Fawn Chang
Behavioral Interior Designer, Founder — The Gentle Shift AcademyFawn ChangFawn Chang, Behavioral Interior Designer and Founder of The Gentle Shift Academy, is a Color Marketing Expert, Color Strategist, and international keynote speaker who has spent 40 years designing, consulting, and teaching professionals internationally — how the spaces we live, work, heal, and gather in transform the people inside them, precognitively.
Fawn has worked with PPG since 2009 across both color marketing and IT — where her work in user experience deepened a career-long study of how people read and react to the design principles marketing already knows, applying them to the built environment and positioning her uniquely at the intersection of design and human response.
She writes and delivers the accredited Health, Safety & Welfare CEU programs (AIA and IDCEC certified) that bring the science of color and design to architects, designers, and builders worldwide, in partnership with Color Guild International and its global independent paint companies. With more than 2,500 presentations delivered across the globe, from Fairbanks to Santiago, including one broadcast live nationwide in Chile — and a track record of repeat engagements that speaks for itself — she has a rare gift for making color and design psychology approachable, practical, and immediately useful.
Fawn was the color and design expert behind a 2019 multi-state classroom study for PPG (reviewed by the RAND Corporation): in the classrooms she designed, teachers reporting that students 'pay attention in class' rose from 63% to 94%, and teachers who felt their classroom helped students learn doubled to 100%, while unpainted rooms stayed flat. She also built the Caribbean Colour Authority by engaging professionals across the many nations of the Caribbean — guiding them to forecast and trend the colors that speak the language of belonging across their richly varied cultures. A National Science Foundation project called on her gift for translating complex research into something any audience can feel and use.
Fawn's work begins from a single idea: color and design are not decoration, they are direct communication to the nervous system, and the body is the ultimate authority. She has shared this message with audiences including AIA, ASID, IDCEC, IDS West, CDECA, and CODI. Whether on stage or in a room, her aim is the same: to help designers create spaces that transform the people who live in them.
Design the Cues the Nervous System Needs: A Hands-On Framework to Deliver With New Authority
This workshop teaches designers to move neuroscience off the page and into the room — applying what science confirms about the body's precognitive res
…This workshop teaches designers to move neuroscience off the page and into the room — applying what science confirms about the body's precognitive responses to the full, living experience of a real space.
Participants explore how the nervous system r
…This workshop teaches designers to move neuroscience off the page and into the room — applying what science confirms about the body's precognitive responses to the full, living experience of a real space.
Participants explore how the nervous system reads and responds precognitively to a space — which design cues lead behavior and emotion before conscious awareness, how the nervous system reacts to a room before the thinking mind has even formed a
…This workshop teaches designers to move neuroscience off the page and into the room — applying what science confirms about the body's precognitive responses to the full, living experience of a real space.
Participants explore how the nervous system reads and responds precognitively to a space — which design cues lead behavior and emotion before conscious awareness, how the nervous system reacts to a room before the thinking mind has even formed an opinion.
We open the design conversation across the entire spectrum — every style, every color, every desired outcome in every environment. Designers learn to use all of the cues to speak in perfect synchronization, the body's language, with precision and ease for their unique projects and clients.
Participants learn and play with design strategies known to emotionally engage the body and behavior, additionally applying circadian and biophilic color principles as a practical specification lens. The result is a framework and palette strategy to take home and use on the next project, with the language to present those decisions to clients in plain, confident terms.
Through guided observation, a live body-check exercise, and palette-building from a real brief, participants learn to identify the cues that create friction, stress, and cognitive load, and to replace them with cues the nervous system reads as safe, clear, and regenerative.
The outcome is a new way to approach projects through design for the nervous system's needs — one that permits delivery of the ask: spaces that transform the people inside them, designs that are beautiful and function to promote longevity and happiness.
Show MoreClick the title to see all detailsShow More