose a space type for each space from the Space Type Catalog. The catalog lists the rooms that usually belong to each type.
3. Group spaces of the same type that need the same answers into one profile. A profile has one type. Spaces of the same type that need different answers get separate profiles: the primary suite is Sleep and Rest 1, the secondary bedrooms are Sleep and Rest 2. A wellness property might carry Treatment Room 1 for massage and Treatment Room 2 for facials.
4. Ask what will happen in each profile. Then ask the remaining discovery questions once for the project, and place each answer on the profiles and single spaces it applies to. The type sets which questions are asked and what the defaults are; the answers set the profile's targets and bind its rows.
5. Record an exception on a single space only where it differs from its profile, with the reason. A secondary bedroom that faces the street carries a higher isolation target than the others in its profile.
6. Where nothing in the catalog fits, define a custom type from the nearest family, with a name and an intent sentence, labeled Custom. Custom types that recur across projects are proposed for the catalog in the next framework version.

Four rules govern profiles:

• One space, one profile. A room that does two jobs, such as a great room with a dining area, is split into two spaces, each with its own profile.
• Defaults are starting points. A type's performance targets, acoustic class, color rendition, and light posture are confirmed or changed for each profile in discovery.
• Adjacency stays per space. Conflicts arise between spaces that share a wall, floor, or door, so the conflict register names spaces, not profiles.
• Verification stays per space. Every room is built separately, so every space is commissioned. A profile passes only when each of its spaces does.

How the brief is built. Discovery begins with people, not systems. The UX for Spaces™ process calls the first stage Listen and Map: who is in the space, how they move, where they slow down, where things become frustrating or uncomfortable. The output is a map of daily life, the moments that matter most, and an emotional target for each area. The brief converts that map into rows.

Every space begins complete. Each space starts with every technology layer that would support, protect, or enhance its intention, its scenes, and its conditions. Light is part of every one. From there, the design is shaped to the project and the people in it, and layers are pared back where the budget, the building, or the household asks for it. The default is generous so that nothing is left out by accident, and anything set aside is set aside on purpose. Circadian lighting is part of this default wherever people spend time; it follows from the space's intentions and is never asked as a technology question.

The conversation stays with the life of the space. We talk about what will happen in each space, how people want to feel there, and what gets in the way: the glare in the afternoon, the road outside, the doorbell during a nap. The layers follow from those answers.

Sound is more than music. A soft, steady sound that settles a space for sleep, a chime that arrives gently, a soundscape for winding down. Each one belongs to the experience it serves.

One answer reaches everything it touches. Deep sleep in a space shapes its evening light, its shades at dusk and dawn, the sound that settles it, how the doorbell reaches it, and how its walls and speaker boxes keep it quiet. Each of those is carried to the trade, the drawing, and the stage where it is built.

Questions are asked once. Method. Each discovery question is asked once for the project and speaks of spaces, not rooms: "Does bright light or glare bother anyone in any spaces?" Each answer opens a list of the project's profiles and single spaces, and is placed where it applies. Answers that hold for the whole project skip the list. Any single space can be opened and changed; the change applies to that space only, and the space shows that it differs from its profile.

What each profile holds.

What each space holds. The space name the project will use everywhere, on drawings and in programming (Primary suite); its floor; its profile; and any exceptions, each with its reason.

Experiences define the scenes. Method. Discovery asks one question of every occupied profile: what will happen in this room? Each experience chosen adds its scenes to the space, and the space type pre-selects the usual ones. A Media Room pre-selects Watching movies or TV, which adds Movie. A bedroom where someone reads adds Read and places it on the bedside keypad. Every occupied space starts with Pathway, Dim, and Bright before any experience is added. The experiences are also the headings of the experience brief, where each one lists what protects, supports, and enhances it.

From target words to criteria. A performance target is a word; a criterion is a condition with a unit or a checkable function. Method: each target on a profile is expanded into criteria in the behavior register, not in the brief. The brief stays readable by the client. The register carries the numbers.

The expansion draws on the method's practice targets. A few examples, each a practice target unless marked:

Recovery is one target set, whatever the reason. When a space is tagged Recovery, the framework sets every environmental factor at the most demanding published criteria available for healthcare environments and measures the space against them: for sound, the WHO Guidelines for Community Noise values for hospital ward rooms (30 dB LAeq indoors at all hours, night-time events not above 40 dB LAmax, treatment and observation areas not above 35 dB LAeq), which are more demanding than the FGI Guidelines' patient-room range of NC 30 to 40 and therefore govern on level, while FGI Table 1.2-3 supplies the partition criteria (STC 45 between patient rooms on the same floor, 50 floor to floor, 50 to public space, 60 to a service area) and Table 1.2-4 the speech-privacy criterion for confidential rooms (STI 0.12 or less at the unintended listener), with the method's steady floor below NC-20 and the mechanical-transition limits of Acoustic Design row 10; for air, ASHRAE Standard 170-2021 Table 7-1 for a patient room (2 air changes per hour of outdoor air minimum, 4 total, MERV-14 minimum filtration), with HEPA active in the space and the WHO 2021 air quality guideline values for particulates; for thermal, the same table's patient-room design range of 70 to 75 F (21 to 24 C) and relative humidity at or below 60 percent, held within 1 degree of the occupant's chosen value, inside the ASHRAE Standard 55 comfort zone (PMV within plus or minus 0.5, about 10 percent predicted dissatisfied, humidity ratio at or below 0.012); for light, the Brown et al. 2022 melanopic recommendations, and ANSI/IES RP-29-25 Table A-1 for the patient zone of a general patient room: 200 lux general, 4 lux night-light, 30 lux night observation, 400 lux reading at the head of the bed, with night-lights from amber or red sources or below 2800 K and every target reached through at least three-level control. Where no published criterion exists for a factor, the method sets a practice target from the best available evidence and labels it as such. The same targets apply whether the occupant is recovering from surgery, illness, travel, training, or a demanding day. The values are checked against the current edition of each source at project start; editions change, and the framework records the edition each value came from. This is a statement about where the targets come from; it is not a claim that the space is clinical, and the medical judgment stays with the occupant's physician.

What the brief does not do. It does not choose products, and it does not promise outcomes. A space tagged Sleep is a space the building will hold in a sleep posture to defined conditions. Whether a particular person sleeps well depends on many things the building cannot control. The brief commits to conditions.

A behavior is one row. When a stated condition is true, the building responds as specified. That sentence is the whole grammar of the framework, and everything else on the row is routing.

The seventeen categories. The UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0 organizes behaviors into seventeen categories, in this order: Interface and Control; Acoustic Design; Biological Rhythm; Cognition; Recovery and Wellness; Restoration; High Performance Spaces; Safety and Trust; Access and Presence; Gathering; Preservation; Arrival and Departure; Transitions; Building Health; Sustainability; Learning Environments; Retail and Experience. Each of the two v16.0 workbooks, residential and commercial, holds 298 populated behavior rows across those categories; the two differ in wording where the setting differs, not in structure. Not every row applies to every project; a project record is the subset that binds to its spaces.

The fields on every row.

How a row is written. Method, in order:

1. Write the trigger as a condition a sensor, a clock, a person, or a project milestone can actually produce. "The occupant feels tired" is not a trigger. "Uninterrupted stillness is detected in the focus space for 60 minutes" is.
2. Write the response for every layer it touches, in one place. If the response involves lighting, shading, HVAC, masking, and a notification hold, all five appear on the row. The point of the method is that no layer is specified alone.
3. State transitions as durations. Autonomous lighting transitions fade over a minimum of ten minutes; wind-down transitions run 30 to 45 minutes; a scene change a person calls may be faster but is never instantaneous. Shading moves at speeds below the ambient noise floor. HVAC corrections do not produce audible fan speed changes. These are practice rules from the framework's operating principles.
4. Bind the row to a profile or a space, and to a user, moment, and priority.
5. Tag intervention depth and Impacts Build. This is where the row becomes a work item for a specific trade at a specific stage.
6. Flag the conflict profile if the row involves sleep, security, privacy, recovery, energy, or safety, and write the conflict entry.

Three example rows from the framework, condensed. These are framework rows, not project results.

The third row shows something the method insists on: many behaviors are not automation at all. They are design reviews with a deadline. The framework treats "a decision must be made before this drawing is issued" as a building behavior, because if the decision is missed the space cannot behave as intended no matter what is programmed later.

