portfolio unit 2 | 2017
maria vittoria gandolfi
contents 5
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2.2 introduction
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mapping industrial design
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narrative and typology
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2.1 industrial design for service
and then what?
This project focused on developing a service or a product service system to improve London’s air quality. The aim of the work was to encourage individuals, groups and communities to better understand the air pollution matter and to create a concept that could proactively engage in individual and collective behaviours. Alison Prendiville, our tutor, supported us along the whole project process. She first introduced us first introduced us the issue dealing with many people who underestimate the impact of air pollution in their areas and which therefore showed an interest of OS Geovation in exploring how mapping data may engage people with this social and environmental challenge. In the first stage of the project, we decided to carry out the research phase in group. We explored existing data, information and discourses on the theme to identify opportunities for deeper exploration. By browsing on articles, reports and precedents design projects around the issue, we became gradually more familiar with the theme understanding different lines of thought and we soon realised that one of the problems of educating people of the air pollution issue is that it is invisible yet. So, we were understanding we had to bear in mind the following question: how to make what is invisible, visible, making the intangible (data, air pollution) tangible (the physical environment)? This phase did not last very long to allow us to focus on further investigation and it was replaced by the interaction directly with outside users gathering first insights.
2.1 industrial design for service
enterprise
Make the invisible visible
discourse
publics
service
Drafting my portfolio for the first Unit let me think again to the progress I have achieved in the projects, their strengths and weaknesses. It made me aware of the mistakes I have done but also the skills I learnt and improved during a few months. This second critical journal has served the same function for me but still allowed me to gain better perspective on my own future practice. At the beginning of the Unit Two, we were asked to position ourselves in between four key sub categories of industrial design: Enterprise, Publics, Service and Discourse. I located my practice between Service and Publics especially because I am deeply attracted by working on societal challenges taking a user centred view. At the start, I believed the Public project would have given me the chance to work in touch with people and meet their expectations about a tangible problem. However, I soon realised that there was a parity in how I could identify a problem and address it within each project. Today, I am satisfied I developed my Service project and in this way I met new methodologies that are proving to be useful for my further major project. 5
The interaction In group, me, Elsa, Stella, Efe and Chris created our design probe pack consisting in paper cards of visual maps, diagrams, questions or blanket spaces to fill with sketches. This aimed to understand and define public awareness of air quality in London through observations and in-depth interviews. We started from more quantitative surveys e.g. asking people to guess the amount of air pollution in different cities, or to indicate which most common diseases was caused by the air quality. Going more into details, we managed to gather more personal experience in people daily life in relation to their perception of the air quality around the city. We asked focused question about their daily route, which means of transport they usually take and which areas they perceive as poor or good in terms of air quality. After gaining a more detailed perception of the context, we reframed the topic. We wanted to have a better overview of the costumer journey and experiences in order to later locate the users in a specific target. We provided them a booklet where they could write down usual items carried with them, daily interactions with strangers but also with services around the city. During the engagement of external possible users, we documented evidences via small films, audio and photographs which allowed us then to better analyse insights.
Probe Pack - Air Quality In London Thank you for agreeing to participate in our project. In this pack you will find a questionnaire and some (hopefully) playful research materials that will give us some clues about the topic. Dont forget to have fun and feel free to draw outside the lines! Please draw your daily route;
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In a group discussion, we first codesigned rough personas sketching all the information received. We wanted to identify people’s behaviour in relation to their awareness or unawareness and depending on how they could care or not about issue. By doing this, we then categorised six types of people: asthma sufferers, environmentalists, cyclist, young parents, middle aged people and indifferent. According with our summary of data, we described them as for their habits, choices and opinion, experiences and frustrations related to the air quality issue. This group session was really useful, in my opinion, because it helped us to capture and visualise users’ mindset and to let us decide which type of persona we wanted to focus on. It was a crucial moment of constructive debate and mutual exchange of views within our group.
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At this point, I first roughed out types of people I was most interested in: young parents and middle-aged people. After having a watchful eye open for London’s external environment, I soon realised that it would be easier to get in touch with young parents as they proved to be more open for engaging. With Elsa we manged to engage lot parents with young children asking them focused question about their habits, routine and activities involving the kids. We went to several places in different days, especially to parks, museums, outside schools, playgrounds like Hampstead Heath park, Holland park, Natural History museum, British museum, Granary Square, but also libraries or leisure centres like the British library and Camden Council Library. In this way, we were able to pinpoint the places mostly visited by this category and to outline possible service touchpoints. 10
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I started therefore to create my own placemaking in a specific area of London, Hampstead, an area characterised by quite low air pollution where family with kids can enjoy outdoor activities and spend most of the time in parks. Exploring the area by walk and “shadowing� my target user, I re defined my persona and I realised that most of the parents usually walk around their borough as the children do during their daily routine. Outside of the school proved to be the place where the children and the parents stay together, they chat and sometimes they decide to spend the afternoon together due to children activities. Hence my challenge: how to make this daily physical activity funnier, so how to make kids and parents aware of the importance of walking and encourage them to walk to stay healthy and preserve the environment from air pollution?
