Project Waller Creek: Sensemaking

The team organizing observations and quotes in order to find patterns in the research. Photo by Brooks Protzmann.

Following the research phase, the seven of us launched into making sense of our findings. Our research lead us to three major insights.

Insights

Our three insights were:

(1) Students are exposed to high levels of stress, and spending time in nature benefits mental wellness in a proactive way.

(2) Nature provides convenient moments of relief in urban settings.

(3) UT students exhibit a need for a rejuvenating space. Some students require only a moment of delight, while others desire a more immersive experience.

Archetypes

We used another tool to make sense of our research, called an archetype map. In addition to conducting lengthy contextual interviews with students, we also intercepted students around campus and asked them questions about the creek.

The perception map revealing the grid of archetypes. Graphic by Annie Xue.

We mapped them along the axes of “attitude” and “awareness.” We started to notice some clear trends appear. Most students fell into this neutral category, and completely unaware people don’t have an opportunity to develop an opinion. But we found that in these intercept interviews, once we took students down to the creek, they were automatically optimistic about the creek’s potential. Even “The Unfamiliar” and “The Unopinionated” started to imagine the possibilities of the space.

Personas

Next, we created personas based on the students we interviewed and archetype map to help identify our target users. First we have Passerby Paul.

The persona, Passerby Paul. Graphic by Caroline Rock.

Paul is an accounting junior who spends most of his time in McCombs. He parks in the San Jacinto garage, which is near the creek. He walks over the creek every day on his way to and from class, but he doesn’t even know it’s there. Paul is “The Unfamiliar,” completely unaware and therefore neutral.

Next we have Hang-Out Haley. She’s a studio art freshman who spends a lot of time on campus, in her dorm or in class.

The persona, Hang-Out Haley. Graphic by Caroline Rock.

She knows the creek is near the art building. She sees it every day, but it doesn’t look welcoming to her. Haley is “The Unopinionated” — she is sort of aware of the creek, but still neutral about it.

Students like Paul and Haley were our target users. We wanted to help them gain awareness for the creek by showing them it’s something that can benefit them. Based on our personas, and what we learned about mental wellness from our research, we crafted a new problem statement: How might Waller Creek become a mental wellness resource to help Passerby Paul and Hang-Out Haley manage their stress?

Ideation

In ideating, the team went wide before we went narrow. We aimed for quantity over quality in the generation of ideas.

All of the generated ideas presented on the wall in groups. Photo by Caroline Rock.

First, we individually spent time externalizing our ideas through written words and sketches on Post-It notes, and then we shared-out our ideas. Once we shared all of our individual ideas, we posted all of the ideas on the wall into groups for further consideration.

With the groups of ideas, we chose the most-promising ideas to consider for prototyping. Some of the “winning” ideas were combinations of multiple ideas. We then spent the next three weeks prototyping these ideas. Read the next article to learn about the prototyping phase for Project Waller Creek.