Lugano Arte e Cultura — LAC
Transforming Public Spaces with Interaction Design
An Indian Interaction Design student documenting a transformation she will soon witness at LAC — Lugano Arte e Cultura.
Human Evolution has always fascinated me. We grow to be better and smarter (hopefully?) everyday. In a lot of ways, we have broadened our reach by constantly reminding ourselves that we are also responsible for more than we imagine. Our actions define our relationships with products and people around. And when you look closely, the way we interact with them really teaches you a lot about yourself. I just welcomed a whole new realisation this week about Service Design and why it makes us look forward to the future. I am looking forward to a different kind of future in Lugano. A live project finally involving us to transform a public space with the help of Interaction Design. It was one of my aha! moments. Grab a green-tea and get comfortable. This journey is just starting.
1 Feb 2016
Frog Design pleasantly surprised us with a new project which was in collaboration with LAC — Lugano Art and Culture centre. We met Alessio the marketing manager at LAC who walked us through the centre’s pillars, their vision of the space for people and how important it was to involve a lot of youngsters at the centre. I couldn’t help but notice a coincidence in the date they opened the centre with the day I left India for Switzerland. I arrived in Lugano and I remember taking the bus to school and noticing this building right opposite to the lake, stark and completely different from what Lugano has. It was bold, it has an incredible future-feeling to it, like it had something inside that was of ulterior quality and sophisticated that would wow my senses. But, I didn’t manage to go there that month or the next. However, I walked past it quite a few times. Often, stopping by to stare and marvel at this building. Now when I think of it, I also didn’t step in thinking I would be charged to enter the place.
When Marc came to visit me, I took him to LAC. Showing off how Lugano was not just a quaint little town, I dared to get inside LAC on a Sunday, to take a peek at what could it possibly house? I met Christina in the first few days when I moved here. She plays the violin at the Conservatory and she happened to perform at the LAC soon. I lived in a house with Andrea Connena, a Pianist who performed at the LAC too. I met a young, beautiful girl called Rachele who invited me to LAC for her ballet performance. EVERYBODY loves the LAC. But I never managed to go there. All these incidents washed up to the surface of my memory yesterday because we are now working on a service design project with LAC to involve youngsters to make this centre a more happening and friendly location.
Working with Kim, Ramona and Minal is going to be exciting. The best part about this group is they know my skills and interests so well that it was easy to jump in and divide responsibilities. They understand my enthusiasm and my love for stories in everything we do.
We started discussing our first few experiences at LAC and a very interesting point came up.
None of us felt that we could go inside LAC to explore it.
Hmm. I thought I was the only one. I took Marc in November until the entrance and was immediately approached by a man asking if I was there for a concert/play? I was a little taken aback and felt that I shouldn’t be there if I wasn’t watching something. So I just explored the courtyard and headed out to the coffee shops around.
Kim told me that he didn’t manage to go beyond the open space in the front of LAC! He felt that the place was massive, it had a sense of grandness to it, that could be quite intimidating. Ramona had seen the inside but admitted that it was slightly unwelcoming and not really clear for people to be curious about what’s inside. Minal mentioned that she wanted to go there but never had a chance to. She however, felt the same about entering there, wondering if she had to pay for an entrance or something to explore further.
It felt like a place that wouldn’t encourage wanderers or people who have enough time to explore it.
It has a sense of seriousness, that sometimes might scare youngsters because it felt too grand or big, like a space that was highly serious about the people around and wouldn’t encourage anyone to wander and use that space for their personal work.
This brought us to the first common point of agreement on the project : LAC doesn’t have that “one thing” that can make people want to explore what’s inside. It’s got to have an ice-breaker of sorts, to bring in young people. It has to make itself a little more friendly, while people are making up their mind (or courage?) about going inside.
A couple of experiences about LAC and we were off to research about what other cultural spaces might be doing? Kim showed us a video of a museum making portraits on sand of people elsewhere.
A few days ago, I stumbled across Sree Sreenivasan’s MET interview. He is the CTO of MET museum, United States. Interestingly, he brought with him a digital experience that MET would gladly use in the future.
MET has an interesting department that uses technology to transform experiences at the Museum. It got me curious about what the rest of the cultural centres in the world are currently doing to engage a young audience.
This got me a lot of references to show the team. We planned to meet at LAC tomorrow at 10:30 am to explore the space and finally build courage to go inside!