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The value I wanted to point out with my service concept was the following: helping children develop spatial awareness and learn about their local area, to make them more aware about the air pollution reduction while promoting not to use cars or other means of transport. So, to encourage children and parents to lead healthier lifestyle doing more physical activity.
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concept map
App
Parents with kids
School Booklet with map
Exploration around the area
Get point and Be rewarded
Doing MISSIONS
5 senses + 1
Walking around the environment
Knowledge of the topic: air pollution
My Explore your mission concept was a service pointed towards children: a booklet for exploration provided by the schools encourages children to use it with an App. The children can explore the area walking around the enviÂŹronment and at the same time developing a knowledge about the air quality. They must complete several missions around the environment aimed to develop their 5 senses and the 6th one, about the sharing aspect with other children. After each mission, they will get points and they will be rewarded e.g. with free activities at the leisure centre. They can experience such a treasure hunt searching for some hidden sign around the naÂŹture, and once spotted out these do the mission.
storyboard
touchpoint 14
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What I leant Along the whole project, I get in touch with different and new service design methods with the aim of engaging individuals, groups and communities. I really appreciated all the processes I went through in group but also at an individual level. Together we discovered spaces and how to build a first contact with people to gather crucial insights for our field research. We implemented our methodology practice really practicing more each time and learning the proper approach to interact with users. On my own I developed my skills of self-direction by putting into practice the methods I learnt. It was more about testing service design methods and quick and dirty prototypes rather than finished products and highfidelity solutions. Perhaps this was so that I realised I should have more defined my service touchpoints: I grasped that the UX with the external environment needed to be situated in a bit better way, through different touchpoints. Nevertheless, I am now sure that this awareness will prove useful in my further development of the thesis project. At the moment, I am already using some of the methods acquired in this last project of the Unit Two and carrying on this approach I will need to translate them into a real and detailed design proposal. What I gained the most in this project is the importance of interaction with people, target users, which sometimes might be the starting point to explore new prospects and interesting development. It was like that in choosing my thesis project ‘s subject. 17
2.2 introduction Industrial design has changed When we talk about industrial design we are traditionally talking about a modern process born from an industrial culture in which the relation between production and consumption prevails and the capitalist is the main character acting in this context. The industrial context, which historically determined industrial design, has changed and moved towards something hard to define. This is because the reality around us has revealed itself through something unknown involved in the digital dimension: we are living in a universe which is “real” but not “tangible” somehow and essentially spending most of our real time on digital dimension. Our “real” conception is not the same as before but rather it has been enriched by complexity. Today we are witnessing to a “dematerialisation” phenomenon: some physical objects and spaces are missing, and their physical nature has been replaced by a material and immaterial system which is called “sistema prodotto”. I first heard this definition uttered by my BA head teacher in the first year and I am more and more convinced of how much it reflects what is industrial design today.
The threshold between the traditional production system, in which the industrial designer perhaps found a reassuring technical position, and this new picture of reality is getting crowded of interesting development, subjects of study which we designers are working on to define a “no longer only industrial design”. In responding favourably to this speeding up of reality changes, I think the aim of the industrial design could be to face the research, ideation, experimentation and design process in a permanent way, so not to achieve a goal which determines the end of a project but rather continuously studying these processes in real time. ¬ As “design” is the name given to the modern man’s need to modify the reality by practicing what which is possible, hence the designer’s aim is to forecast the future. The role of modern industrial designer is also to study a “not real” but realistically feasible subject and through this incessant study he outlines possible scenarios which could be a look to the future. On my way to become an industrial designer, I persuade myself more and more that I every day should ask myself questions, so developing the problem finding, to reorient people needs and show original and doable prospects, and finally make them.
