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#SMARTER LONDON #SmarterLondon IN A CHANGING LONDON IN A CHANGING LONDON Ethnography & Culture In Design Ethnography & Culture in Design 14 Weeks | Spring 2016 14 weeks | Spring 2015 Syracuse University London Syracuse University London
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Syracuse University Study Abroad London http://www.sulondon.syr.edu/index.html SU:VPA College of Visual+Performing Arts Industrial+Interaction Design Program http://www.vpa.syr.edu/academics/design/undergraduate/industrial-interaction-design/ Published May 2016 by Meehan Printing Co. http://www.meehanprint.london/
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Ethnography & Culture
INTRO Welcome to the product catalogue of the Syracuse University IND 481 Ethnography & Culture in Design class made up of 17 Industrial and Interaction Design students. This class ran for 15 weeks, from the end of January to the beginning of May. It revolved around the idea of co-creating products with a local London neighborhood and community of our choosing, driven by the needs and aspirations of those communities. The course was a project run by our Professor (Priya Prakash) to explore the ideas of a smarter London and future smart cities by running co-labs in three London neighborhoods - Brixton, Notting Hill, and Shoreditch. The idea of a smart city is not new. As a matter of fact, London is considered a smart city e.g. the Oyster Card system and applications like Citymapper use technology to improve the quality of life and design systems that create an interdependent network of goods, services, and people. The design process was to work and develop a relationship with the communities from the three neighborhoods to gather research and create insights on problems and establish design opportunities. Students then explored ideas for products and services that took the form of a product catalogue.
The main goals of this project were to increase: A1. Intellectual engagement B1. Technical Skills C1. Professionalism
Introduction
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COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is aimed at understanding the Why, What, How, Who and Where to design better with people using cities and its communities as a context. Following a process of rapid prototyping by starting with a hypothesis i.e. A design question– The course follows an investigative approach to arrive at a range of plausible solutions. These prototypes will act as design-props to create a future city product catalogue for branded communities and neighborhoods. The course over 14 weeks will unearth people insights by studying underlying behaviors, assumptions and beliefs Londoners have about living, working and playing in core London boroughs through their interactions with the city’s urban products, services and infrastructure experiences. Future cities have a growing need to engage citizens. Impending circumstances are going to require that citizens take responsibility and orient their activity to challenges such as congestion, resource efficiency, low carbon use, and resilient energy systems. The aim is to unearth insights to predict future urban trends that help inform the design of urban behaviors, products and services that either don’t yet exist or will get redundant due to rapid changing lives. Students will select/adopt a London neighborhood. Study the people living there. Design a branded community intervention (service/product/experience) to promote the future of that neighborhood in a positive way to showcase and attract local economy, jobs, creative talent and infrastructure projects. Students will base their hypothesis by studying various actors in a city’s urban Infrastructure through the eyes of Londoners on how they want to create a smarter London to make the city resilient and future-proof. In this course each student will contribute their design solution to a branded community product catalogue of future urban products, services with the inhabitants providing the context. This course aims to unpack new methods in design research through data across qualitative, quantitative, story-telling, rapid prototyping, social media documentation and film-making.
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Ethnography & Culture
Phase 1: Immerse & Observe the city | 4 weeks Adopt a neighborhood & community Phase 2: Design & Test hypothesis | 6 weeks Design a series of interventions in situ of adopted neighborhood to test hypothesis with community. Document the process and map it. Phase 3: Communicate & Market the Design | 4 weeks Find the right format to communicate your service /product design intervention to sell the branded community story. Formats can take shape of a Kickstarter campaign, a neighborhood momento/street furniture, a news article from 2040, an ad – choose the right medium. It needs to be part of the product catalogue and will be exhibited at the City Hall. Community can be real or virtual. Each group’s individual project covers: 1. Branded community portrait and neighbourhood map 2. Applications/products/services targeting the chosen community 3. Service touch-points designed with the community 4. A physical presentation for the final Exhibit Key questions for hypothesis: What is Smart ? What does Smarter London mean in 2016 and 2040 ? How does the growth of the city affect – housing, mobility, cost of living and wellbeing? What are the role of cities and the fall of nation states mean? What are the role of virtual communities and e-citizenship mean?