Feb 2 2016
(Monologue. Skip if you want to jump to the documentation)
I left home to a cold, foggy Lugano. I was listening to Catharsis and wondering how uncanny it was that Indian music fits perfectly to the moment while I’m walking down the streets of Lugano. It was interestingly familiar. Sometimes I feel that Lugano or the Italians remind me of India. The tone that most Italians speak in sounds similar to Telugu, my mother tongue. Someone told me that Telugu is called the Italian of the East, I brushed it off as a funny story, but what’s similar is the fact that Telugu and Italian have words ending in vowels so they might sound familiar. But every Italian I mentioned this to disagreed. For instance, when I’m home and my neighbours are having a conversation while going downstairs, I don’t understand the subject but in my head I imagine a conversation and sync it with the tone and the sing-song way of the Italians and I complete a whole, imaginary conversation with conclusions in my head. I also find some similarities in our culture. Food, Music and Art, yes. But things related to Family, how they express their opinions with an appreciating honesty and their warmth towards new people and oh! Hospitality! Very good reasons to feel like a home away from HOME right?
The lake was covered with a blanket of fog. It looked like it just decided to not get out of bed. I didn’t mind that because Lugano was getting warmer. And I really wanted some cold days to feel the swissness truly. (Mr.Global Warming, calm down man, take it easy.)
I reached LAC at 10:30 and stood in silence for about two minutes, admiring its structure. It really was a pretty magnificient building. Especially the front space, I could visualise a 10 year old me with my old cycle spend evenings here, there was laughter waiting to be echoed by this space, kids with roller blades giggling, Hippo and dad sitting in a corner with some tea and occasionally having conversations, oh, I could go on! It was a visual burst of experiences.
But here’s what I saw:
I took a deep breathe and walked ahead. This was the first time, we’re going beyond the reception at LAC. It was a big moment.
LAC is a cultural centre with a Museo d’Arte della Svizzera italiana (Art Museum of Italian Switzerland), a 1000 seat concert and theatre venue. There is a cafe, a bar, a shop and another section which we didn’t explore which looked like lockers. It is situated right opposite to the Lake of Lugano, from the centre (piazza) I can walk towards the entrance and go into the Museum or the theatre or go towards the park.
Now we had a brief introduction to LAC. We were left with exploring the Museum and Gallery and the Theatre area. Friday is the official visit and we decided to explore those area with the manager.
Now we gathered our thoughts and began asking questions about the place. What did we like? Who did we see? What are LAC’s star qualities? etc. Our questions were mainly focussed on people that visited LAC. Do young people like this place? How do we know?
Here’s a questionnaire we prepared.
Typeform is incredible. It’s one of those survey creators that make every question seem fun. They actually make the user look forward to answering more. And the icons are yummy. Just look at the hearts. Sigh. And the coolest thing about them is their dashboard that also analyses data and crunches numbers and gives us rough calculations to make sense of how the survey fared.
A review on our desktop research gave us a break from LAC and drove the enthusiasm towards looking at other cultural centres, museums and galleries and their digital involvement with the crowd.
Here’s a shortlist of our desktop research:
Friday we meet up to discuss details of the references, review the questionnaire and finally approach people to fill it. Along with a special visit to LAC.
5 Feb 2016
The last two days were spent mostly on obsessing over pictures and stalking every cultural centre that has a presence online. I saw some incredible things happening in the other parts of the world, it’s inspiring how technology is so important in story telling. People are learning to accept the digital ways to make sense of things, we’re constantly connected digitally and any information is right there, available and waiting to reach you.
Today we officially explore LAC. At 11:00 am, we were greeted by the employees of LAC at the entrance and they personally took us corner to corner to explain about the centre.
LAC has an interesting history. It was an abandoned area until a few months ago and before that it was a hotel. After the Hotel ran out of business, it was proposed to turn into a Casino. A hotel next to it, International Du Lac still runs now and back then it would have been a good idea for people to visit the casino and go back to their rooms. However, Lugano already had a Casino. But then, they decided to turn it into a Cultural Centre finally, after a tussle and finally LAC was opened for the public in September 2015.
A little detailed exploration about LAC revealed two things : The place was very much serious, too serious in fact. It needs to engage the youth in its wonderful corners and give them space to do cool things.
Lugano is an interesting city. It is 1.5 hours from Milan, 3 hours from Zurich, it has an interesting bunch of multicultural activities every now and then.
Being a student city, well, almost, it brought it a variety of cultures to the Ticino life. And what better place to get together? It seems perfect on paper, but in reality, there were no youngsters that day at LAC except for us.
The second thing that was revealed was, and this is my most interesting discovery in life so far, when you associate a feeling to a place, regardless of whatever it appears to be, people will connect to it. The feeling a building houses is very important, it’s like how we are made.
We are all individuals with different compositions, experiences and thoughts. We live in our own secret universes and when someone gets to know us, we reveal to them, these interesting thoughts and ideas we house, our intentions for them, plans and experiences, each one of them tell the other person something about us, they give them something to connect with and get closer.