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mapping industrial design Moving forward with the Unit Two of my master, it is even more clear how complicate the industrial design discipline is. In order to locate my own practice and then the boundaries of my major project, we were asked to explore the multifarious elements and perspectives of this discipline through a start-up exercise. By glimpsing key areas of interest, we have been finally able to identify contexts and then specific issues that could fit our project intent. At the beginning, we individually drafted some words on a big poster which came up thinking of the industrial design meaning. This allowed us to open a discussion together around all those design categories and larger areas of society, culture and environment which we are surrounded by and design thrives on. 21
First, it was quite instinctive to delineate different design disciplines which we were more familiar with. In the first phase of Unit Two we had been introduced to most of these disciplines and we explored them through our projects to orientate then our practice. Thanks also to this evolutionary experience of our individual project, our more informed knowledge allowed us to define other disciplines tied in with the first ones, some more distinctive and other more generic. At this stage, we started to list fields of interest identified as global concerns and we described these in detail by laying out main topics around. For me, these topics represent what we as designers attempt to explore in our daily “mission�, our continuous research of the reality. They embody what we could call subject of study or all different drifts and scenarios on which designers affix their renovated design knowledge. Going more into details, I had a deeper insight of what these concerns can be: they soon become the global needs which designers must intervene on and set a continuous modification on to guide people wishes. By doing this, we automatically set a hierarchy of all issues and contexts we previously outlined, and we were able to make choices about the way of representation, what needed to be highlight or rather leave out.
Collaborative
DESI GN TOOLS WORMHOLE
SOCIAL DESIGN
PRODUCT DESIGN ECONOMICAL
SPECULATIVE DESIGN
SERVICE DESIGN
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
POLITICAL
SOCIAL DESIGN INDIVIDUAL
SOCIAL
MATERIAL DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTAL
In di vi du al
TOPIC ISSU ES SYTheSTEM journey
DI SC I P LI N E S SY S T E M The map 1
Elora:Maker World Principles towards a New Approach of Comfort
After an iterative reflection about the territory of industrial design, we were quite Future ready to mapStef: the An keyAgeless issuesBoundless in a complex existing map: the Solar System. We all agreed that this system could well represent howVicky: the Aging design disciplines and the main fields of interest gravitate towards their sun, the industrial design. However, the complexity of the Solar System didn’t look like enough to visually embody all the elements and how they systematically play a role on the design universe. So, we decided to reshape the map and create two solar system. 2
In the first one, the Disciplines System, the planets illustrate the six main disciplines while the satellites, which orbit the planets, Yuie: Design against PTSD define in detail the subjects and methods of each disciplines. In the second one, the Topic Issues System, Chris: Re-plastic the planets are the seven issues of interest previously selected and the moons around them represent the main topics related to Yuki: Cross Species Homes each global concerns. The more the topics are closed to the planet, the more these are specific and detailed. Between the two systems, we place a Design Tools Wormhole comprising the main tools and methods through which you can develop, illustrate and accomplish a design project.
The route of our individual project was represented by different space shuttles which undertake/do a journey in the design universe. My personal space shuttle started from the sustainable design planet and orbit the social design one, moving then to the product design planet. After passing through the design tools wormhole, my project left the Disciplines System behind and moved to the second system gravitating towards individual, social and material issues planet. This type of journey has not to be considered in a chronological and unidirectional way but rather as an iterative process: the disciplines and issues which the project deals with constantly and simultaneously feed the project territory.
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MAP OF INDUSTRI AL DESIGN UNIVERSE 22
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Next journey At this point where I am developing my project intent, I have clearer picture of the path to follow in my mind even though it has not changed so much from the one I traced in our map. My project objective brings to light an actual situation and a specific problem starting from a sociological reflection, so it should inevitably touch the social design territory: key words as aging, community, education and communication are comprised in the social topic planet. The methods I intend to use in my project have to deal with service design field, mostly because I will need to interact directly with my target user: so, to gather insights through observations, in-depth interviews, group discussions, shadowing. Also through co-designing methods I will need to visualise the user experience This project also will orbit the product design planet involving the manufacturing of physical objects. It deals both with the material side and the digital dimension by exploring the ICT (Information and Communications technology) field and trying to develop an IoT based intervention.
s e r vi c e
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s o c i al
product
m a ter i a l
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d i g i tal
wick 1: the elderly life candle 1: the elderly wax: skills and knoweledges
narrative and typology The more you lose the more you gain
candle 2: young generation
wick 2: young life
The title said it all: to build a narrative around our project making use of a physical typology. In this initial stage, we were asked to unpack our major project in relation to the issues, context and the research methodology to materialize it and so make it more visible using a typology. The main key of this exercise was to nurture the connection between theoretical research and tangible outcome through a speculative strategy. “Typology� as conventional examples, as the result of the classification of things recognisable as a cultural norm according to its physical characteristics, function and context. At the beginning, we created in group a large list of possible typologies in small paper cards so each of us could picking them randomly. We could choose more than one typology and decide individually whether to apply the exercise to all or just one of them. In both cases it was important to choose the typologies in an arbitrary way in order not to have a direct connection with our project but rather to push us to gather new insights.