Operating principles that govern every row. Eight rules from the framework sit above all categories:

• Circadian override. Circadian logic is always overridable, in any space, at any time, by any authorized user. A manual scene, guest preference, or occupant request suspends it for that space until released. The building never imposes biology on someone who chooses otherwise.
• Sleep overrides circadian. When a sleep or rest scene activates, the space leaves the circadian schedule and holds its sleep posture regardless of the time of day, until explicitly released. A 7 am sunrise does not override a guest who needs to sleep.
• One circadian standard, timed per occupant. The evening and night light targets are the same for everyone, set at the level the most sensitive occupant needs; there is no separate rule for children. What varies is timing: each space's wind-down is anchored to the sleep time of its occupant, whoever that is, and shared spaces follow the earliest sleeper present or the occupants' stated choice. A space whose occupant sleeps before sunset either blacks out at wind-down start or follows outdoor light until daylight falls below the evening target; an electric sunset in a daylit space is not attempted. Where an occupant needs more light to move safely at night, pathway output is raised within the amber or red spectrum so the night ceiling still holds. Circadian lighting is a baseline, not a choice put to the client: it follows from intention, the way quiet air does. Any performance target other than Storage and preservation or Service and utility brings it in, and once it is in, it covers every space people spend time in: every occupied space, dressing rooms, hallways, and landings, because the spaces people use before sleep shape that sleep as much as the bedroom does, and circulation is the path to the bath at night. Storage, pantries, laundry, garages, collection display, and outdoor spaces are left out. A client can set aside any single space, and can override the circadian automation at any time; whether it resumes after a set time, when a condition is met, or only manually is decided in programming.
• Focus cycle. Focus scenes run on a one-hour cycle with a built-in break: at 60 minutes, a peripheral warm light shift for five minutes, no audio, no alert.
• Technology fades to the periphery. Every material in a building is technology, from the wall assembly to the chair. Some of it is a statement, meant to be seen. Some is infrastructure, meant to stay out of view. Either way, it never competes for attention. It sits at the edge of awareness until it is needed, and it speaks through the room (light, sound, temperature) before it asks for a screen.
• Materials are systems. Material choices are evaluated for acoustic impact, light reflection, and thermal contribution to the space. They are not specified independently of system design. Materials and systems are one specification, not two.
• Redundancy by priority. Graceful failure is the baseline for every space: local control holds when the internet is lost, and a space defaults to a safe state when its controller fails. Priority 1 behaviors, and any behavior adjacent to life safety, go further: a duplicate path is specified so the behavior itself continues through a single failure. That can mean a redundant processor, a second network path, backup power sized to hold the behavior, or duplicate sensors where one sensor would otherwise drive a priority 1 decision. Life safety systems remain independent, as codes require.
• Protects, supports, enhances. For every experience defined for a space, the technology must support it, and may also protect or enhance it where that is plainly true. Supporting is required: every experience has at least one behavior that makes it work as intended, such as task light for Cook that breaks away from circadian while the scene is active. Protects and Enhances are never forced onto an experience. A technology that does none of the three does not belong. The role is set per experience, so circadian evening light protects sleeping in a bedroom and supports reading in the same room.
• Every space begins complete. Technology layers are applied to support, protect, or enhance the intention of a space, a scene, or a condition. All of them are applied by default, with the ability to pare back.

Scenes, keypads, and triggers. Method. A scene is something a space can do; a keypad is one way to start it. The two are designed separately.

• A space can have any number of scenes. Each records every way it can be started: keypad button, schedule, touchscreen, app, voice, or sensor or event. A scene with no way to start it is flagged.
• Scene names are one word, with Video Call as the one deliberate exception, because a call changes light, shades, and climate for the camera. Timed behavior lives inside the scene's programming, the way the focus cycle lives inside Focus and a timed meditation lives inside Calm. Session names a recording session, not a timer.
• Keypads hold the scenes of a moment, not the scenes of a space. A keypad is for reaching what you want without thinking: at the door, at the bed, at the desk. It holds at most four scenes, the number a person can hold in mind and reach by position rather than by reading.
• Ganged keypads serve different categories. Where a location needs more than one keypad, each keypad serves its own category: a lighting keypad and a shade keypad, never two lighting keypads. Splitting one category's scenes across two keypads to get past four is not permitted; eight lighting scenes on two four-button keypads is the same burden as one eight-button keypad.
• Beyond four, use a touch interface. A location that needs more than four scenes in any category has outgrown buttons for that category. It takes a touch interface, which can show what is running and offer only what fits the moment. Finding the right light in a dark space by reading a grid of engraved labels is the failure this rule prevents.
• The limit is per keypad location, not per space. A space can have many scenes, reached by schedule, automation, touch panel, app, or voice. A Media Room might carry Movie, Game, Music, Dim, Bright, Pathway, Clean, and Off: eight scenes in the space, while the entry keypad holds the four that matter on the way in. A space can have several keypad locations, each named: entry, bedside, desk. A scene beyond a keypad's limit replaces a button; it is never added.
• Where the limit comes from. It is a design judgement drawn from 25 years of watching people use keypads, and it is consistent with research on working memory, which puts the number of items a person holds in mind at about four (Cowan 2001), and on choice, where decision time rises with every option added (Hick 1952; Hyman 1953). The method records it as a method rule, not a measured threshold.
• Keypads are estimated, then defined. For pricing and early planning, the framework estimates a keypad everywhere a light switch would go: one at every entry point of every space with its own lighting, one at every exterior exit, the bedside keypads (two in a primary bedroom, one in other bedrooms), one per level a stair serves, and the main entry keypad, with minimums of two in kitchens, living spaces, halls, and the primary bath. The real keypads are then defined on the plan with electrical during MEP coordination: each one's location, the lighting loads it controls, and its scenes. Only defined keypads go to electrical and into the programming. Keypad locations are due at Construction Docs; a keypad still estimated after that is a Missed Stage, and the Intention Declaration lists it as a blocker.

Autonomous Response. What a space does on its own, without anyone calling a scene, is listed per space by name, only where the space's rows call for it: Air quality (ventilation responds to CO2 and VOCs), Temperature hold (quiet correction within the band), Glare control (shades respond to glare), Humidity hold, and UV protection. Each item traces to the rows that create it. These are not keypad scenes.

Layers and defaults. Method. Every layer that supports, protects, or enhances an experience, a scene, or a condition is applied by default, and light is part of every experience. Any layer can be pared back for the project, a group, or a single space, with the reason recorded; protecting layers such as life safety and CO and air quality sensing are removed only by the designer. A layer can serve several uses: sound can carry music, a soft, steady sound, a soundscape, and a gentle doorbell, each its own choice. When any answer adds a layer to a space, every use that was off only because the layer was missing is offered again. A quiet air system is a baseline for the whole project, chosen once; no experience brings it in. The estimate starts with the full default and comes down as layers are pared back.

Scope. Method. A row can apply to the whole project, a building, a floor, a group of spaces, a profile, or a single space. Where two levels set the same row, the narrowest wins: space, then group, then profile, then floor, then building, then project. A row applied widely can be excluded from one space, or given that space's own version, with the reason recorded. Groups cross profiles and floors, so the quiet rooms of a house can be given rows together.

Detector placement. Device rows reach the spaces where the device belongs. Every occupied space has CO detection and air quality sensing (Building Health 20); open areas that flow together, such as a kitchen, dining room, and family room, share one sensing zone. Minimum CO locations: every level, outside sleeping areas, inside every sleeping space, any room with a fuel-burning appliance, and rooms that share a wall with an attached garage. A kitchen is not assumed to have gas; a kitchen with a gas appliance is marked so. Leak detection: baths, kitchens, service rooms, laundry, wet bars, and the water heater location.

Specification gates. Some requirements are not behaviors. They are gates a product or system must pass before it is approved for use, and they carry no CTI tags. The framework holds two sets on its Standards sheet: the Lighting Specification Standard (color rendition, flicker, spectral data, glare, dimming) and the Network and Security Standard. The second exists because every behavior in the register, including the privacy and access behaviors, runs on the building systems network, and a promise of privacy is only as good as that network. Its ten gates:

Where the owner's IT policy or a compliance regime sets a stricter requirement, the stricter requirement governs. The choices that belong to the owner (who governs the network, which compliance regimes apply, what remote support is permitted, and which data must stay on premises) are question rows in Safety and Trust.

Sensing by privacy expectation. A design rule on the Standards sheet governs awareness of falls and medical distress. Each space uses the least identifying sensing method that can meet its requirement: presence sensors everywhere as the baseline; millimeter-wave radar, which detects presence, posture, and motion with no image, in bedrooms, bathrooms, and recovery spaces; thermal or infrared imaging for bed and chair exit; acoustic analytics, processed locally with no speech recorded, where there is no line of sight; and cameras only at exteriors, entries, circulation, and shared areas, never in bedrooms or bathrooms. The building acts first on a detection with responses that help if it is right and do no harm if it is wrong, such as raising lights along the route and alerting the designated people. Actions with consequences beyond the space, such as unlocking the entry for responders or calling emergency services, follow their confirmation or an unanswered check-in within a time the owner sets. Detection is processed locally, and the owner sets retention and visibility of the data. Which spaces need this, and which methods are acceptable, are decided in discovery (Safety and Trust, row 24).

Two categories will target the same space with different requirements. The method expects this and writes the resolution down before construction, so the rule makes it into specification rather than being improvised at commissioning.

