Construction Junction: Greetings and Farewells Final Implementation (Team 8)

Julie Choi, Sophia Fan, Nina Yoo, Connor McGaffin, Mimi Jiao

Key Insights

Based on our feedback from the cultural probe and our further exploration with affinity mapping, we reached a conclusion that the existing greetings and farewells at CJ don’t necessarily have a problem. Customers seem to be content with being left alone, while employees are always busy and don’t have the time to greet and bid farewell to every customer.
Through our affinity diagramming, we discovered two main types of interactions in the general environment pertaining to greetings and farewells. This includes social semantics, which cover human to human connections, and inanimate interactions, which cover human to inanimate object connections. We wanted to explore how our implementation could enhance the existing greeting and farewell process at Construction Junction by utilizing the physical space to create another layer of inanimate interactions between customer and CJ.

Goal: Because we didn’t find any inherent problems with the greetings and farewells in CJ, we wanted to see if there was a way to enhance the current situation for the customers. While many don’t want to be greeted by physical staff, we were interested in designing ways customers could feel more welcomed and appreciated without the need of an actual employee.

Gut Checks

In class, we built off our idea of designing inanimate interactions and experiences to enhance the customer’s journey throughout CJ. We came up with these initial ideas:

To highlight some ideas we were more interested in, we were interested in having a Mr. Rogers trolley placed in the front of the CJ entrance/exit. On each side of the trolley would be signage greeting the customers. Using this trolley as an implementation creates a lighthearted vibe consistent with the signage in the space, and it also establishes an emotional bond between the physical object and space with the customers of CJ. After studying the population of those who most frequent CJ, we found that these are the people who grew up watching shows such as Mr. Rogers, so we decided to use this cultural reference for a population that would mostly understand it and be touched. Another idea we were interested in was having a mural on the wall of the entrance door. This mural would be a combination of painting and text saying “see you later!” and would act as a farewell for customers to see as they leave Construction Junction.

Final Idea

We wanted to create an implementation that acts as both a greeting and a farewell. Building of of our ideas with the Mr. Rogers trolley and mural, we wanted to combine the greetings and farewells together into one.
Our final idea is a sculptural installation of the Mr. Rogers trolley in the entrance area of Construction Junction. The trolley will be constructed of bits and pieces found throughout CJ: the ceiling is made of spare doors found throughout the space and the chairs are made of the donated chairs the makerspace room ceiling within CJ is made from. Other parts consist of metal rods and miscellaneous wooden and metal scraps that can also be found throughout the space. The trolley will be placed at an angle so that both entering and exiting customers can see the greetings and farewells on the trolley. Trackmarks on the ground will guide the customers to look at the trolley, where they will see the greetings and farewells. When customers enter, they will see the front of the trolley with a rotating sign with several greetings on it. These signs will rotate based on a motion sensor trigger that senses when people approach it. As the greetings rotate on the sign, visitors will get a different greeting, creating individuality and personalization of the greetings. Similarly, when customers leave, they will see the side of the trolley which houses the rotating sign with farewells. Again, the sign will rotate based on proximity and motion of nearby customers and they will see a different greeting.

Through the Mr. Rogers trolley, we wanted to enhance the greetings and farewells. We didn’t necessarily find any problems with the current situation, but we thought it would be nice if we could implement a sculptural installation that made the current environment a little bit more considerate of the customers. We want the customers to enter and leave Construction Junction knowing that CJ is thankful and appreciative of them.