My first typology was the candle and I decided to focus only on this one. First, a technical description of the candle typology popped up with an explanatory statement: a cylindrical body of wax or another flammable solid substance, formed on wick, used as a source of artificial light. I started then to sketch the physical typology according to different categories: its main characteristics, functions, other uses and personality. These represent the structure and detail which the typology provides and may be manipulated, inverted and more generally changed to create a narrative of the project’s intent. At this stage, I was not in the right head space regarding my major project and I had not taken yet one specific direction. This why it was difficult to build up interesting connections with my typology. The exercise itself helped me to narrow my theme down and to focus my research towards deeper reflection.
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The narrative The starting point for my project was the ageing. Ageing as a cellular decay in the biological sense. Ageing as a multifactorial process characterised by a progressive drop of functional abilities. I have soon realised that this definition does not represent the problem but rather the inevitability around the matter. I started then to wonder which type of changes this reality could socially bring on. As the people age they get weaker, but at the same time they dispense more wisdom and knowledge collected along the life. A simple expression came up: the more you lose, the more you gain, so the more your health “wears itself out� the more your knowledge grows. This idea soon made me think about the candle operating principle: as soon as the candle starts burning, it becomes more and more short; the wick burns out, the wax begins to melt and a part of it is collected at the base of the candle. I began to associate the wick to the elderly life and the wax to all those knowledges and skills collected along the whole life. The wick (so the life) starts burning out as the people are getting older. Whereas the wax melt represents the experiences accomplishment: this needs to be shared and not wasted in order to disseminate the elderly’s know-how to younger generation. In this way, as the new candle is formed thanks to the melted wax which is taking shape on a new wick, youth can grow up also through old people spread of knowledge. 28
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The route The subject of the knowledge collecting I showed was also strengthened by an actual situation in our modern society: the increasing life expectancy which drives the elderly to lead a longer and better quality of life. Therefore, it is precisely this overturning of the ageing meaning that brings about changes of the elderly behaviour, as for example their will to keep on working in order to teach and share his knowledge to younger generation. The image of my candle typology associated to the narrative around it helped me to better locate the project. The iterative approach I used by developing the exercise allowed me to deeply explore one possible route for my project’s intent and to outline my objectives. 30
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and then what? Over the last two months I have passed through different phases: confusion, inspiration and orientation. I needed to clarify me what I was most interested in dealing with major project development. Perhaps I spent too much time to narrow down my starting topic but at the same time I have the feeling I have more deepened my research. I curiously noticed how the value of the lifelong learning is spreading across our modern society and thanks to that I understood how much would be important to preserve own skills and learn new ones especially in a rapidly ageing society. In my challenge of shaping the New Old’s mindset, I would like to make the digital skills learning and training more intriguing and show older people the opportunities to use those skills in order to keep up with technological advances. Using a metaphor could be one first possible approach to tackle this issue: metaphor as a bridge between what the elderly knows and what they don’t know and didn’t grow up with. So, I will act through a turn from the digital dimension to the analogic one by “converting” the technology’s code to a more familiar language. The elderly should recognise the analogy between digital and real world through a product that “doesn’t scream technology”. 33
So far, I had the opportunity to take part to some of the digital skills session provided by the Digital Eagle Barclays. During these classes, I met some older people and I could see how they behave around the matter: some seemed to be quite confident with own laptop or smartphone, other less so. As for my next steps, I will need to deeper identify older people’s frustration about the digital dimension that they can experience, getting in touch with as much user as I can. I have clear in my mind which steps I will need to undertake by developing a product based intervention. It will be a device that the elderly can interact with essentially at home and can work as a “translator” which communicate to the other technological tools. Through this, one older person could record the problem experienced independently interacting with the product and be guided by it. I will need to find out the best way to make the technology learning easier and let the elderly remind different steps in order to achieve a specific task. Working on the product shape will represent a challenging stage with due regard for user’s mindset, habits and needs. The most difficult phase I must face will be researching and defining the right technology to put into my device. A technology that could enable a simple interaction from my target user. Furthermore, another crucial step of my intent development will be the interaction testing between my users and the product to see if it works effectively. After all, people are the central aspect of my project. 34
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