Final note and video of our design, Grow-it!
Our final note on our design - Grow-it
A design made in the MAB24h student competition 2016 by Team Kaff’ - Malene Mogensen Henriksen & Kathe Elisabeth Reimuth
link to design concept video: https://youtu.be/CsOYh_n5r00
Designbrief, vision and designvalues
When reading the designbrief a lot of thoughts came to mind. Though Aarhus is a smaller city compared to other european cities it sure is divided in different groups of social-status, lifestyle and ethnicity. We have the hipster neighbourhood, the part of town where students live, the rich-people area, the family-friendly area, the immigrant area. Aarhus sure is divided, but we all share the same public spaces, parks and so on. Though sharing these, we do not interact and socialise with each other. We wish to change this. We want to act as place-shakers on these already place-made places.
We chose our domain to be Bispetorvet which is a new public space that has just  opened up to the citizens of Aarhus in 2016 (http://stiften.dk/aarhus/bispetorvet-bliver-til-et-groent-pusterum-i-byen). A year ago this space was a parking-lot in the heart of the city with its neighbours being the beautiful Cathedral of Aarhus, Aarhus Theater and the most visited shopping street strøget.  Now the Aarhus municipality has a vision about the space being turned into a green area to relax and take a break from the busy life surround the area. As stated in an article in the local newspaper “Trees and grass shall move in, when the cars move out of Bispetorvet. The place shall be a place of play, relaxation and experience.” (ibid).
Though we find that they have succeeded in creating a nice green area with a lot of room to play and relax - a place - they have yet to shape a true identity of the space and the users has yet to get to know it as a space. As Yi-fu Tuan puts it “”Space” is more abstract than “Place”. What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to now it better and endow it with value” (Tuan:2011:6).
Our vision of the place is to let the users of Bispetorvet and the place itself co-create the feeling, the activities and the identity of the place through interaction and play. Our design values is play, co-creation and simplicity.Â
Here is some pictures from our field study at Bispetorvet:Â
Our vision:
“We would like to create a design that through a sensory and playful approach creates simple interaction between users of Bispetorv in Aarhus and the place itself. Through co-creation and interaction between agents connected to Bispetorv the new identity of the place will be dynamically shaped.”
So let us present our design, Grow-it!
Our design concept, Grow-it!
What is grow-it? Grow-it is a game. Grow-it is art. Grow-it is a plant. Grow-it is a living organism. Grow-it is what you make it. Â Grow-it is an interactive living organism living in the wooden areas in Bispetorvet. Everything you do on the wooden areas are being felt by Grow-it, Grow-it reacts on your activity on the place.
But how? The wooden areas are covered in a pressure-sensitive surface. The longer you stay at one place, the more activity, the more plants grow on the surface. By being and participating in the area, the more life is created. You and Bispetorvet are one. And you a part of creating Bispetorvets Identity. But it is more than that. It is dynamic - when participating, the plants connects you with the other participants. Bispetorvet is therefore also a co-designer and participant in your experience at the place.
Grow-it not only creates interaction and visualization of this interaction and activity on the surface of the area, but it also support social interaction and social engagement between the different agents using Bispetorvet. Not by forcing them to talk with each other, but by growing plants. The plants are attracted to other plants growing in the space. If you interact with the space long enough the plant you have grown by interaction and doing activities in the space will intertwine with other plants, and you will create a symbiosis with other people at the space. Creating a greater synergy. Â
Process and reflection
Our approach to the designprocess was based on the Ideo design-thinking. Basically it has three different phases: 1) Inspiration, 2) Ideation and 3) Implementation. Though there is these three phases, we believe in moving dynamically between them and iterating. Our process has therefore been all about actively doing, failing, iteration ect. We believe in the “fail early and fail often”- way of designing. We started the designproces in the inspiration-phase brainstorming on the theme “place-making”. Thereafter we thought of already existing designs, each found our favorite and presented it to each other. The first one was Piano Staircase from the designgroup The Fun Theory. The other was the installation “Before I die-wall” which was exhibited during Aarhus Festival 2012. From both of these we were inspired by the playfulness, the simplicity and the fact that you can both participate active and passive while having a meaningful experience. From this inspiration phase we decided on some mutual designvalues. These are, as mentioned earlier, play, co-creation and simplicity.
Next we moved on to the ideation phase, where we first made a brainstorming session of the possible domains. After an open-minded brainstorm we narrowed it down to four different places, and again through dialog narrowed it down to two. We then went on a field study documenting the activities of the two places. We ended up chosing to Bispetorvet as our domain, and began observing, interacting and exploring the place. We created a vision as stated in the previous section.
After exploring we made a mindmap over the possibilities of the place which can be seen on the photo below. The idea with this mindmap was to conceptualize our initial thoughts of the domain.
Afterwards we started working actively with the domain by first using the method How-Might-We to gain an insight in the problems of the area. When we had created these insight-statements we moved on to work with them through the method BadIdeas 3.0 (Silva 2010). We started with a two minute brainstorming-session, but afterwards we hit a massive wall. We had simply created too many problems, to sort out through one method. Therefore we iterated and revisited the domain, the designbrief and our vision for the design. We realised the importance of participation and co-creation. Therefore we decided to include our future users in the designproces through a participatory process. We chose to make a mini-workshop and to give our future users a voice and a designer-role of their future public space.
(Picture: a snapshot of the mini-workshop with the participants/designers/users/researchers)
Making this choice of including our users in creating our design was the best decision we made in this entire (and short) designproces. Participation and co-creation was crucial for us to make a meaningful design.
After the workshop we went back to the office to mock-up and prototype on the design concept. This through scenario-based storytelling. By approaching the design through play we got the last details sorted out and our closed in on our final design-concept.
(Picture: a snapshot from your mock-up and prototyping session, using scenarios and storytelling as techniques to close-in on our final design concept)
Final reflection: How does the design respond to the design brief?
As it is now there has been created a brand new and really nice public space in the heart of Aarhus, but as mentioned in this final note the space has yet to become a place (Tuan 2010) and we found out through our field studies that it has no identity yet. It is a places that have been place-maked by the Aarhus municipality and city-planners. The design Grow-it allows and invites the users and citizens of Aarhus to shake up the space - acting as place-shakers - and giving life, growth and identity to the place. They are through their interaction with the place making it feel like a space.