Course Discription
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PORTOBELLO PROJECT MOVING THE MARKET FORWARD
D6
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WHO ARE WE? + WHAT DO WE DO?
D6
D6: six industrial+interaction designers. We are a co-design firm that focuses around community organizations to help develop understandings between businesses, locals and tourists in an ever changing London environment. With the help of Portobello Market’s community and every individual participant, we have collected useful information and data to discover the wants, needs, desires, hopes and fears of the market. We are proud to say that the Portobello Project is a reflection of the community, and it is also a project for the community. Throughout this project, we have constantly reminded ourselves how important the community is through all of our design.
Photo - left to right
Sam Fu - Strategist + Co-Product Designer Angelia Kim- Graphic Designer Erol Ozcelik- Researcher + Co-Graphic Xilong Liu - Product Designer Devon Huck - Entrepreneur Li Pang - Project Manager
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WHY
Did we choose Portobello Market?
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Every market in London has a special and unique feel such as Camden Lock, Borough, Berwick Street, and more. But Portobello Market was an area that particularly appealed to us because for most of us, it was the first market that we visited-given that we lived 10 minutes walking distance from it in Bayswater. The pastel colored buildings, the creative second hand goods, the vibrant and active atmosphere, and the smell of aromatic hot foods are just some of the aspects that immediately caught our attention and stole our hearts. We envisioned a bright future for this market and were hopeful and eager to contribute our design knowledge and skills to make it come to life.
portobello project
CONTENT
74 FINAL DESIGN Check out the final result of all our hard work and sweat towards this project.
Community Engagement
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A full understanding of the history, overview and examination of the portobello market.
We created questions and prototypes to put our hypotheses to a test to learn the wants, needs and desires.
Portobello Perspectives
Social Media+Analytics
Immersion+Observation
68 As part of our design research, we conducted several activities with the community.
Content
To help us gain a better understanding, we got to hear the voices of the people who make up the market.
Designing+Testing
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See how we spread the word about our concepts and how the audience interacted back with us via Twitter.
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Golborn Market (hot foods)
£ Chair - Portobello End
NEW NEW
NEW
High-End Portobello Green Market
NEW
£
£
NOW PLAYING
SUPERMAN VS. BATMAN NOTTING HILL JUNGLE BOOK
MARKET TRAIL Electric Cinema
Golborn Market Hot Foods New Goods Flea Market New Goods Fruit and Veg New Goods Antiques
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HISTORY
When it comes down to Portobello's past, it is a fairly recent story because much of its history has been taken place within living memory. Portobello Road was named after a battle in the Caribbean in the eighteenth century. The Gulf of Mexico's Porto Bello was one of the ports where goods were exchanged from the New World to Spain, supplying central America with goods from Europe. In 1739, Admiral Sir Edward Vernon had captured the port with a small fleet of ships from the British navy. As a result, major cities celebrated the victory and streets and districts were named after Vernon and Portobello.
portobello project
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THE MAP OF PORTOBELLO
INDEX
A BRIEF OVERVIEW
Portobello Road is one of London's best known streets and an international tourist attraction that is located in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This west London road is famous for its markets and the liveliness of the crowds who tend to go on the weekends to buy or simply look around. The busiest day of the week is Saturday, where the road flourishes with various stalls. From antique dealer stalls, racks of new second hand goods, ethnic goods, flea markets, fruit and vegetable stalls, to street food stalls that fill the area with the scrumptious smell of hot foods. Along this mile long and narrow winding street lies residential cobbled side roads.
Antiques NEW
New Goods Fruits+Vegetables
ÂŁ
Flea Market Hot Foods
Portobello Community Housing
NEW
NEW
Antique 101 Arcade
immersion+observation
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Immersion + Observation
When we first visited Portobello road on a Thursday afternoon, the streets felt deserted and the atmosphere seemed to have no life. The only people there seemed to be the store owners, who actually taught us that if we were looking for the “real” Portobello market experience, we would have to come on a Friday/Saturday when the market is actually open. As we walked through the quiet street, we noticed a wide variety of stores and stalls. We could feel a bit of gentrification as we observed high end stores (Kurt Geiger, All Saints, etc.) next to antiques stores and corporate markets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, etc.) next to produce stalls.