The priority scale. Method:

Priority does two jobs. It decides which behavior wins when two collide, and it decides what gets cut when budget or ceiling depth runs out. A row at priority 5 is the first thing removed from a specification; a row at priority 1 is the reason a wall gets thicker.

Arbitration. Method. When behaviors meet in a space while it is running, a fixed order decides: life safety first, then protected behaviors, then a scene a person called, then automations, then defaults. A scene a person called interrupts automations only on the layers it touches. The designer sets how an interrupted automation returns: when the scene is released, after a set duration, at a time of day, at sunrise or sunset, when the space is vacant, or at the next cycle. Focus interrupts circadian for one hour, then circadian fades back. Two kinds of protection can be set: a behavior that no scene may interrupt (air quality targets), and a scene that excludes a space (All Off does not affect the office while Focus is running there).

Rules applied are not conflicts. Where an operating principle already settles a tension, such as Sleep overrides circadian or life safety overrides everything, the register records it once as a rule applied, with the spaces it covers. Only tensions no principle settles are conflicts. This keeps the conflict register to the decisions that still need a person.

The conflict register. Every row flagged with a conflict profile has an entry that names the space, the two categories and moments in tension, what each requires, the resolution rule, and the priority of the rule. The framework ships with illustrative patterns that a project adapts or replaces with the household's or operator's own logic. Four of them, condensed:

What programming cannot fix. Method, stated plainly because it is the most common misunderstanding about this work: a resolution rule can decide which scene wins, but it cannot manufacture physical separation or mechanical capacity that was never built.

• If the workout space shares a partition with the sleep space and the partition was not designed for the isolation the sleep space requires, no rule about audio levels makes the sleep space quiet. The conflict is resolved at Construction Documents by the partition assembly, or it is not resolved.
• If the kitchen hood cannot clear cooking at its lowest speed, dimming the task lights for guests does not help the air. The conflict is resolved by hood selection and duct design, or it is not resolved.
• Masking covers intermittent intrusion by raising a steady, tuned floor. It cannot lower a background noise level that already exceeds the target. If the sleep space's HVAC noise is above NC-25, the fix is in the mechanical design, and adding masking on top of it moves the space further from its target, not closer. Masking is still the right supplemental tool where isolation cannot reach the target, as on a rehab, which is why the framework gives every space type a masking ceiling as well as a build target.

Masking ceilings. Practice targets, measured with the tuned spectrum at the occupant position. The build target is for the steady floor; the ceiling is the most masking the space will carry before the source is routed to correction. Anchors: WHO Guidelines for Community Noise (1999) bedroom values of 30 dBA continuous and 45 dBA maximum; Basner et al. 2014 on steady versus fluctuating noise during sleep; ANSI/ASA S12.2-2019 for NC. The FGI Guidelines cap electronic masking in healthcare spaces at a 48 dBA background; every ceiling below sits under it.

In the Space Type Catalog these four rows are the Sleep, Guestroom, Focus, and Open social classes. Every type carries one of them or one of four more: Recovery (a steady floor below NC-20 while the space is in use for recovery, under the recovery criteria above); Performance (below NC-20, with masking not used and room acoustics set by the High Performance Spaces rows); Not set (no steady-floor target for the space itself, whose noise is kept from reaching its neighbors); and Set at brief (the designer sets the target for the project and labels it a practice target).

A person asleep is woken by change more than by level, so a steady 35 dBA floor that buries a cycling compressor is a better sleep environment than a quieter one that fluctuates. That is the trade masking makes, and it is made only after the source and the transmission path have been addressed: the method's evidence review, Human Performance as a Building Design Requirement, notes a 2026 polysomnographic trial in which the tested pink noise itself altered sleep structure, which is reason to treat continuous masking as the last layer rather than the first. A 45 dBA floor in a bedroom is outside the WHO envelope and is not a trade the framework allows.

This is why the conflict register is written during design and why each entry carries an intervention depth. A conflict whose resolution is "structural" or "architectural" is a drawing change. A conflict whose resolution is "programming only" is a rule. The register says which, before anyone assumes the software will handle it.

A behavior row is a coordination instrument. Its intervention depth tells each discipline whether the row is theirs, and the response text tells them what the row needs from them. The UX for Spaces™ designer holds the space's intent and the register; each trade holds its own drawings and its own professional responsibility.

Who owns what. Method. The table maps intervention depth to the disciplines most often responsible. Real projects assign by contract; this is the default routing.

What each discipline gets from the register. Instead of a technology package that arrives after MEP is complete, each discipline receives its rows early:

• Architecture receives the rows tagged Schematic / DD and Architectural or Structural: proportions of performance spaces reviewed against modal clustering below 300 Hz; STC targets per boundary with a box-in-box recommendation where standard construction cannot reach them; rack location as an architectural decision with thermal, acoustic, power, and service clearance requirements; daylight geometry and orientation documented as inputs to the lighting specification.
• Mechanical receives NC targets per space before duct sizing, the rule that HVAC corrections in sleep and focus spaces must not produce audible fan speed changes, demand-controlled ventilation logic with CO2 thresholds, filtration standards, and the humidity envelope for preservation spaces.
• Electrical and lighting receive the lighting specification gates: minimum CRI 90 in occupied spaces, flicker-free operation per IEEE 1789-2015 at all dimming levels including below 20 percent, constant-current-reduction drivers rather than pulse-width modulation, published SPD data and M-DER for any luminaire in a circadian, sleep, recovery, learning, or wellness space, color rendition by the named TM-30 specification for the space's intent (see Alignment tags and external standards), and glare and uniformity limits.
• Electrical also receives the keypad locations defined with the UX for Spaces™ designer during MEP coordination: each keypad's location, the lighting loads it controls, and its scenes. Keypads are a light control device and a scene interface at the same time, so their locations are set together, by Construction Docs.
• Plumbing receives leak and flow monitoring points, space and whole-building shutoff valve locations, and the rule that plumbing runs adjacent to sleep and performance spaces are evaluated as vibration paths.
• Interiors receives the rows that make materials part of the system: RT60 targets that constrain finishes, matte or honed finishes on horizontal surfaces in work, dining, and reading spaces to avoid veiling reflections, surface reflectance values as inputs to daylight reach, and the rule that fixture layout is not finalized until interiors has been consulted.
• IT receives the Network and Security Standard, the segmentation plan, and the Safety and Trust rows on governance, compliance, remote support, and data residency. On commercial, hospitality, and healthcare projects this is usually the owner's IT team or managed service provider, who approves the segmentation plan before the network is designed.
• Technology receives everything, because the register is its native document, plus the acoustic rules that apply to its own hardware: active equipment in or adjacent to a space with an NC target must operate below that target at every state including idle; every motorized element must operate below the NC target of the space it serves through its full travel; every cable penetration through a rated assembly is sealed, baffled, and fire-stopped and shown on the construction documents.

The seat. The UX for Spaces™ designer's coordination role sits alongside the architect, lighting designer, MEP engineer, and interior designer during Schematic Design and Design Development, in its own seat. It does not replace any of them. The lighting designer still designs the lighting; the register gives the lighting designer the space intent, the gates, and the deadline.

Intention first, then commitment. Method. The method is collaborative, and it only works if the construction team has bought in before drawings begin. Buy-in is built in two steps.

1. The owner approves the intent. At the end of Define Experiences, the Intention Declaration is produced from the Spatial Performance Brief and presented to the owner. It states, in plain language, what each profile is for, which spaces it covers, and which commitments carry priority 1 or 2. The owner's approval is what gives those commitments their weight. It is the owner's intent, not the designer's.
2. The trades commit to it. At the start of Schematic Design, the team meets. Each trade receives the rows routed to it, discusses them, and signs that it can deliver them, or states what it cannot deliver and why. This is the moment for a trade to say "that duct path won't work, here is what will," while the answer is still a line on a drawing. A row a trade cannot commit to goes to the conflict register with its intervention depth, and the owner decides.

The commitment meeting is the opening that matches the experiential sign-off at the close: the project begins with agreement on the intent and ends with verification against it.

Partner at every phase. Decisions come up in the field that no drawing anticipated: a relocated beam, a substituted fixture, a duct that has to move. The UX for Spaces™ designer stays available through every construction stage to answer them. Method:

1. The trade raises the question, and the designer identifies which rows it touches, by number.
2. If it touches none, the trade proceeds.
3. If it touches rows, the designer states the intervention depth and the options, with the effect of each on the row's criterion.
4. If a priority 1 or 2 row would be weakened, the decision goes back to the owner, because the owner approved that intent. Everything else is resolved between the designer and the trade and logged against the row.

Field questions are answered within one business day, so that asking is never slower than guessing.

Every active row carries an Impacts Build value: the latest construction stage at which the decision still has to land. Miss it and the behavior becomes a retrofit, or becomes impossible. Method: pick the stage where the work or decision must still be made, not the stage where it would be convenient.

The eight stages.

