Defining environmental (experiential) graphic design.

In two components.

This article began as a thesis paper for my college studies.

Introduction.

It tells reader how the idea was shaped and lists some sources that I found important to mention. If you are in some kind of a rush, go strictly to the “Component one" part.

Society of environmental (later changed for “experiential”) graphic design (SEGD) website says: “Environmental Graphic Design embraces many design disciplines including graphic, architectural, interior, landscape, and industrial design, all concerned with the visual aspects of wayfinding, communicating identity and information, and shaping the idea of creating experiences that connect people to place”. This definition merely suggests the areas for EGD to be created in and connects it to tangible environment. I wasn’t satisfied with this definition because it is quite vague and there’s obviously more to EGD than that.

I started to research sources that were connected to EGD and I believe that this video pushed me in the right direction:

https://www.ted.com/talks/timothy_prestero_design_for_people_not_awards

Here’s my quick review:

This lecture begins from description of a particular case, that designers were dealing with. They tried to decrease rate of death of babies in poor families in developing countries. The aim was to design an incubator that will keep a new born baby warm (and eventually they added blue light emission to prevent jaundice).Trying to build something good-looking and functional that will inspire manufacturers to produce it they ended up with Time magazine photo shoot of a product, but that was the end of the story. It won some awards, but it didn’t actually go to the users. So the team focused their attention on those who will buy the machine, and it turned out that it’s not the hospitals that have a demand for those, but the governmental institutes that distributes equipment among hospitals. And companies that make and sell machines are mainly focused on supplying those that are treating the middle-class problems like heart disease. So they decided to consider distribution issues in design process. Then, when they received a feedback from partners, they realized that beside from intended use, there are some problems connected to actual use, some quite specific for a region, some almost generic. “We’ve learn there’s no such thing as a dumb users, there’s only dumb products” points Timothy Prestero.

Basically it tries to say really simple thing — think of the situation in which your design is used and modify it according to this situation. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a wayfinding system in a hospital or pictogram in an iPhone app.

Then I found a couple of clever articles here, on medium.com: Washing Machine for Men by Peter Fabor and When UX Design Doesn’t Work by Ezequiel Bruni. Roughly saying, they raised an issue of a conflict between rapidly developing technology following by inventing new UIs that are changing our lives and groups of people who by some reason are not keeping up, it’s not that they are dumb, it’s just impossible to know everything, right?

So, the designer should consider past experience and knowledge background of his target audience and somehow use it to make his product’s UI more efficient.

The last article I want to mention is Good Design Isn’t About Being Clever by Adam Debreczeni, and I’d like to quote one important paragraph:
“Innovative designs should take into account how the mind makes assumptions and in the process shrink mental barriers in the learning curve.”

This is how I faced the idea of the learning curve shown inside EGD making process: as a designer, you can assess the position of your target audience on the learning curve, then you can choose either to maintain this position and use it to your benefit, or to change it, to push people into new experience and create new background knowledge, but only if it worth the costs.

Summarizing everything above I think that EGD idea is formed by two components, they are:

1. Consideration of the user’s experience and knowledge in the design process and using them properly (it includes creating new ones).
2. Consideration of situation in which the design outcome will be used and modifying it according to this situation.

Component one.

Consideration of the user’s experience and knowledge in the design process and using them properly (it includes creating new ones).

Why should designer use all the previous experience that people have, rather than creating a new one? This question doesn’t really have a simple answer. Adam Debreczeni tries to warn designers in his article Good Design Isn’t About Being Clever to avoid forcing user to learn new things if it isn’t completely necessary. I won’t even try to answer this question, but instead I’ll try to visualize it.

UI or user interface is the key to this whole model. UI “…is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur”. This definition is suggested by Wikipedia, but I’d rather substitute the word ‘machine’ with ‘design product’, because it’s broader and reflects real world better.

Example: imagine you’re at the hospital, little pictograms are showing you the ways to WC, cloakroom and doctors’ offices. This would be the interaction between you (user) and hospital (as a design product).

So, UI is basically conveying information (to user and in some cases back to machine, when UI is interactive, i.e. when user pushes a button, the button tells the machine to do something).

Now I’d like to introduce two ways of conveying information: direct and indirect. Direct way is what the object in the system is using by default. What is generally accepted as default way in the society. In our society (system) humans (objects) are generally accepting text (written or spoken) as a default way to convey information because we are learning spoken language since childhood. On the other hand, indirect way is any other way to convey information that is invented to serve some purpose — icons, pictograms, symbols, sounds, gestures. The border between direct and indirect is rather blurry and some parts of indirect method could become direct in this particular system and vice versa.

Using the direct-indirect model the impact of innovative design could be envisioned in simple graphics:

Envisioning direct and indirect way to convey information through a certain design

t stays for time, i stays for the amount of information delivered to the user.

