An Empathy Algorithm: Bridging Neuroscience, Design, and AI

In the world of design and architecture, AI is often relegated to functional tasks: generating images and written content, and optimizing workflows. According to AIA’s research study The Architect’s Journey to Specification, over half of professionals have experimented with AI, yet only six per cent use it regularly in practice.

Experiential designers can use artificial intelligence to analyze data based on real human responses and predict how people might react to different spatial environments. This capability provides valuable insight into how design influences behavior, emotion, and social connection. By doing so, AI becomes an active partner in exploring human experience, rather than a passive analytical tool.

Effective design depends on understanding human experience, which is complex, subjective, and difficult to measure. Traditional research methods are often expensive, time-consuming, and challenging to apply to environments that have not yet been built. They also struggle to capture the fluid and evolving nature of human perception.

AI can help bridge this gap by interpreting visual information such as renderings and environmental images to forecast how people are likely to experience a space. This approach enables designers to test ideas virtually, gain faster insights, and make informed decisions that align with human needs and expectations.

The amount of information we find in an environment influences our ability to interpret and navigate it. People tend to enjoy environments that strike the right balance—offering enough complexity to engage us without overwhelming our senses. These models evaluate features such as the density of visual elements, patterns, and spatial arrangements to quantify complexity.

Pleasantness is a fundamental aspect of human experience, defined by how comfortable, appealing, or satisfying an environment feels. Pleasantness can be quantified by analyzing a combination of sensory and psychological factors, such as color schemes, lighting, spatial openness, and material textures. These elements contribute to creating an environment that evokes positive emotions and a sense of well-being.

People are inherently drawn to symmetry and proportionality. These features create a sense of harmony and balance, making environments more visually appealing. Symmetry contributes to people’s understanding of a built environments and their feelings of safety within it.  People are better able to intuit their way through a space where symmetry is a dominant feature

Physiological stimulation refers to how an environment affects our bodily state—heightening alertness, arousal, or relaxation through sensory cues.  Assessing these factors to understand how spatial design elements like lighting intensity, color saturation, and implied movement patterns contribute to physical engagement or calm. Measuring these responses brings insight into how environments can energize or soothe occupants, shaping their comfort, productivity, and overall experience.

Although these responses are fundamental to how environments are experienced, they often operate below conscious awareness and are difficult to measure or describe.

AI-driven analysis is transforming how wayfinding and experiential design are understood and refined. Data-based insights reveal how people might navigate, interpret, and emotionally connect with spaces before those environments are built. AI enables designers to evaluate architectural forms, interior elements, placemaking features, and signage systems through visuals, producing insights that guide decision-making and strengthen user-centered outcomes.

Integrating data-driven intelligence into the design process, this approach enhances creativity with measurable evidence. It supports alignment among stakeholders, reduces the need for costly physical testing, and accelerates the development of spaces that resonate with human cognition and behavior.

Entro AQ is our proprietary artificial intelligence platform that quantifies and predicts human experience within designed and built environments. By analyzing visual representations of spaces, it forecasts how people are likely to perceive and emotionally respond to them.

Grounded in cognitive science, it translates environmental features into measurable indicators of human reaction, helping designers understand how factors such as complexity, order, and visual balance influence perception. This data-driven insight allows teams to identify elements that affect comfort, clarity, and engagement, enabling the creation of environments that are intuitive and emotionally resonant.

Through rapid analysis, Entro AQ enhances wayfinding and experiential design long before a space is built.