Enforcement states. A row that is not simply assigned to a stage carries one of these instead, so that no row is silently dropped. A row that misses its stage on new work is never reclassified as an existing condition; it is recorded as a missed stage, so the miss stays visible and the owner decides with the cost in view:

Programming is due before purchase. Method. A Programming only row carries Construction Docs as its Impacts Build. The programming is written and checked against the specified hardware and drivers before any equipment is purchased, so a hardware or driver problem is found before a bad purchase, not after installation. Tuning and verification of that programming still happen at Commissioning.

Why the stage matters more than the technology. Most of what makes a sleep space quiet, a focus space private, or a cinema accurate is decided at stages 1 through 3, before any technology is purchased. The UX for Spaces™ process stages Listen and Map, Define Experiences, and System Logic are aligned to run before and during Schematic Design for this reason. The seven process stages and the eight construction stages are different sequences: one describes the designer's work, the other describes the building's. A row's Impacts Build value is always a construction stage.

The project record is a set of documents that together carry the chain from need to tuning. For teams that work in commissioning terms, the Spatial Performance Brief plays the role of the Owner's Project Requirements and the behavior register plays the role of the Basis of Design: the first says what the building must do for the people in it, the second says how each discipline will produce that. Method: each document below is produced at the stage named, and later documents reference the rows in earlier ones by number rather than restating them.

The experiential sign-off. The method closes a project against the experience, not against a device count. The sign-off template lists twelve items in eight groups: Discovery (discovery summary); Experience (experience definitions by space and moment, emotional intent targets by space, movement and flow mapping); System (experience-to-system mapping, system behavior and logic, scene and automation definitions); Interaction (user interaction model); Wellness (calm, WELL, and biological alignment); Performance (performance criteria for light, sound, air, and thermal); Validation (edge cases and exceptions); and Sign-Off (final stakeholder approval). Each carries an owner, a status, and a signature.

Row numbering. Every row in the register keeps its framework category and number (for example, Restoration 6) plus a project suffix when a project-specific row is added. Drawings, commissioning entries, and post-occupancy log entries cite that number. This is what lets a builder ask "which row requires this" and get an answer.

Commissioning is not about devices turning on. It is about the space behaving correctly. Every scene, automation, and response is tested against the intended experience, and every numeric target in the register is measured at a defined position and recorded. Method: a target that was never measured is aspirational, and the commissioning record says so.

Three kinds of check. The method distinguishes them because they answer different questions and use different instruments.

Per space, not per profile. Every space is measured at its own positions, because two rooms built to the same profile are still built separately. The record lists each space under its profile, and a profile passes only when each of its spaces does.

What is measured, by kind of space. From the framework's commissioning rows. These are practice requirements within the method.

• Circadian and sleep spaces: M-EDI at the eye plane in daytime, evening, and night states, compared to the practice targets (250 lux or more daytime, 10 lux or less in the evening state, 1 lux or less on night pathways and in sleep spaces during sleep). Flicker modulation depth and frequency at all dimming levels including below 20 percent. Illuminance uniformity across the task plane, 0.6 minimum-to-average or better. Where daylight through low-emissivity glazing is relied on, spectral transmission at the glazing plane.
• Acoustic spaces: RT60 per space, background noise as NC at the defined position, STI at defined positions where intelligibility is a target, STC verification where isolation is critical. Acoustic commissioning is a required deliverable on any project where acoustic performance was specified.
• Air: CO2, PM2.5, VOC, and humidity readings from installed monitors validated against reference instruments; ventilation response confirmed at the register thresholds.
• Thermal: setpoint hold within the specified band in sleep, focus, and recovery spaces, with the fan-noise rule verified by sound measurement during a correction.
• Interface: every physical button traces to a justification; every touchscreen traces to a convergence of two or more functions that need a screen; every voice command has a physical fallback; idle screens are dark; every scene can be started by at least one trigger; no keypad holds more than four scenes and ganged keypads serve different categories; every keypad matches the keypad schedule.
• Network and security: no default credentials remain on any device or account; segmentation is tested between segments; the internet disconnect test passes with every bound behavior still running; remote session expiry is tested; administrative logging is confirmed; the security handoff record is complete.

Targets and current conditions are kept apart. The commissioning record has two columns for every criterion: the target, and the measured value. A target that came from intent alone, with no site survey or baseline behind it, is marked provisional until it has been measured once in the built space. A target is never rewritten to match a measurement. If the measurement misses, the record says so and the deviation is routed to the row's intervention depth: a programming fix, a device change, or, where the miss is architectural or mechanical, a documented limitation with the reason.

Mechanical transitions in sleep spaces are a separate requirement. A mechanical system can meet its steady-state noise target and still wake someone when it starts, stops, or changes capacity, because sleep is disturbed by the change above background more than by the level. The method's evidence review, Human Performance as a Building Design Requirement (see References), sets this out from the polysomnographic literature and defines the requirement the method applies. For every sleep space the criterion schedule carries three acoustic limits, not one: the steady background, the absolute event maximum, and the permitted rise above the preceding stable background, with the sampling interval, event window, and instrument time weighting stated so that unlike measurements are not subtracted. The acoustician and mechanical engineer enter the numbers before schematic sign-off; an unassigned number is an open design item, not permission to skip it. The acceptance test is run at each pillow position in the agreed sleep configuration (doors, windows, and shades as they will be), synchronized with equipment-state logs, exercising starts, stops, minimum-load operation, speed and stage changes, dampers, pumps, and defrost where applicable, with representative overnight logging to catch repeated or combined events a short demonstration misses. Raising masking, reducing required airflow, or disabling necessary operation does not close the requirement.

Every numeric criterion carries eight fields. Purpose (the activity and need it serves); location and receiver (the position, eye or ear height); operating condition (occupancy, doors, windows, shades, equipment, time mode); criterion (metric, units, target, tolerance, permitted excursion); basis (code, standard, research recommendation, or explicit project preference); test (instrument, method, duration, averaging); accountability (design owner, installer, verifier, and who corrects); operation (maintenance, fault response, retest, override). A number without these fields is not yet a requirement.

Three result categories stay separate. A delivered physical condition (airflow, light at the eye, sound spectrum) establishes whether the requirement was met under the tested conditions. An occupant's reported experience (comfort, distraction, reported sleep) is recorded with its context and never merged with the physical result. A clinical or physiological outcome (sleep stages, a diagnosis, a validated biomarker) is established only by a study designed to establish it, and a consumer wearable does not qualify. The commissioning record and the post-occupancy log keep the three in separate columns.

Two technical rules that come up at commissioning.

• Masking is verified as a covering layer, never as a fix for an excessive floor. The masking level is set at or below the space's ceiling with the tuned spectrum, and recorded. If a space's measured background noise already exceeds its NC target, the record flags the source (most often HVAC) for mechanical correction and notes the residual level. Raising masking on top of it would raise the floor further.
• CCT is not accepted as evidence of biological light performance. Two luminaires at the same correlated color temperature can produce materially different melanopic output. The record uses measured M-EDI from a spectrometer or a melanopic-capable meter, or manufacturer SPD data converted through M-DER, never CCT alone.

Once the space is occupied, refinement begins. Real life introduces nuance the register could not know: a wake time that moves, a guest who reads later than the wind-down assumed, a sensor whose field of view catches a hallway. The UX for Spaces™ process calls this stage Tune in Real Use.

How tuning is done. Method:

1. A report from occupancy is matched to the row or rows that govern it. "The hallway light wakes me" maps to the night pathway row, the sleep space spill criterion, and possibly the sensor placement row.
2. The adjustment is made at the shallowest intervention depth that can resolve it. Programming before device, device before infrastructure.
3. The change is logged against the row with the date, the reason, and the new value. The register is updated so the record and the building agree.
4. If the shallowest depth cannot resolve it, the report is escalated with the row number and the depth it would require, so the owner can decide with the cost in view.

Drift. Buildings do not stay commissioned. LED output depreciates and phosphors shift spectrum. Sensors drift. Filters load and fan noise rises. Furniture, rugs, and curtains change absorption and reverberation. Scene logic drifts from intent after user modifications. Drift is cumulative across systems, and it is silent unless measured.

Monitoring. Method. Where the project has installed sensors, the conditions they measure are monitored continuously against each row's tolerance. Installed sensors are validated against reference instruments at commissioning. After that, the monitoring compares each sensor against independent peers and known reference conditions. Sensors do not drift at the same time or in the same direction, so a sensor that diverges from its peers is the anomaly, and it is found without waiting for a calendar date. That check holds when three conditions are met, and the design provides for them:

• Each sensor has a peer: another sensor measuring the same or a related condition, such as return air, an adjacent space, or outdoor air. A sensor with no independent peer is scheduled for a field check instead.
• Drift is independent. Sensors that would age together (same model, same batch, same automatic baseline correction) are mixed or anchored to known conditions, such as outdoor air or unoccupied overnight readings.
• Only measured conditions are covered. Spectral shift at the eye, RT60 after furnishings change, and NC at the pillow are not measured by room sensors and are checked in the field.

