FOOD:SERVICE DESIGN_AHO2022S
Monday morning started off by tidying up the prototype space after testing Friday. While tidying we discussed the benefits of our testing. A common response was that historical connection to geographical locations could be very interesting as a service. The use of familiar, but mystical symbols raised curiosity, but required something more to become meaningful. With that in mind, Monday became a day of meaning. Following the continuation of Dr. Ted Matthews D4Me, we found it important to begin the mapping of symbols, narratives and anxiety in Norwegian road culture. Collecting a wide array of data resulted in vast mappings describing everything from opening the car window as a symbol, to the Norwegian rural curiosity as a narrative, and the anxiety connected to meeting a local motorcycle gang.
Tuesday we found it important to discuss these mappings with individuals outside our own group. Were our mappings realistic and true? What could be supplemented and why? Without any connection to reality, our narratives, anxieties and symbols would be mere assumptions. Discussing with others proved to be fruitful. After lunch our goal was to extract the essence of the mapping, translating it into meaning. This brought us to the conclusion of the 3X’s; "The Norwegian roads are efficient, safe and embrace beautiful nature, but carry with them problems of belonging. Aesthetically, it is an exclusion of nature, functionally an exclusion of historical necessity and communicatively an exclusion of interpersonality across regions.”
With a good understanding of our collected meaning, Wednesday was the day of mythical constructions. Diving into Cristopher Bookers 7 narratives in storytelling, our task would be to decipher each narrative and possibly conclude on one that could work as a framework for our translated meaning. The comedy and the rebirth were selected as possible options. However, there was an important difference between the two: the narrative of rebirth demanded the user to have some form of introductory opinion, while the comedy embraced the user as someone more wicked and ill-defined without necessarily having a clear agenda. We concluded on using the comedy as a framework, and constructed a comedic myth of the Norwegian road culture: “You feel no belonging to the road. You know it as an adapted passage between a and b. You are prevented from seeing the road winding through nature like blood vessels, from understanding the immortal history behind it, and from knowing the diversity of the people you pass. But, you want to be curious, you want to know, you want to understand. Now you stand here, off the beaten track, receptive. You understand, you know, you're curious. You know you're part of the people you pass, part of the story, the road is an extension of your own blood vessels. You no longer know the road only as an adapted passage between a and b. You feel a sense of belonging to the road.”
Thursday afternoon was spent on preparations for the revised concept presentation Friday. With a still, fairly abstract conceptualization, it became essential for us to focus on understandable communication. Limited to only 3 slides, carefully choosing what to say, also became important for us. This process of choosing what to say and how to say it proved to be very difficult, as we felt we had gathered enough material for hour long talks. We cut as much as we felt was possible without compromising what we wanted to deliver, and headed off to punk band practice and the aho pub for the evening.
On Friday we followed the presentations of fellow students, and prepared ourselves on what we had planned on presenting. The presentation was swift; three slides, three minutes. We went through key findings from the test we had the Friday before, our work with Dr. Ted Matthews PhD and lastly our poetically designed service myth. After our presentation we got some feedback. One of the teachers told us that we had to work on defining our end-user; pointing out that the service might not be for everyone using the Norwegian roads. Another teacher told us that she looked forward to seeing how our concept would turn out in the end. We got the notion that we had done a good job, and that we were moving in the right direction. When all the groups had presented, we went off to grab a beer as the weekend was upon us.
To summeraize the week, it started and ended with Dr. Ted Matthews. We worked closely with his insights into "Sacred Service Design", to map out what we need to form "our" service myth. It was a definitely a week of mapping and reflecting. During the week the project felt both lost and honed about 20 times, which in a way feels typical, as working so closely with design theory tends to feel that way. However difficult the process was, we were able to land, and stand comfortably on our result. Presenting our findings in the end of the week, gave us the feeling of proudly closing a chapter of our design process. We looked forward to the coming week as we now had the foundation to start designing rituals.