Portobello is changing through gentrification, whether it is a good or bad thing is up to the people to decide.
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portobello project
WEEKDAY
VS WEEKEND
STALL
VS
CORPORATE
ANTIQUE
VS
MODERN
While the weekday seemed to be pretty empty (crowd wise and stalls wise), we noticed that the weekends are the complete opposite. During the weekend times, it felt like we were “walking with a herd of sheep”- crowded and slow. Street performers lightened up the atmosphere while adding a quirky twist to the environment. immersion+observation
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a chalkboard for your thoughts?
We built a chalkboard to collect people’s opinions about Portobello Market.
We have cake
This cultural probe method allowed us to do two things. One ask simple questions in a very crowded and busy market where people came to us because they were interested, but also two it opened up dialog. people that came tended to write happy things but would talk about the negatives. This mainly happened because they did not want to “ruin” a beautiful thing that was happening on the market and didn’t want to give the wrong impression to visitors.
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portobello project
cultural probes In order to get a better glimpse into the problems of locals and tourists walking through Portobello we needed to be in the middle of the action. We created a large chalkboard for visibility of not only us but our brand as D6. Through the chalkboard we tested two methods, a method of direct interaction where we stood in front of the board and one where we stood away.
NEGATIVE - 2 PROTESTING - 2
MARKET ITEMS -3
WHAT DOES THIS MARKET MEAN TO YOU?
FOOD - 13
NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK - 6
OTHER - 5
HOME + COMMUNITY - 10
Many responses on the chalkboard were points on the market itself that ended up more in the positive limelight from the perspectives of the tourists. However many people talked with us about the hidden back story of locals and the troubles they have been going through.
CLOTHING -4 MUSIC - 8
WANT MORE __ IN THIS MARKET? Here we started to understand that there was a disconnect between the market and the consumers. With what the consumers wanted and what the market was providing. Here it shows that there is a need for better communication.
LOVE - 6
CONSUMERS - 4
FOOD - 12
CREATIVE GOODS - 7
SPACE - 4
OTHER - 4
ANTIQUES - 2
cultural probes
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market managers advocates politicians “The market is slowly losing it’s soul it once had” tim “Olive man” of portobello
“I HAVE MEMORIES OF THE MARKET BEING SO LIVELY WHEN I WAS YOUNG, THEY FEEL FAKE” ______ OF CATH KIDSTON
stall owners new and older residents high end store workers
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“THERES THE NEW COMMUNITY THAT WANTS THE MARKET GONE, LIKE WESTWAY AND THEN THERES US.” RIBeNA - COMMUNITY ADVOCATE
portobello project
Interviewing Community + visitors With the help of the traders, managers, locals, and touristic visitors of the market, we gained an abundance of valuable insights. Many believed that with the growing change of London, including Portobello Market, most areas have lost their unique feel to it and became less of a “community” space. We were told that pubs began to drift off as coffee shops began to flourish every street, while high end brand stores started to take over antique stores. The idea of a communal space has began to lack as this market, and London in general, has become gentrified. Whether from tourists not knowing the history of the places they are visiting or from locals being angry at tourists taking up their daily living space, this is a conflict that we wanted to focus on.
“THIS IS JUST A CHECK OFF ON A LIST OF PLACES TOURISTS COME, it feels like DISNEYLAND” nicholas - MARKET MANAGER
“c o m m u n i c at i o n through the market and the residents is difficult as it is” MARK - MARKET MANAGER
As we talked to the market managers, they were quite worried about the future of Portobello Market because most of the visitors were well above 20 years old. Because not many young locals are visiting, they feared that the next generation of stall traders will lack people wanting to take this job. In the end the main question is, “how do we take the market forward without respecting the past?” interviews
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tesco vs stalls?