A field check with reference instruments is triggered when a sensor diverges, when a monitored condition moves outside its row's tolerance, or when a report from occupancy points to drift.

Recommissioning. Drift is silent unless something measures it. The method recommends repeating the commissioning measurements at the original positions and comparing them to baseline, on a schedule the owner chooses. Annual recommissioning is the default recommendation for spaces carrying priority 1 rows, such as sleep, recovery, and performance. Where monitoring is in place, recommissioning concentrates on what the sensors cannot measure and on what monitoring has flagged. The scope, when run in full, covers M-EDI, flicker, and uniformity in circadian spaces; NC and RT60 in acoustic spaces; HVAC static pressure where fan noise governs an NC target; calibration of lux, CO2, occupancy, and temperature sensors; shade motor speed, noise, and limit behavior; and scene verification against the register. Deviations are corrected and documented.

What tuning is not. It is not a way to reach a target that construction missed. If the sleep space's partition transmits the neighbor's television, tuning can change scenes and masking, and the log will record that the isolation target remains unmet and why.

The intent belongs to the owner. The register is the owner's record of what the building was designed to do for the people in it, and it is handed over at sign-off in a form the owner, a future operator, or a future technology designer can read without the original designer present.

Roles. Method:

Support. The UX for Spaces™ process names the final stage Support and Evolve: the way a space is used shifts, expectations change, and the system is kept aligned with real life rather than frozen at the original design. On projects under Blend's care this is delivered through a membership program with scheduled on-site visits, remote support, proactive monitoring where the tier includes it, and programming adjustments within a defined window after any new installation. The register and post-occupancy log are the working documents for every visit. Security updates follow the update plan, and remote access follows the policy the owner chose.

Handover to someone else. A record written in framework rows can be read by another firm. The method requires handover of the register, conflict register, commissioning record, security handoff record, and post-occupancy log in full at the end of any engagement, so that the owner is never dependent on one company to know what their building was designed to do.

A hotel guest arrives at 1 pm off an overnight flight and needs to sleep until evening. Housekeeping is working the floor. The guest in the next key has the television on. The property needs the space back in service by 6 pm for the evening. This example is illustrative and is built from the hospitality rows in the framework.

The study example had one person and one boundary. This one has four classes of user, an operator, a business schedule, and a property that will be verified key by key. The method is the same; the register looks different.

Human requirements. The guest needs dark, quiet, and a stable temperature at a time of day the building would normally treat as midday. Housekeeping needs to know the guest is resting without knocking. Engineering needs to reach HVAC diagnostics without entering. The property needs the space to reset for evening service without a manual walkthrough. The adjacent guest needs to watch television without being told to turn it down.

Criteria. In the guest space while rest is active: light at the pillow under 1 lux M-EDI; background noise at or below the space's NC target, with intermittent intrusion from the corridor and the adjacent key below the level that carries into the space; thermal setpoint held within a 1 degree band with no audible fan speed change. Between keys: partition and door assemblies that reach the isolation target from the adjacent television at normal viewing volume. In the corridor: a status the staff can read without entering.

Coordinated design and behavior.

• Arrival. A check-in credential event moves the space from standby to an arrival state: welcome-level light, temperature at the guest's preference or property default, audio off, blackout open. Recovery posture is the default: warm light, thermal precision, quiet.
• Rest. A single legible control at the bedside puts the space into rest at any hour. Circadian logic suspends for this space. Blackout closes regardless of exterior conditions. Lighting drops to near zero. Temperature holds at the sleep setpoint. Masking activates at its tuned level. The space does not release until the guest releases it. A 1 pm rest is treated exactly like a 1 am one.
• Staff roles. Housekeeping, engineering, and management each have role-specific access and system visibility. A housekeeper cannot override a guest's rest scene. An engineer can read HVAC diagnostics for the key without entering it. The corridor indicator at the door shows the rest state as a peripheral status, not a message.
• Night path. If the guest gets up, path lighting to the bathroom activates below 10 lux, warm, from low sources, with no overhead trigger; the exhaust fan stays at minimum.
• Adjacency. Isolation between keys is specified at Construction Documents to the target that keeps a television at normal volume from carrying. Door assemblies get seals and closers rated for the corridor. This is where the adjacent guest's requirement is satisfied, and it is the one item on this list that no programming can substitute for.
• Reset. When the guest releases rest, or at checkout, the space returns to the evening or vacancy posture: HVAC pulls back or restages, lighting to the period scene, vacancy logged, housekeeping notified where applicable.

Trade and drawing responsibility. Partition and door assemblies: architect and acoustic consultant, Construction Documents. Bedside control, corridor indicator, sensors, and masking device: technology drawings at rough-in, trim at MEP finish. Role-based access: programming, with the role definitions supplied by the operator as an operational policy row. HVAC quiet-correction rule: mechanical design at Schematic / DD plus programming. Housekeeping rule for a rest-active key: operational policy, owned by the operator.

Verification, per key. Isolation between keys measured with the adjacent television at a defined level. M-EDI at the pillow in rest state with corridor doors open and closed. NC at the pillow with HVAC in a correction. Functional verification of the arrival state, Rest, corridor indicator, role restrictions (a housekeeping credential attempting to change a rest-active scene is refused), night path, and reset. Recorded per key, because a property is only as good as its worst key.

Tuning. Guest feedback and staff reports map to rows. A recurring report of corridor noise in a particular key routes first to door seal adjustment, then to the masking level for that key, and, if the record shows the isolation target was never met, to a documented limitation for that key with the assembly change it would take.

Operational data. A property running this register can produce a verified performance summary for a key or a floor: air quality, thermal hold, and acoustic measurements over time. That is a report of measured conditions. It is not a certification and not a health claim.

What this does not promise. The guest may still wake. The method removes the causes the building controls: daylight through a gap, a corridor door that slams, a housekeeper's knock, a fan that cycles. It commits the property to conditions per key and gives the operator a record to manage against.

A tag on a row says which external framework the row's behavior relates to. It routes evidence and coordination: on a project pursuing WELL, LEED, or Calm Tech Certified for Spaces, the tagged register shows the consultant where each behavior and its evidence live. As with those standards generally, certification of a project runs through the program's own process with a certified designer on the project.

The eight CTI principles as the framework uses them. This is the method's application of the Calm Technology principles to spaces. The eight principles were created by Amber Case, building on research by Mark Weiser and others at Xerox PARC in the 1990s; the Institute publishes them at calmtech.institute/calm-tech-principles, where the Institute defines calm technology as a process for designing technology that works with human attention instead of against it. The principle names below are the method's working phrasing for spaces, and the criteria say when a row earns the tag.

Blend and the Calm Tech Institute. Blend is a strategic partner of the Calm Tech Institute and co-presented Calm Tech Certified for Spaces with the Institute's founder at CEDIA Expo 2026. That relationship is why CTI tags are native to the framework. CTI tags roll up to a calm-technology alignment score for the project, and a project designed to the framework arrives at Calm Tech Certified for Spaces with its evidence already organized. As with the other standards, project certification requires a certified designer on the project.

Metrics the framework adopts from external standards. M-EDI and M-DER from CIE S 026:2018. Flicker limits from IEEE 1789-2015. Color rendition by the named specifications of ANSI/IES TM-30-20, Annex E, Table E-2, with CRI 90 kept only as a submittal floor where a manufacturer publishes nothing else. Background noise as NC per ANSI/ASA S12.2-2019. The daytime, evening, and night M-EDI practice targets from the 2022 consensus recommendations published in PLOS Biology (Brown et al.). Each is listed in References.

Color rendition by space intent. TM-30 defines three design intents, Fidelity (F), Preference (P), and Vividness (V), each at three nested priority levels with Level 1 strictest. The framework assigns a named specification to each space intent rather than inventing its own thresholds. Rf,h1 is local fidelity for reds and does the work R9 did in the CRI system; Rcs,h1 is the chroma shift of reds, and a small positive value is what makes skin and food read well. Criteria are evaluated at the space's design illuminance, since TM-30 assumes 200 to 700 lux in a polychromatic environment.

The three templates below are the minimum record for a space. Copy them as they are. The filled example that follows is the study from the work and focus intention at the start of this document, written as a project record would write it. Names, values, and row numbers in the filled example are illustrative.

Blank: Spatial Performance Brief

Profiles

Spaces

Space types are chosen from the Space Type Catalog by ID, or marked Custom. Performance targets are chosen from the 31-term vocabulary, comma-separated. Notes carry the nuance the terms cannot.

Blank: Behavior row

Blank: Conflict row

Filled example: a study designed for focus. Illustrative.

Spatial Performance Brief: profiles

Spatial Performance Brief: spaces

Behavior rows

Conflict row

Post-occupancy log entry (illustrative): 2026-11-12. Row P-01. Occupant found the masking audible during quiet reading. Level lowered one step; STI at the desk re-checked with the great room television at normal volume and found within target. Logged by the designer.