Here is an example: in the world, that is not familiar with EGD at all, the city builds a big hospital. Inside the hospital, there would be various doctors available for treating various diseases. Therefore, there should be some navigation system to allow people find a proper doctor. First and obvious way to do it would be to install a huge sign that is containing full information on each doctor, so each user has to read all the text to find what he needs — the direct method (the bigger the board gets — the larger amount of information it conveys, straight blue line at 45 deg). Second way is to invent a pictogram for each doctor, this would be the indirect method. At first, people would struggle to memorize and get used to those, at this time direct method is more effective(red line to the left of the mark ‘e’), but after some time one look at the sign with a pictogram would be enough to receive all the data (red line to the right of the mark ‘e’). Mark ‘e’ represents a certain point of effectiveness, where direct and indirect methods are equally good.

Blue line represents direct (in this case it’s plain text) and ineffective way to convey information, the gradient stays constant. Red line represents inventing a new system (of conveying information indirectly, in this example — using pictograms) that becomes more effective throughout the time as people learn and get used to it. Red line is the simple case of the learning curve.

On the other hand, the failure of indirect mechanism on the left side of ‘e’ point is illustrated by Peter Fabor in his article about washing machine design: company that is producing washing machines invented pictograms to operate the machine, but they are used rather rarely by common users and they usually don’t memorize those symbols and have to read the manual all over again.

Target of the design in this model would be to maximize the amount of conveyed information per time period:

The target of any design is to maximize the amount of delivered information per time period

The way of conveying information through the design (direct or indirect) should be selected according to the usage of final outcome. If it falls before point ‘e’, than the direct way should be applied. And if it falls after ‘e’, than the indirect way would more effectively convey the desired amount of information. Of course in some time period indirect mechanism could become direct, as did the text. Then other indirect mechanism could be invented to speed up the process even more. In the beginning of 21st century people are already filled up with knowledge of different indirect systems of conveying information that were developed in the past. We understand pictograms, road signs, traffic lights, gestures, colour meaning (e.g. red sign represents some kind of danger) etc. Designer is always facing the same decision over and over again: should he use direct or indirect way to deliver certain data to user? And if he chooses to use indirect, should he use any of those systems that already exist or should he develop a new one? Making those decisions is an essential part of EGD process.

Component two.

Consideration of situation in which the design outcome will be used and modifying it according to this situation.

The situation component could not be simply illustrated by graphics, but is perfectly explained by Timothy Prestero in his TED video (mentioned in Introduction) where he tells a story about designing medical equipment for the particular region and particular market.

Another example is provided by Iliya Birman in his article. WC in a dead end corridor is indicated with a sign on a wall, which usually is okay, but not for that particular corridor, for there’re no people passing by:

Ilya Birman , Dead end corridor, 2014

To solve this problem, the designer should consider this issue (no people passing by the WC, people looking inside the corridor):

Ilya Birman, Corridor space re-thought by a designer, 2014

Now the sign is visible from outside or the dead end.

Example of analysis using two components approach.

To illustrate the process of environmental (experiental) design thinking, Peter Smart’s redesign of the boarding pass is shown below.

Peter is building a profile of a user in certain situation: “You’re standing in an airport. For many, airports can feel overwhelming. In a busy, fast-moving environment, knowing where you need to be, at what time and how to navigate the airport labyrinth is crucial. Therefore this should be as simple and stress free as possible… The problem is, it isn’t.“

Here is Peter’s example of a boarding pass:

Peter smart, Singapore Airlines’ boarding pass, 2014

This is purely technical item, designed to interact with a machine rather than with a human, the vital information is printed in small letters and there’s no proper hierarchy. Besides, the edges of the boarding pass are always hanging outside of passport as people tend to keep these things together:

Peter Smart, 2014

So after figuring out the way to convey given information (first component of EGD) and considering the situation that the design would be used in (second component of EGD) the boarding pass starts to look different:

Peter Smart, 2014

All vital information is given through direct method (plain text) using clear hierarchy. It could be shown graphically as point ‘a’:

The indirect way is used for the secondary information like weather or transfer. As those symbols are already quite common to the general public, this case would lay to the right of point of effectiveness on the indirect curve, that mean it’s delivering more information in shorter amount of time (and space) in comparison to text (point ‘b’):

Then there is also difference in handling the item during the whole stay at the airport:

Peter Smart, 2014

Those changes were inspired by the experience of Peter, so he used himself to consider the knowledge of the user and he had understanding of the real conditions in which boarding passes are used. This led to the re-thinking of the design object according to the environment and improving its qualities.

Conclusion

So finally, environmental (experiential) graphic design is basically designing product’s user interface while considering two points:

1. User’s experience and background knowledge. Should the designer use those or should he create new more efficient ways of conveying information, creating new habits for user?
2. Situation in which the design outcome will be used (this may include manufacturing, distribution, actual usage etc).

Reference list.

I’m grateful to all authors.

1. Design for people, not awards by Timothy Prestero (TED talk video)
2. Washing Machine for Men by Peter Fabor (medium.com article)
3. When UX Design Doesn’t Work by Ezequiel Bruni (medium.com article)
4. Good Design Isn’t About Being Clever by Adam Debreczeni (medium.com article)
5. It’s time to rethink the airline boarding pass by Peter Smart (personal blog article)
6. Blog post by Iliya Birman (design studio blog article in Russian)