I had no idea I was capable of producing this much work in 24 hours.

Wow.

My faith in myself has been renewed.

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. 

Here is some pictures from our field study at Bispetorvet: 

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.  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.  

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?

Our goals for this project were to utilise a space, common to a large number of people from a wide variety of segments of the community. Not only did we want to find a way for this community to engage in real issues, but we also wanted to facilitate a way for them to interact outside of their normal social boundaries.

Based on our current location, we decided to use public spaces within Hobart, and after some on field visits  we focused on utilising the Elizabeth Street Mall (an open air pedestrian area), with the idea to be able to expand to different public spaces. We brainstormed ideas individually, keeping these goals in mind, before sharing them together and finding ways to combine and create new ideas. Finally we decided to start approaching the goals through a distributed, asymmetrical game experience. We prototyped the idea of having physical interactive installations that users could play, across areas (so you wouldn't necessarily be able to see the other players). For our rapid prototyping, we used paper, and some people. We were immediately able to  start refining with their feedback; for example, while we started out with more complex games similar to chess, these were going to be too complex and inaccessible given time, thus not engaging people to play. We managed to refine the idea further to make the physical interactions each a different part of a type of mechanical puzzle. We also decided that the overall theming of the puzzle could change, so that it may engage players on a community scale and give feedback to placemakers on real-world issues. Each game would be a simple mechanical puzzle with unique interface elements that, when successfully completed, update a large central ‘command console’ with the completion of the task. The command console, can view all parts of the puzzle and each of their roles in the assigned community issue. The entire command console would also be part of an app, so that people may view how the installation is being utilised at any time. By engaging with the games, players are also taking the opportunity to be informed, discuss and provide feedback on various issues relevant to the community. Each game is designed to be different, encouraging players to explore public spaces so as to engage with each of them. As the system is entirely digital, tracking of engagement with the system can be done online, and if such a system is deployed to more than one public space, competitive statistics can be made available online as well. If the game was a puppy saving puzzle and there installations in both Hobart and Glenorchy (a Greater Hobart suburb) then there could be competition across these where a location could be ranked by how many puppies it has saved in the game. By adding this additional competitive feature, the community is more likely to engage in playing and even interact with each other, toward to common goal of saving even more puppies.

This sums up our design process in taking the initial spec and performing a series of iterative brainstorms to filter the idea into something workable. Before prototyping we took in many different social considerations, in an attempt to make sure our idea could be utilised by all. We didn't want their to be a barrier to entry in using the game, thus we did not base it on an application that would require a device and internet, and plan for any physical installation to be physically accessible. After prototyping we refined the idea after finding more considerations to make of a social space as design constraints, and planned system functionality around these constraints, as well.

We hope this could be a fun and highly engaging experience, that communities could make their own and further contribute to placemaking in their areas!

Concept video:

https://youtu.be/6y24BXdkm6M

References:

We just mock-up’ed our design using this very simpel yet “accurate” model of our domain - with a picture of the beautiful cathedral. To do this we used storytelling and scenarios as a technique to visualize and play out the design. 

(picture shows the six badideas we developed through the two minute brainstorming session)

The past few hours have been very busy and we have been away from the internet which explains our few updates. 

After doing the how might we-method mentioned in our previous post we had highlighted a lot of problems and insights in our domain to work on and with. Thereafter we decided to use the BadIdeas 3.0-method (Silva 2010) to generate som bad and silly design ideas as a way to work with the problems we found. We started out doing a quick two minute individual and silent brainstorm on badideas, but afterwards we hit a wall. We had a breakdown - or as Schön might describe it a surprise. We simply had to many problems to solve, not enough time, chaos in our minds which made us forget the designbrief, our vision and our design values. As the method created more chaos than ideas, we decided to end it. So how could we deal with this breakdown/surprise? We took a step back and looked at our values and our vision once again. We read the designbrief and the references. A big part of place-making and place-shaking is co-creation and participation is user-involvement so why not include users as co-designers in our designprocess! 

(picture shows three of the four designers, researchers, participants in the workshop) 

We quickly decided to do a mini-designworkshop. We called two of our friends who is lead-users of Aarhus Center and invited them to the workshop with us and them as participants. The workshop took place at our domain, Bispetorvet, and we brought post-its, paper, pencils, kamera and cookies. Our roles in the workshop was that all four of us was both designers, users, researchers - basically, we were all equals. We started out telling them short about the designbrief and handing them the problem: “How can we through digital technologies shape Bispetorvets identity?”.  We also presented the values we wish to highlight with the design - Play, co-creation and simplicity. 

Now that we’ve settled on our idea, we’ve thought a bit more about a few designs our distributed machines might have:

-          Several cranks on the side of a wall, next to some lights. By turning the cranks left or right, the number of lights that are visible would increase or decrease. The goal would be to have the lights match a pattern displayed on the wall; when the two are similar enough, the game would register, and a new pattern would be displayed

-          A matrix of 8 or 10 coloured lights that would change between four or five colours by pressing them in. A smaller matrix may show a pattern to replicate on the colour wall, or a colour to turn all buttons to. Once the pattern is matched, the game would register the puzzle as complete and a new pattern would appear

-          A crosshairs looking over a small screen with a number of lights that appear. There would be horizontal and vertical dials on the side of the screen. By turning the dials, the crosshair would move horizontally and vertically. When the crosshair aligns with the right colour light (avoiding the wrong ones), the puzzle is complete and a new set of coloured lights appear

Another function of the control panel could also be a ‘master control’. The master control panel should show the progress made in a given timeframe, and we prefer a smaller timeframe like one day or several days so progress is easily visible. But another function the control could have is allowing the operator of the controls to optimize the output of machines. It’s very important we don’t allow people’s say on these issues to be compromised, by effectively using the central controls, by say balancing a series of lights, might allow the machines to work more optimally so they fill progress more efficiently.