Two things are versioned separately: the framework and each project record. Method.

The framework. The UX for Spaces™ Framework carries a version number (currently 16.0, dated 2026-10-15). A version is a specific set of categories, rows, tags, operating principles, specification gates, the construction map, and the Space Type Catalog. A change to any of those produces a new version. Row IDs are stable within a version; a row that is removed keeps its number retired rather than reassigned, so older project records still resolve. Space type IDs follow the same rule.

The project record. Each project's brief, register, conflict register, and commissioning record state the framework version they were built from. A project does not migrate to a newer framework version automatically. When a project is revisited under a newer version, the differences are reviewed row by row and the record states which version governs each row. Post-occupancy log entries reference the row ID and the record version in force at the time.

This document. This document is published with a version and a date. It describes the framework version named in its text. When the framework changes in a way that alters the method described here, the document is revised and the revision is dated. Earlier versions remain available so that citations resolve.

What a version number does not mean. It does not mean an external body reviewed the change. It records that the author changed the method and when.

Provenance. This document was prepared from the v15.4 workbooks and revised against v15.5, v15.6, v15.7, v15.8, v15.9, and v16.0, the UX for Spaces™ process description, the alignment and construction package templates, the experiential sign-off template, and the evidence validation notes. Version 1.1 adds the Intention Declaration and commitment meeting, the field decision process, the Missed Stage enforcement state, continuous monitoring with peer comparison, recommissioning as a recommendation, and a clarification of the word target, and it updates the status of the software. Version 1.2 adds the Network and Security Standard, the redundancy principle, the security rows in Safety and Trust, and the capability definition of Calmness. Version 1.3 retitles the document The Design Standard. Version 1.4 adds space types and profiles. Version 1.5 adds experiences and roles, the scene and keypad model, Autonomous Response, arbitration, scope, detector placement, and the periphery principle. Version 1.6 adds the complete default with paring back, layers and their uses, the quiet air baseline, questions asked once for the project, and the conversation that stays with the life of the space. Version 1.7 revises the performance target vocabulary, states where circadian lighting applies, and sets the keypad limit at four scenes, with ganged keypads serving different categories and a touch interface beyond four scenes in any category. Where a value is cited from a secondary source, the References say so.

Each version of this document is listed with its date and what changed. Earlier versions remain available so that citations resolve.

Version 1.7 · 2026-10-17

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0. The framework's performance target vocabulary still reads as in version 1.6 and is revised to match in the next framework version.

Performance targets

• The vocabulary grows from 28 terms to 31.
• Cognitive: Cognition is removed as a target; it names the family, not a condition a space can hold. Attention, Perception, and Decision making are added. The family is now Attention, Perception, Speech intelligibility, Decision making, Learning, Focus, Creativity.
• Attention and Focus are defined as separate targets with different criteria. Added Attention to the criteria examples.
• Restoration and Recovery are defined: the mind coming back after demand, and the body coming back after exertion, illness, or stress.
• Atmospheric: added Celebratory.
• Functional: Display and performance is renamed Display and exhibition, so it no longer shares a word with Performative.
• Color rendition by space intent and the profile example updated to the new terms.

Circadian lighting

• Circadian lighting is a baseline that follows from intention, like quiet air, and is never asked as a technology question. Any performance target other than Storage and preservation or Service and utility brings it in, and it then covers every space people spend time in, including circulation as the night path. Added to One circadian standard, timed per occupant, and to Every space begins complete, with the spaces it covers and those it leaves out. A client can set aside a single space and can always override the automation; how it resumes is decided in programming.

Keypads

• A keypad holds at most four scenes, down from six. Keypads ganged at one location each serve a different category, such as lighting and shades; one category's scenes are never split across two keypads. Beyond four scenes in any category, the location takes a touch interface. The limit is per keypad location, not per space. Added the reasoning, with references to Cowan 2001, Hick 1952, and Hyman 1953. Updated in Vocabulary, Scenes and keypads, the keypad schedule, and commissioning. The framework's Interface and Control rows 3, 4, and 9 still read six scenes per keypad and are revised in the next framework version.

Version 1.6 · 2026-10-15

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0.

The default

• Added Every space begins complete: every layer that supports, protects, or enhances an experience, a scene, or a condition is applied by default, with light in every experience, and pared back on purpose. Added to the operating principles and the commitments.
• Added Layers and defaults: paring back by project, group, or space; layers and their uses, with uses reopened when another answer adds the layer; quiet air as a project baseline that no experience brings in; the estimate starting from the full default.
• Added to the Spatial Performance Brief: the conversation stays with the life of the space; sound is more than music; one answer reaches everything it touches; questions are asked once for the project and placed on spaces.
• Rewrote the rest and sleep intention in Start here layer by layer: evening light, shades at dusk and dawn, a soft, steady sound, isolated speaker boxes, the gentle doorbell, and climate under the quiet air baseline.
• Extended the Sleep criteria with evening light, shades, sound, and doorbell targets.

Experiences and scenes

• Experiences: Focused work and Video calls are separate; Playing or recording music is Recording music; Recovery added.
• Scene names are one word, with Video Call as the one deliberate exception; Session names a recording session. In the hotel example, Rest override is now Rest.

Framework v16.0

• New rows: the gentle doorbell, isolated speaker boxes, music kept in activity spaces, the quiet air baseline, Recover, recovery equipment infrastructure, Calm with color, the wind-down soundscape, shades at dusk and dawn, Game light and sound, afternoon glare on screens, bath humidity, and the cooking hood on air quality.
• Discovery questions reworded to the experience; scene names updated; Standards sheet gains Every Space Begins Complete and the Layers and Defaults block.
• Space Type Catalog: Cost drivers becomes What drives cost, written from the experiences; each type offers its own experiences.
• Row IDs from 15.9 are unchanged. Populated behavior rows: 298.

Version 1.5 · 2026-10-15

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.9.

Experiences and roles

• Added experiences: the fixed list of what can happen in a space (sixteen, including Arriving and leaving, Listening to music, Playing or recording music, Getting ready, Dining, and Shopping). Discovery asks every occupied profile what will happen in it; the answers define its scenes. Added to Vocabulary and the Spatial Performance Brief.
• Added the operating principle Protects, supports, enhances: every experience must be supported; protects and enhances are added only where plainly true; every technology must serve an experience in one of the three ways, with the role set per experience.
• Added the experience brief to Documentation: per space, each experience with what protects, supports, and enhances it.
• Added a commitment: technology earns its place.

Scenes and keypads

• Rewrote Scene in Vocabulary. A space can have any number of scenes; each records how it can be started. Every occupied space starts with Pathway, Dim, and Bright. A contextual scene replaces the standard one it stands for. No scene is named for a session; timed behavior lives in the scene's programming.
• A keypad holds at most six buttons, up from five. A space can have several keypads at named locations.
• Keypads are estimated from the space type for pricing, then defined on the plan with electrical during MEP coordination, due at Construction Docs. Added the keypad schedule to Documentation and keypad locations to what electrical receives.
• Added Autonomous Response: what a space does on its own, listed per space by name.

Running behavior

• Added Arbitration under Priorities and conflicting needs: the order that decides when behaviors meet, how an interrupted automation returns, and the two kinds of protection.
• Added Rules applied: tensions an operating principle already settles are recorded once and are not counted as conflicts.
• Added Scope: a row can apply to the project, a building, a floor, a group, a profile, or a space, with exceptions and additions per space. The narrowest wins.
• Added Detector placement for carbon monoxide and leak detection.

Timing

• Programming only rows are due at Construction Docs: programming is written and checked against the specified hardware and drivers before purchase. Tuning stays at Commissioning.

Principles and wording

• Replaced Technology disappears with Technology fades to the periphery. The Calmness definition now says the building keeps its hardware at the periphery rather than out of sight.
• Commissioning checks that every scene has a trigger and no keypad holds more than six buttons.
• Behavior row template and the profile table now carry experiences and scope.

Framework v15.9

• Standards sheet: Technology Fades to the Periphery replaces Technology Disappears; new principles Protects, Supports, Enhances and One Circadian Standard, Timed per Occupant (already in this document, now on the sheet); new blocks Experiences; Scenes, Keypads and Triggers; Arbitration; Scope; Detector Placement; Programming only definition states the Construction Docs deadline; version entry for 15.9.
• Interface and Control rows 3, 4, and 9: six scenes per keypad. Row 15: six direct-select options.
• High Performance Spaces 22 and Safety and Trust 14 reworded to the periphery principle.
• Programming only rows carry Impacts Build Construction Docs (23 rows per workbook); rows that verify or tune at commissioning keep Commissioning.
• Every category sheet: new columns Experiences (Protects / Supports / Enhances, pre-tagged for review), Default Scope, and Applies To.
• Spatial Performance Brief: Profile and Experiences columns.
• Space Type Catalog: Experiences offered and Estimated keypads columns.
• New row Building Health 20: CO and air quality sensing in every space; open areas that flow together share one sensing zone; CO alarms are interconnected.
• Every row now carries a build stage and depth, and a Phases column listing every stage where the row lands.
• Row IDs from 15.8 are unchanged. Populated behavior rows: 285.