Aggressive traders + Community
Appearance of stalls
Future Produce Stalls
Gathering of possible directions we could possibly go into after conducting our research with the community
need a younger generation
PORTOBELLo
insights + I D E AT I O N
older + newer community
improve Relationships
dialog of market
Lacking Space
seating community spaces dwell time
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portobello project
opening a space What would happen within a community if we were to set a space up in the middle of the market and observe the conversations that took place? This space would act as a resting are because of Portobello’s lack of seating in an age of a different shopping experience we once had compared to the past, where we went to the market to just buy things, today its an experience journey. Where you buy things, buy hot food, sit relax and enjoy the full day there.
testin g ideas
where does food come from ? Through a period of years, Portobello’s symbol of the produce stands have been declining. In the next two years we estimate that there will be 2 produce stands compared to the 30 only 10 years ago. We wanted to know why people shop at Tesco and Stalls and if they could tell the difference between the quality of produce. Yes, its a carrot suit.
testing hypothesis
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third space goals
How can we promote conversation and dialogue between people centered around Portobello in order to each one another about Portobello?
Creation of rest areas in market (Increase dwell time and experience)
increase interaction/conversation (Between locals, market and tourists)
?
Teach visitors about market (show that there is more to the market than just a pretty place to be checked off of a bucket list)
Potentially change flow of visitors (the market wants people to see more of portobello then just the main market area, there are more stores and areas waiting for visitors)
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portobello project
CONCEPT - CREATE A SPACE OUTSIDE WHERE PEOPLE CAN COME TOGETHER TO LEARN ABOUT ONE ANOTHER, AND ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MARKET
?
goals
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What is it? The Third Space is a communal area in a ever changing London, built for Portobello in mind, the space is one where locals, visitors and other members of the community come together with the curiosity of question on the board. Through testing and development it was designed with the goal of gaining feedback from the community in order to better develop the community (and market)
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portobello project
introduc ing the thir d space GAZEBO ROOF
Collapsible gazebo made of aluminum for a light but sturdy structure. Protection from rain and sunlight during hot days.
INTERACTIVE BOARD
A board for a person to write their thoughts about the “daily question provided by the market. The information is sent to the market for them to analyze and understand the needs and wants of their target users. It also provides locals, tourists and others a conversation starter to learn more about one another. Social media applications can go through the screens - this is to help promote the market to a younger but larger audience and help conversations to occur outside of London.
THE BASE
A foundation to hold the furniture intact to the ground as well as the poles. It is the standard size of a stall area in Portobello Market.
ACCORDION BENCH
Three-ply water resistant cardboard for light-weight yet durable usage. Expands from 34 cm to 169 cm and comfortably fits 6 people. It has handles on the side for two people to carry because it is 160 cm wide. Seating is mainly for leaning against for comfort, and arrangement encourages people facing one another for content
0 5 2 , 1 ÂŁ seating, y l n o with
nd ded inclu tronics a elec ering wo people) covsetup requires t f
ion o
allat (inst
the third space
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USAGE IN PORTOBELLO In the image below you see a community of locals and tourists coming together on a busy Saturday afternoon. They slowly gather to the spot as they read the question on the board and are interested to interact with it. As they do, others comment on each other’s work, the space and the question itself. This idea is to promote the lessening of public gathering places in a gentrified London. The space uses existing stall spots that aren’t being used by the market traders. These can vary from place to place and can also vary in amount. Instead of wasting the space we feel it is important to use all the available space the market can in order to grow into a better tomorrow.
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portobello project
see it in o l l e b o port
Only seating area on Portobello Road.
Use available Trader stall spaces
the third space
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project timeline This is the general project development timeline established by D6 for clients. It begins with the approach phase in which D6 familiarizes itself with the client and what their needs are. This is followed by a period of research which can be repeated as needed if the results are inconclusive. During this phase, concepts are prototyped and tested to ensure that they perform as necessary. The final design phase is used to refine the design that came out of the research phase. This phase also prepares the product for manufacturing. The implementation phase is quite flexible due to the many variables that come with the manufacturing process.
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portobello project
how w
e do it
(timewise)
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D6 manages the manufacturing process because most community organizations don’t know anything about how to manufacture an object. We handle everything from contractor bids to logistics and handling to ensure that we don’t simply leave the client with a CAD model at the end of the design process.
the third space
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who are we? + what can we offer?
D6 is a co-design firm that focuses around community organizations to help develop understandings between businesses, locals and tourists in a ever-changing London environment. Through our process, we work with multiple different groups at different stages of our process. During the entire process we keep the organization aware and informed of what we do and the discoveries we find.
