Last week, a builder client spoke with Design Basics Plan Alterations Designer Tricia Baker regarding Design Basics’ Livability at a Glance™ floor plan presentations, “It’s a better way to evaluate and compare home plans.”
People told us it was hard visualizing a built home when looking at simple black and white floorplan artwork. This prompted Design 
Basics to introduce Livability at a Glance, highlighting the four lenses women reported using when evaluating the home’s suitability for her and her household. Areas primarily for entertaining were shaded yellow, de-stressing areas blue, flexible living spaces green, and storage areas were highlighted in orange. Homebuyers responded enthusiastically, with comments such as “Now this I can understand!” Livability at a Glance helped buyers see themselves living in the home, creating an emotional connection with the plan.
Additionally, for all of the plans Design Basics has reviewed for their Livability attributes, on Designbasics.com, a bar graph shows how each plan compares with similar size and type plans across the four lenses.
Livability at a Glance represented a major advancement in understanding how the home lives. Now, Livability at a Glance has evolved to become a better way to search home plans. Most online home plan searches are very linear and left-brained (logical), providing search criteria such as square footage and type of home to rule out home plans. Everybody did it the same way. Useful, but such search filters stop short of actually helping you identify home designs you would be interested in.
Now when searching home plans on DesignBasics.com you can also search by those four Livability at a Glance lenses. Since we all have different priorities when it comes to how we want to live in our dream home, Livability Search™ allows you to select the relative importance of each of those lenses. Searching by how the home lives is much more insightful and intuitive than old-fashioned plan searches! Learn more about Livability at a Glance™.