Version 1.4 · 2026-10-14

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.8.

Space types and profiles

• Added the space type and profile layer between the project and its spaces. A space type defines what a kind of space is for; a profile is a project's numbered instance of a type with one set of answers; every space is assigned to one profile and inherits its answers, targets, and rows. Spaces that need the same thing are defined once.
• Added the Space Type Catalog: 148 pre-mapped types in 18 families for residential, hotel, food and beverage, corporate, and wellness settings, each with an intent sentence, default performance targets, lead behavioral categories, acoustic class, color rendition, light posture, common conflicts, and cost drivers. Custom types are allowed where nothing fits.
• Added exceptions: an answer on a single space that differs from its profile, recorded with the reason.
• Added four rules: one space, one profile; defaults are starting points; adjacency stays per space; verification stays per space.

Brief, rows, and records

• Spatial Performance Brief now has two parts, profiles and spaces. Vocabulary, Documentation, and Templates updated.
• The Space binding column accepts a profile or a single space; a space-level row overrides the profile's row for that space.
• The Intention Declaration states intent per profile and lists the spaces each covers.
• Commissioning measures every space and passes a profile only when each of its spaces passes.
• The Masking Ceilings table now names acoustic classes, and the catalog adds Recovery, Performance, Not set, and Set at brief.

Framework v15.8

• New Space Type Catalog workbook shared by the residential and commercial workbooks: How Space Types Work, Space Type Catalog, Families, Classes, Project Profiles template, and an illustrative example.
• No behavior rows changed. Row IDs from 15.7 are unchanged. Populated behavior rows: 284.

Version 1.3 · 2026-09-26

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.7.

• Retitled from "UX for Spaces™: The Design Method" to "UX for Spaces™: The Design Standard." UX for Spaces™ is the design standard; the method is how a project is carried through it. The content of the method is unchanged.
• Named the companion build standard, the Building Intelligence Standard, in About this document.
• Added Sensing by privacy expectation under Behavior specifications: the design rule for awareness of falls and medical distress.
• Framework v15.7 now also includes the Sensing by Privacy Expectation rule on the Standards sheet and Safety and Trust rows 24 and 25 (where fall or medical distress detection is needed and which sensing is acceptable; the distress response). Populated behavior rows: 284. Framework 15.7 is dated 2026-09-26.

Version 1.2 · 2026-09-25

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.7.

Correction. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 specified privacy behaviors and physical access control but set no requirements for the security of the building systems network those behaviors run on. This version closes that gap.

Security

• Added the Network and Security Standard: ten specification gates covering segmentation, unique credentials, local-first operation, remote access, updates, encryption, logging, supported products, owner control, and security commissioning. Described under Behavior specifications.
• Added owner questions in Safety and Trust for network governance, compliance and IT policy, remote support, and data residency.
• Added IT as a receiving discipline in Coordination across trades.
• Added network and security checks to Commissioning, the security handoff record to Documentation, and security handoff to Ownership and support.

Pillars

• Rewrote the Calmness definition as a capability, with the checks that verify it at commissioning. Added to Vocabulary.

Operating principles

• Added Redundancy by priority: graceful failure is the baseline; priority 1 behaviors and behaviors adjacent to life safety get a duplicate path.

Framework v15.7 (both workbooks)

• Standards sheet: new Network and Security Standard; new operating principle Redundancy by Priority; Calmness definition rewritten; version entry for 15.7.
• Safety and Trust rows 15 to 23 (as of v1.2; rows 24 and 25 were added in v1.3): four owner questions (network governance, compliance and IT policy, remote support, data residency) and five behaviors (unknown device isolation, remote session expiry, single-action credential revocation, planned security updates, security commissioning).
• LEED v5 Credit Reference updated to the July 2026 BD+C and ID+C rating systems: added Electric Vehicles, Renewable Energy, Grid Interactive, and Construction Management; corrected three credit names; ID+C numbers shown where they differ.
• LEED: the 31 LEED cells whose credit numbers differ between LEED v5 BD+C and ID+C are dropdowns offering both versions, with BD+C as the default.
• Row IDs from 15.6 are unchanged. Populated behavior rows at v1.2: 282. Version 1.3 added Safety and Trust rows 24 and 25; the final 15.7 holds 284.

Version 1.1 · 2026-09-25

Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.6.

Coordination and buy-in

• Added the Intention Declaration: a plain-language statement of each space's intent and its priority 1 and 2 commitments, produced from the Spatial Performance Brief and approved by the owner before Schematic Design drawings begin. Added to Vocabulary, Coordination across trades, and Documentation.
• Added the commitment meeting at the start of Schematic Design, where each trade receives its rows and signs that it can deliver them or states what it cannot. A row a trade cannot commit to goes to the conflict register, and the owner decides.
• Added "Partner at every phase": the process for field decisions. The designer identifies the rows a question touches and states the options; a change that would weaken a priority 1 or 2 row goes back to the owner. Field questions are answered within one business day.
• Added two records to Documentation: the commitment record and the field decision log.

Decision timing

• Narrowed Existing Condition Constraint to conditions that existed before the project began, such as a retrofit. It no longer applies to work built during the project.
• Added the Missed Stage enforcement state for a stage that passed during the project without the decision landing. It is recorded as a deviation, and the owner decides whether to recover it or accept it as a documented limitation.

Adjustment in actual use

• Added Monitoring: installed sensors are validated at commissioning, then compared continuously against independent peers and known reference conditions, with a field check triggered when a sensor diverges. The three conditions this depends on are stated.
• Changed annual recommissioning from a requirement to a recommendation. The owner sets the schedule; annual is the default recommendation for spaces carrying priority 1 rows. Where monitoring is in place, recommissioning concentrates on what sensors cannot measure and on what monitoring has flagged.
• Extended the commitment on sensor readings to cover ongoing peer checks.

Vocabulary

• Clarified that a performance target is always one of the 28 words, never a number, and that numeric targets (practice, build, NC, isolation) are criteria carried in the behavior register.

Software

• Updated the software commitment: the UX for Spaces™ software is complete and in use, and produces the project documents. The continuous monitoring software is in development.

Framework v15.6 (both workbooks)

• Standards sheet: Existing Condition Constraint narrowed and Missed Stage added; new Intention and Commitment block; Drift Management renamed Monitoring and Recommissioning; Environmental Drift aligned; version entry for 15.6.
• Spatial Performance Brief: vocabulary note that targets are words; Intention Declaration approval block.
• Every category sheet: the Impacts Build dropdown now offers the enforcement states alongside the construction stages.
• Biological Rhythm row 22 rewritten for monitoring and recommended recommissioning.
• New row Building Health 19: sensor peer comparison. Row IDs from 15.5 are unchanged. Populated behavior rows: 273.

Version 1.0 · 2026-09-20

First published version. Describes UX for Spaces™ Framework v15.5.

So that the rest of the document can be weighed, here is what the method claims, stated as commitments.

• Authorship. UX for Spaces™ and its framework were authored by Jimmy Powers. This document states them as a method; Blend Technology holds the trademark.
• Conditions. The method commits a project to measurable conditions in defined spaces, verified at commissioning and recorded. What a person does in those conditions, sleep, focus, recover, is theirs; the method's work is the conditions.
• Evidence. Every numeric target is a practice target. Where it adopts a published value, the source is named in References; where no published criterion exists, the value is labeled as the method's own. Claims stay within the cited research, and the evidence review Human Performance as a Building Design Requirement (September 2026) grades that research as established, supported with limits, or emerging.
• Alignment tags route evidence. A WELL, LEED, or CTI tag points the consultant to the behavior and its evidence; certification under each program follows that program's own process with a certified designer on the project.
• Light is specified by spectrum and measured at the eye. Melanopic response depends on spectral composition, intensity at the eye, timing, duration, and the person, and two sources at the same CCT can differ materially, so the method requires SPD data or measured M-EDI.
• Readings carry their context. A CO2, particulate, lux, or sound value is recorded with its position and conditions, and installed sensors are validated against reference instruments before behaviors are trusted to them, then checked against independent peers for as long as they are monitored.
• Technology earns its place. Every technology specified protects, supports, or enhances an experience defined for the space, and the experience brief shows which.
• Every space begins complete. Each experience brings in every layer that serves it, and the design is pared back on purpose, never by omission.
• Security is specified, not assumed. Every system on the building systems network passes the Network and Security Standard before it is approved, and the owner holds every credential at handoff.
• Separation and capacity are built. Behavior logic cannot substitute for physical separation, mechanical capacity, or a partition that was never built; the conflict register says which resolutions are rules and which are drawings.
• Present practice and future software are kept apart. The services described here (brief, Intention Declaration, register, coordination, construction package, commissioning, care) are current practice. The UX for Spaces™ software that carries the method is complete and in use; it produces the project documents named in Documentation from the framework. The continuous monitoring software described under Adjustment in actual use is in development. Until it is released, monitoring means the sensors and platform installed on the project.
• Examples are illustrative. The rest and focus intentions, the study record, and the hotel guest are constructed to show the method.