Buildings are the same. They are after all, built by people, who had intentions. Ideas for that space, for people who would walk past it and probably wonder what could they possibly do at that place? What was it intended for?
Here are some snapshots from that tour.
That brings us to our presentation and next steps.
Our presentation involved the initial plan for LAC, an interaction between the Community, Digital Space and LAC.
LAC PILLARS are Quality, Accessibility and Transversality.
By our desktop research, we have analysed most websites and services that serve as a platform for interactions between many people and also a few hints of platforms for promotions as well. Our research identified a few insights that include no regular exhibitions for the younger audience and involve them in some way, the empty space at the entrance is rather unwelcoming and people want to hangout in comfortable places.
Insight 1 and Insight 3 seemed to have similarities, nonetheless we let the remain individual insights to get more ideas.
I can’t tell you how excited I get looking at that questionnaire. If I had to choose an alternative profession (apart from the 126347378468732463 ideas I have already), it would be a questionnaire maker. I love talking to people and I’ve realised that most people are rigid when they’re pounced with questions since the beginning (I’ve tried both ways, friendly introductions to jumping in straight to questions). And if I could make everyone comfortable in this process, I believe better and honest results would be achieved. However, most of us are always in a hurry and forget the fact that the other person, indeed holds the key to our insightful design process. They hold the direction and we really need to know what makes them answer that way. It’s a delightful process.
And now we wait for a week to gather our inputs, create personas, identify ideas hidden behind the interview answers and most importantly, wonder if you are a struggling artist, what can you possibly want from a cultural centre apart from space and opportunity?
We have a week off now because there is a carnival in Bellinzona. It’s incredible how people just take a week off to go listen to music, drink and meet all their friends. What an interesting social experience! Imagine if you meet all the friends you couldn’t meet in ages in one place, I would be the happiest person on the planet if we had this event in Hyderabad. I would also probably not meet everyone that night, sigh, I really need to design something to help me manage my friendships. I don’t think clones are a good idea but I’m seriously considering them just for this one purpose.
8 Feb 2016
It dawned upon me last evening that cultures have interesting links. It’s pretty intriguing how we have similar experiences in different ways. We have festivals, birthdays, social gatherings, appreciation for art, relationships and cuisine. And many more such elements that link us to a cultural identity, that we often refer to like a book of guidance. Or something that connects us deeply to a school of thought. And here we are, 2 Indians, 1 Australian and 1 Swiss Italian discovering the world inside a cultural centre in Lugano. How diverse is that!
But living here for 5 months now, I seem to get a decent picture of what people associate to, as cultural norms. I love the fact that I am able to soak in this knowledge with the help of the friends I made here. That is why it is very important to have friends. All the silly reasoning pales away this moment, you don’t need friends because you have to face hard times, you need them because they’re your gateway to maximum number of exchangeable happiness. And that happens through culturally influenced habits.
Today I researched on a few names to interview. There might be artists in Bellinzona/Lugano/Ticino/Switzerland who would be able to outline their ideas and expectations. What could they be doing now? How do they find ways to reach out to audiences?
On researching further, I stumbled upon NEVERCREW. NEVERCREW is a swiss based street artists duo composed by Christian Rebecchi & Pablo Togni. And they are touring INDIAAAAAA! This is fabulous. I have managed to write to Pablo on facebook and I can’t wait to discuss this with him. Check this out, this is next to my University at the skatepark.
This brings us to an interesting question on our ideas about LAC : Can bringing in young artists into LAC attract a younger audience?
So now we are hanging by this assumption and going to interview at least 5 local artists, from Ticino, Switzerland and probably from countries other than Switzerland. We thought of knowing more details of young artists and how they look at their future in the field and set out to making a detailed questionnaire. We’re looking for some cool artists that can make people wonder in amazement. And I think I landed on the right artists this time! Let me see what they have to discuss about their profession!
9 — 14 Feb 2016
Based on our assumptions, we carried out interviews with the local public in Lugano, around Lugano and with a few artists (just to confirm if our assumptions have any factual information). We prepared an interview guide which includes the people we would like to interview specifically, the questions to ask and the co-ordination of information via communication channels. Kim setup a Slack Channel for our group and we communicated regularly there. It was getting difficult to communicate on Whatsapp because we are mostly using our laptops and to share screenshots of our work to gather quick feedback or updates. It also became easier to track our process and share some ideas to get our creative juices flowing in the head.
Our interviews have brought interesting insights. Somethings were puzzling and it took us a lot of time to find relevant information and group it with complementing relevant information. Some of the things we liked, we started sorting them to find insights together as a team.