D6 Image of the medium graph
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portobello project
commu ni co-des ty ign
As a Co-Community Design Firm it is important to us to research and test with the community.
the third space
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how it is used
The Third Space is organized by the members of the organization when there are open spaces in the market. The furniture is readily lightweight and easy to set up with little work to do. The question written on the board is chosen everyday and can be used multiple times to gather more information from a larger audience. At the end of the day after tourists, locals and other community members write their answer the information is feed back to the organization after they put the Third Space away. This information can be analyzed and categorized in the future for the Market’s own development and for the stall owners knowing what to sell.
Set-up requres two people, D6 will show process and usage of feedback
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portobello project
2 portobello organization members carry lightweight furniture to open sites
set up site by extending bench and powering screen via street outlets
question of the day is written on board for others to answer
What does this_?
info
usage
at the end of the day the answers are transfered to the organization’s page to use
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FEEDBACK from users Our primary stakeholder, Portobello Market Manager Nicholas, commented on our final product. He sees the value of the space, as London is changing and now feels that Portobello should change with it. The market today is not the same as it was in the past. Today is about the experience the dwelling of the people to enjoy the day. That is the main reason why Portobello doesn’t have many seating area because it is used to the past where people walked in, bought and left. Here, he feels that it will also help with the feedback they get from the visitors and locals, whom before had been very hard to gain information from (used polls, e-mails, paper and pencil). Portobello has been trying to go steps forward by thinking of complicated ways of getting information but now Mark believes that they should take a few steps back and look at the simple methods that work the best through working with us and this project.
the fact that you have to talk to a human being. it’s like... “powerful.”
“IT IS A WAY TO COLLECT THE INFORMATION, WHY THEY ARE COMING TO THE MARKET AND IT’LL HELP US, THE TRADERS UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE DOING RIGHT AND WRONG. “
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portobello project
“THE NEED OF A THIRD SPACE, IS A STRONG ONE that WE NEED IT here in portobello.”
nicholas - MARKET MANAGER feedback
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BRANDING + STYLE GUIDE
From the insights we learned from our interviews and cultural probe, we created a more definite identity of what our branding should. Some of the key terms that we wanted to reflect were: soft pastel colors, a sense of whole, unique, alive, vintage, special, quirky.
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1st Iteration
2nd Iteration
THE PORTOBELLO PROJECT
Final Iteration
THE PORTOBELLO PROJECT
Moving the Market Forward
Taking the Market Forward
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portobello project
Our main source of communication and advertisement to the public was through the social media platform Twitter.
sions s e r p m 65.1K i day period 80 over a
SOCIAL MEDIA
This was how we spread the word for folks to come out to participate in our design testings!
On average we had 1 like per day
On average we had 1 retweet per day
On average we had 1 link click per day
We had an engagement rate of 1.5%
branding + social media
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e to m o c l e w lo l e b o t r po
D6
to e m o c l we llo e b o t r o p
D6
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Warm wishes from historic Portobello Market!
Portobello Project
@D6London D6London@gmail.com
Warm wishes from historic Portobello Market!
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Portobello Project
@D6London D6London@gmail.com
Thank You! D6 would like to especially thank: Mark Atkinson, Nicholas Kasic and the wonderful staff at The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Street Trading Office. This project would have been impossible without their continued support and openness to our incessant questioning.
D6
Everyone at Gold Finger Factory, Marie Cudennec, and Liam Dryden. The random strangers wandering Portobello Market who took a moment out of their busy lives to talk to weird students in the middle of the road. Finally, our amazing roommates Karina and Tiffany for tolerating our late night Tuesday meetings, we love you more than we can say here on this piece of paper. Without your help and support, we would not have made this project possible.
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This book catalogues 14 weeks of a Design research with 18 American Industrial and Interaction Design students running cultural probes and co-labs across Brixton, Shoreditch and Portobello Market. The aim was to understand how design could be applied by working together with local London communities to address urban changes happening within their neighbourhoods. The design process followed a rapid probing for key issues to model products and services that tested plausible hypotheses that shapes future positive scenarios for these neighbourhoods in London.
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