# Effect of Exposure Time on Thermal Behaviour: A Psychophysiological Approach
## 5 Limitations and Discussion  
The first point of discussion is the minimal personal comfort perception/satisfaction feedback against the biometric datasets. Collecting both quantitative and qualitative data and attempting to correlate them is a common practice in similar studies, and believed to offer further insight when coupled with objective data [61, 62]. However, in the experiment presented in this paper, elimination of any kind of survey-like feedback was intentional. Thermal comfort is, in reality, the lack of discomfort, or more precisely and bypassing the double negatives, it is _neutrality_[63]. Some studies reveal that these questionnaires, however short, easy or presented with well-designed user interfaces, still pose a threat for bias or show problems with reproducibility [64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69]. While the comparison between physiological data and psychological feedback is worth investigating, the authors decided to collect the subjective feedback only through the event-mark buttons, when the sensation would be defined as \"thermally stressful\" by the participants. No grading or further questioning was required, the only metric considered was the time the participants remembered to press a button that they were only reminded of in the beginning of the experiment. This event-mark button, however, was rarely used by the participants even in the highest temperature days, and therefore its data was excluded in the publication. Due to the nature of the research questions at hand, the design of the experiment intended to replicate a real-world setting as much as possible. By doing so, the participants were given all the flexibilities and adaptation options as a regular workspace with adaptive capabilities would normally have. However, the use of windows and additional fans were prohibited in order to keep a stable temperature inside the test space--which can be argued as a significant psychological setback. Furthermore, even though the first week of data collection was intended for the test subject to familiarise with the space, lockers were provided for the subjects to bring and  
Figure 14: EDA tonic against PMV values, with the same clusters. leave their belongings, and the authors observed and re-created individual preferences in the Sense Lab for each person at the beginning of their test-day (i.e., the choice of work chair, desired items on the desk, etc. ); the authors speculate that it still may not be enough time to simulate a realistic tolerance behaviour that the subjects would exhibit in \"their own\" workspaces, as they only used the space six times over the span of 6 weeks and formed no routines. Furthermore, while they were informed that the temperature inside the Sense Lab might be different during different days, and despite having alternative clothing in their lockers, the lack of anticipation and expectation, most likely limited any gradual acceptance of the high temperature. At the end, the observed behaviour throughout the experiment period left the authors unsure about whether the employed strategies to make the participants feel \"at home\" worked. It is worth mentioning that, the upcoming experiment designs need to be more conscious of the Hawthorne effect and find ways of overcoming it [70,71]. Additionally, while the age range of the participants is not limited to those of the typical student age group, it can be argued that it is still not fully representative of people that are expected to work in office environments. A sample group of five people does not constitute as representative either. However, the findings in this paper are presented as preliminary and will be treated as a basis for future research. The experiment is replicable with different and more participants.