Guerrilla Interventions: Project Process Journal

GUERRILLA INTERVENTIONS ////// Coffee Shop

Edward Allbutt Product Design Year 1 Glasgow School of Art 15/16

Glasgow School of Art 2015/16 Product Design

DISCOVER DEFINE DEVELOP DELIVER

DISCOVER

Introduction

Designers are frequently in a mode of ‘critical evaulation’, and this project is designed to get you thinking about the world around you in this way, by looking at everyday activities through the ‘lens’ of design.

The project asks you to investigate, initially in teams of 4 or 5, a number of ‘everyday’ social situations in the guise of ‘social design anthropologists’; the research task to observe and document the various ways in which environmental factors influence, for better of worse, the experience you are witness to.

How might the environment, subsidiary products and service provision better support the behaviours, needs and desireds of your observed user?

ENVIRONMENT: COFFEE SHOP

DISCOVER Environmental Research In a ‘Coffee Crawl’ of Charing Cross and through to the West End of Glasgow, we gathered a collection of research and observations from an acutely diverse range of coffee shops.

GESSO Charing Cross, Glasgow Establised 2015 Monday, 14:05

This particular coffee shop doubles as an exhibition space. With large blank walls and clear floors, this sense of space and availabilty permeates the business.

The blankness only serves to highlight the artwork/objects that remain.

DISCOVER

Costa Coffee Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow Monday, 12.00

This successful business has a high turnover of customers. Staff struggle to clear tables constantly as customers come and go.

There was a definite method to the seating arrangements; all was highly regimented and thoughtful but lacking in customization.

DEFINE

DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES I initially chose to focus on the position of people within coffee shops, to look into where they would sit, and the motivation behind their choices.

I identified the fact that often the layout of a shop guides the cutstomers around the space as in the way in which the business wants them to move.

Entry to Fridges to Order to Payment

DEFINE

Linked to this observation is people’s unwiilingness to sit at tables occupied by other customers.

Human beings often value their own private space despite being in public settings, and discourage sharing tables.

DEVELOP

DESIGN SOLUTION I This initial design idea would encourage social interaction in what is otherwise a very closed setting.

Upon entering the coffee shop and buying their coffee, the customer would also be expected to pick up a raffle ticket, allocating them to a certain seat.

This would discourage the solitary seating by which customers often sit alone and occupy entire tables, they would be motivated to sit beside strangers.

DEVELOP

DESIGN SOLUTION II This clock-face would deliver a a new command with every 20 minute interval.

Depending on how long the customer would spend in the shop, they evolve through the series of commands.

They are encouraged, increasingly, to interact with that which surrounds them; it being customers or features of the coffee shop.

DEVELOP

DESIGN SOLUTION III Upon buying a coffee, the customer would pick up one of these marked stirrers. When all the stirrers are brought back together, they would produce a picture, graphic or slogan.

This design would encourage social interaction. People would have to converse in order to build up the desired picture, in doing so creating more of a dialogue between fellow customers in the coffee shop.

DEVELOP

DESIGN SOLUTION IV This sleeve is traditionally used to protect the hands from the heat of fresh coffee.

In this case it as a board for a small game, by which the user is expected to collate a number of signatures from strangers. When they are collected conclusively the initial user receives a free coffee from the business that presented the challenge.

Agsin, the coffee shop becomes an environment by which people are comfortable conversing and interacting, coming together for a common goal.

I became most interested in this table-top structure. By its striking shardlike shapes there was potential for a number of different final outcomes from its assembly.

As well as being the most aesthetically pleasing design, it offered more potential for experimentation and multiple uses than with any of my other designs.

DEVELOP

DEVELOP This idea was scaled up and re-imagined to be a free-standing form in addition to the possibility of being a table-top object.

The product would act as common, functional furniture with a number of uses.

It provides the choice as to the form of its structure to lie entirely with the user.

DEVELOP

DESIGN EXPERIMENTS I

I conducted a number of experiments, asking the participants to build their own structure from the flat-packed pieces provided, depending entirely on their own preferences.

In this case the participants chose to isolate themselves and build a privacy barrier.

DEVELOP

DESIGN EXPERIMENTS II The act of building the structure itself forces a dialogue of some sort, from which point the users can decide how they want the piece to work for them.

Some chose to build a piece that would bring them closer, giving a sort of secret enclosure from the outside environment.

The structure functions as a satisfying table-top piece of art by which its actual use can be whatever the user deems it to be.

DELIVER

A collection of geometrical shapes lie on the coffee-table beside customers. They are left independently to the task of building up a structure of their own.

FINAL DESIGN

DELIVER

DELIVER

The structure could come to fulfill a number of uses. In this case, as well as acting as a divider it also holds a number of the owners possessions and becomes a sort of storage system.

FINAL DESIGN

DELIVER

Edward Allbutt Product Design Year 1 Glasgow School of Art 15/16