External references cited in this document. Each is a published standard, metric definition, or peer-reviewed study. The method's own documents are listed separately.

Light

• Brown TM, Brainard GC, Cajochen C, et al. Recommendations for daytime, evening, and nighttime indoor light exposure to best support physiology, sleep, and wakefulness in healthy adults. PLOS Biology. 2022;20(3):e3001571. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001571. Source of the practice targets of 250 lux M-EDI or more in daytime, 10 lux or less in the evening, and 1 lux or less during sleep.
• CIE S 026:2018. CIE System for Metrology of Optical Radiation for ipRGC-Influenced Responses to Light. International Commission on Illumination. cie.co.at. Defines melanopic EDI and the melanopic daylight efficacy ratio.
• IEEE Std 1789-2015. IEEE Recommended Practices for Modulating Current in High-Brightness LEDs for Mitigating Health Risks to Viewers. standards.ieee.org. Basis for the flicker specification gate.
• ANSI/IES TM-30-20, with Errata 1 (May 7, 2021). IES Method for Evaluating Light Source Color Rendition. An American National Standard. Illuminating Engineering Society. store.ies.org. Annex E, Table E-2 supplies the F, P, and V specifications the framework assigns by space intent.
• ANSI/IES RP-29-25. Recommended Practice: Lighting Hospital and Healthcare Facilities. An American National Standard. Illuminating Engineering Society, 2025. store.ies.org. Table A-1 (patient room, patient zone) and its notes 4, 27, and 28 supply the recovery-space light values; values are adjusted for age 65 and older.

Sound

• ANSI/ASA S12.2-2019. Criteria for Evaluating Room Noise. Acoustical Society of America; approved May 21, 2019. asastore.aip.org. Basis for stating background noise as NC; also carries the A-weighted survey method and RNC curves.
• Basner M, Babisch W, Davis A, et al. Auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health. The Lancet. 2014;383(9925):1325-1332. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61613-X. Review of health effects of environmental noise, including sleep.
• World Health Organization. Guidelines for Community Noise. 1999. who.int. Table 4.1 and section 4.3.3: bedrooms 30 dB LAeq and 45 dB LAmax at night; hospital ward rooms 30 dB LAeq at all hours and 40 dB LAmax at night; treatment and observation areas 35 dB LAeq. Anchors the masking ceilings and the recovery sound criteria.
• World Health Organization. Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region. 2018. who.int. Source-specific night-noise recommendations that update the 1999 guidance for transportation sources.
• FGI Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities, 2010. Facility Guidelines Institute. fgiguidelines.org. Table 1.2-2 (patient rooms NC/RC(N) 30 to 40, 35 to 45 dBA; NICU 25 to 35), Table 1.2-3 (minimum sound isolation between enclosed rooms; note 5 caps electronic masking at 48 dBA), and Table 1.2-4 (speech privacy: normal STI 0.19 or less, confidential 0.12 or less). A later edition exists; values are checked against the current edition at project start.

Air

• Allen JG, MacNaughton P, Satish U, Santanam S, Vallarino J, Spengler JD. Associations of cognitive function scores with carbon dioxide, ventilation, and volatile organic compound exposures in office workers: a controlled exposure study of green and conventional office environments. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2016;124(6):805-812. doi:10.1289/ehp.1510037. Basis for treating CO2 and VOC levels as cognition-relevant conditions in focus and learning spaces.
• ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170-2021. Ventilation of Health Care Facilities. ASHRAE. ashrae.org. Table 7-1, Patient room: 2 ach outdoor air minimum, 4 ach total minimum, MERV-14 minimum filter efficiency, relative humidity maximum 60 percent, design temperature 70 to 75 F (21 to 24 C).
• World Health Organization. WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines. 2021. who.int. Particulate guideline values referenced for recovery spaces.

Thermal

• ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55. Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy. ASHRAE. ashrae.org. The humidity ratio limit of 0.012 (dew point 16.8 C) is cited from a published summary of the 2010 edition, section 5.2.2. The PMV limit of plus or minus 0.5 and the 80 percent satisfaction criterion are cited from secondary sources, Wikipedia: ASHRAE 55 and Wikipedia: Thermal comfort, read 2026-09-20; the 10 percent PPD figure follows from Fanger's PPD relationship at that PMV.

Sleep and mechanical transitions (cited through the method's evidence review, Human Performance as a Building Design Requirement)

• Basner M, Müller U, Elmenhorst EM. Single and combined effects of air, road, and rail traffic noise on sleep and recuperation. Sleep. 2011;34(1):11-23. doi:10.1093/sleep/34.1.11. Polysomnographic study of transportation noise; event timing and characteristics matter more than the average level.
• Stanchina ML, Abu-Hijleh M, Chaudhry BK, Carlisle CC, Millman RP. The influence of white noise on sleep in subjects exposed to ICU noise. Sleep Medicine. 2005;6(5):423-428. doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2004.12.004. Source of the observation that the change above background, not the peak alone, predicts arousal; the roughly 18 dB figure is an observation, not a permissible excursion.
• Basner M, Smith MG, Cordoza M, et al. Efficacy of pink noise and earplugs for mitigating the effects of intermittent environmental noise exposure on sleep. Sleep. 2026;49(5):zsag001. doi:10.1093/sleep/zsag001. Polysomnographic trial in healthy adults; the tested pink noise reduced REM sleep and altered sleep structure.
• Zhang X, Wargocki P, Lian Z, Thyregod C. Effects of exposure to carbon dioxide and bioeffluents on perceived air quality, self-assessed acute health symptoms, and cognitive performance. Indoor Air. 2017;27(1):47-64. doi:10.1111/ina.12284. Controlled exposure to pure CO2 versus accumulated bioeffluents; symptoms and task changes followed bioeffluents, not CO2 alone.
• ASHRAE. Position Document on Indoor Carbon Dioxide. Approved February 12, 2025; expires February 12, 2028. ashrae.org. Evidence for direct health effects of CO2 at common indoor concentrations is inconsistent and does not support a universal limit; CO2 is a ventilation proxy.
• ASHRAE. 2023 ASHRAE Handbook, HVAC Applications. Chapter 49, Noise and Vibration Control. ashrae.org. Engineering guidance for background noise; transition limits need a documented project basis.

Interface

• Cowan N. The magical number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2001;24(1):87-114. doi:10.1017/S0140525X01003922. Supports the four-scene keypad limit.
• Hick WE. On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1952;4(1):11-26. doi:10.1080/17470215208416600. Decision time rises with the number of choices.
• Hyman R. Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1953;45(3):188-196. doi:10.1037/h0056940. Confirms Hick's finding; together they are the Hick-Hyman law.

Frameworks referenced by alignment tags

• International WELL Building Institute. WELL Building Standard v2. v2.wellcertified.com.
• U.S. Green Building Council. LEED v5. usgbc.org.
• Calm Tech Institute. Principles of calm technology and the Calm Tech Certified program. calmtech.institute.
• Case A. Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design. O'Reilly Media; 2015.
• Weiser M, Brown JS. The Coming Age of Calm Technology. Xerox PARC; 1996.

UX for Spaces™ documents

• UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0, residential and commercial workbooks (2026-10-15): Spatial Performance Brief; Standards, Pillars and Build Map; seventeen category sheets; Conflict Resolution.
• UX for Spaces™ Framework v16.0, Space Type Catalog (2026-10-15): 148 space types in 18 families, what drives cost, experiences offered, estimated keypads, classes, and the project profiles template.
• UX for Spaces™ Process 2026.
• Calm / WELL / Biological Alignment Documentation Template.
• Technology Construction Package (introduction).
• Experiential Sign-Off template.
• Before You Build: Evidence-Based Validation of Key Claims, v2.
• Human Performance as a Building Design Requirement. Research paper for owners, architects, interior designers, and engineering teams, prepared for Blend Technology, 5 September 2026. Evidence review and design proposal; source of the mechanical-transition requirement, the eight-field criterion schedule, and the three result categories.

UX for Spaces™ is a design standard authored by Jimmy Powers, Principal of Blend Technology. Jimmy is an acoustic consultant, a certified UX designer, and has designed automated technology systems for 25 years. Blend Technology is a Strategic Partner and Recognized Design Partner of the Calm Tech Institute.

UX for Spaces™ is a trademark of Blend Technology. Trademark pending, United States Patent and Trademark Office, application serial number 99789703. Application status at USPTO TSDR.

© 2026 Blend Technology. All rights reserved.