We chose to review the interviews and pick what inspired us from their answers. We also thought that they had some interesting points about other locations near LAC, some pain-points we weren’t aware of, like the Parking and the lack of involvement of artists at LAC, some even suggested programs that would be a good idea but we wanted to see what everyone had to say about LAC together.
While we identified themes and our assumptions about the space were being wronged or confirmed, we also noticed some comments from young artists that spoke about networking, exposure and promote various productions.
This brought us to notice the most number of Post-its assembled at the young artist section of the board. Everybody noticed how inspiring it was when people pointed out that new Art can be promoted at LAC and that they would like LAC to do something related to artists frequently.
Our interviews were insightful and we are trying to make more sense of the insights we observed. Time after time, we kept referring to these searching for ideas or just inspiration. It helped us constantly to re-align our goals and find the key points to pursue. The various pain-points were clearer when we designed the customer journey map for a young local and young artist at LAC. We decided to go with these two because they are the majority of people who had a lot to say and more in concentrated number from the interviews. A lot of general public also spoke about Artists which suggested that most of them could be part-time or passionate artists.
Edit: A revised Customer Journey
So far, so good. This made sense. But how do you design something in specific from here? This was the toughest part of the process because somewhere along the line, we felt like we needed more information about the place, the people and much more about what they would like from LAC. But our professors calmed us down and pointed towards working in an immersive technique to understand the situation better. So we designed Personas.
Personas are interesting. They are not real people but they are the clusters of people who you interviewed that said similar things. This way you can make sense of a journey because you are aligning the process according to the common interests of people that spoke to you about the problem.
After presenting it, the comment on personas was that they looked artificial. I believe that’s true, one needs to engage and create a scenario keeping in mind people who are real-like, neighbourhood kinds, people around us that would be convincing to narrate the solution.
Edited Personas:
We chose a Young Professional Artist and a Young local for Personas. It was important to understand the motivations and perceptions because these would be the key user needs to address to. Maybe they want an event that could bring more people around? Maybe Dario would want to attend workshops to have fun and gain inspiration? Maybe Anna just wants to have fun with her friends at LAC and chill there? A lot of things were going on in our head. But we managed to pour them into Personas to immerse ourselves into the design problem. Our next step is to create an Idea Catalogue with 5 Ideas suited for LAC.
#1 GAMIFY
#2 CONNECTED BENCH
#3 VIRTUAL TOUR
#4 SHARE ART
#5 My LAC
The next step was the choose one idea and work on it. The comments from the jury led us to work towards an interactive solution that encourages young artists to collaborate, create and contribute to the centre.
We chose to work with two specific personas: The Young Artist and A Young Local.
Their Customer Journey:
After presenting it to Laura Bordin, Sarah and Marina from frog design, Milan, who were mentoring us, we began to establish the context of our solution: Many people we interviewed expressed their interest in seeing local Artists and their artwork at LAC.
How will the young artist contribute to LAC? Where are the touch points? How does the young local know about the art displays? These were some of the questions we began prototyping with.
Frog Mentors were insistent on creating an eco-system so that it would help every part of LAC function independently and yet, influence each’s involvement. Our planned eco-system was for the Artists to stay connected and get involved with LAC as much as possible.
A typical User Scenario:
MyLac would be a competition for young artists to get inspired by the current exhibition at LAC and create inspired art. This would involve Young Locals at LAC to 1) Visit the Centre 2) Get involved with the centre.
Three touchpoints were finalised. 1) A mobile Application 2) A Website
3) A Touch screen in public. The wireframes were designed to understand the usability, interactions for the competition and public awareness of the artworks.
- A Mobile Application: Minal’s idea to introduce the Artist to the Mobile Application to keep in touch with their artwork and also check in with other artists and their work was interesting. It allows the artist to engage with the competition regularly and brings them close to the cultural center.
2) A website: Kim’s website solution was designed to only allow the Artist to upload their artwork since the file sizes could be hard to upload on a mobile phone.
3) Touch Screen: Ramona’s touchscreen solution was to engage the local crowd with the cultural centre. It has artwork of all the people and allows them to vote for their favorite artworks. This will allow the center to choose the artist that could be selected to display.
Visual Design:
Now we add flesh to our design solutions! :D
- Mobile Application:
2. Website:
3. Touchscreen:
Final Video:
It was a fabulous experience working with Kim, Minal and Ramona on the LAC project. Here Laura Bordin and Sarah are testing our prototype before we presented it to Alessio Manzan from LAC.
We would like to thank LAC for collaborating with SUPSI and giving us the opportunity to work on a live project in Switzerland and frog design for mentoring our agile minds and pushing us to refine our ideas and helping us understand our users and their needs better.
***** Images used for representation Purpose only. All of the content is for educational purposes. Photography by Snigdha Nanduri.
