On Learning: Design Brigade Week 5
Major shift in our direction after client and advisor feedback
A project co-sponsored by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson. For more information, visit Design Brigade
Roadblocks
This week, our project certainly reached an inflection point. As we approached what would have been the end of the Design Brigade program, we struggled to articulate what form our final project would take. Overall, our biggest challenge this week was, as it has been in the past, the barriers our clients face to quickly implementing any of our design proposals from the midterm check-in. Planning programming at established institutions can be a complex endeavor, and we’re finding that our clients need more time to absorb and consider our proposed projects. For the Yale-affiliated clients, their budgets are precisely distributed and determined months in advance. In our follow-up survey we sent to all of our clients, we heard very directly from some that of course, a life-altering pandemic was not something they projected and allocated for in this year’s budget, while others shared that they short on staff members at this time. As we had come into this project eager to respond quickly to the urgent needs of New Haven students, realizing that larger cultural institutions simply don’t have the flexibility within their operational models to act super swiftly, was certainly a roadblock and one we have been figuring out how to overcome.
We’ve also had to reevaluate the feasibility of our designs this week. For the Recreational Art Mobile (RAM) especially, the clients raised many questions about how this project could become reality. In the follow-up survey, Jennifer from the YCBA was “still not clear on who would ‘own’ and organize the truck.” Molleen and Jake from the YUAG felt that “the question of ownership and oversight looms large on each of the individual phases.” When we presented our ideas at the midterm check-in, we thought of each model working together to create a structured action plan to develop our clients’ community outreach overtime. In our meeting, the clients expressed some enthusiasm for this idea, but had some serious hesitations about how the models would play out over time. Jennifer had the insight:
“You would almost need to hire a part-time consultant who would work across all museums, high school students, and community leaders…. [and she is] not sure how it’d be possible to sustain interest and partnership over the years without a dedicated touch-stone.”
Jennifer’s insight shed some important light on the actual labor necessary to execute these projects to their most true capacity and made it clear that our team would need to provide more guidance on how to implement our ideas over a sustained time period. With the clients’ feedback from the midterm presentation as well as the follow-up survey, we have a much clearer picture of the challenges we face. Moving forward, we will definitely have to consider every detail and logistical obstacles when attempting to implement our projects.
Breakthroughs
This week, our team had a massive breakthrough. We had been feeling like we were still wading through a sea of questions: Will our four clients work together on one project, or implement a model we designed independently of one another? If they do agree to collaborate on something built, like a bike, who will own it and who will be responsible for riding it, maintaining it, storing it, etc? Who will fund the project and how? How can four very different organizations contribute to the content that will be delivered through the chosen model?
At our team meeting on Wednesday, we discussed these questions, along with our clients’ financial limitations. We heard from the Yale-affiliated organizations that their fiscal years begin on July 1, and budgets for the upcoming year have already been set. Thus, it is unlikely that funding for a project can come from any of them directly, at least not before next year. Bummer, right? Cue Ming Thompson: Ming popped into the meeting unexpectedly with an exciting update. She spoke to Nico, who said that NXTHVN is eager to implement a project this fall.
After the update, our conversation shifted. We were energized at the prospect of helping NXTHVN realize a project in the coming months. But we were still left with one overarching question: how can we still be helpful to our other clients whose timelines and budgets may be less flexible by nature?
We decided to shift our approach to the final deliverable, broadening our view of who our clients are in the process. The fact that our clients are very different in key ways can be an opportunity rather than a limitation. So instead of pitching a singular design to a set of clients, we will now work on taking all of our designs (even some good ideas that didn’t make it to the mid-review presentation) and creating a guide for any and all New Haven cultural institutions whose accessibility may be impaired due to COVID-19 or other limitations. The guide will organize various methods for implementing cultural programming in the community according to scale: XS, S, M, L, XL. XS projects are those that are smaller in scope and are logistically easier to implement, while XL projects may be larger in size, more permanent, or more logistically complex. Local organizations, even beyond our four clients, will be able to access our guidebook and find a method that is most suited to their mission and capabilities.
Design Work Underway
Our guidebook will adhere to our team’s visual language that Cat and Kayley created last week. Furthermore, we will use Cat’s InDesign template in developing our guidebook. The book will follow the format of recipe, outlining the detailed steps to achieving the goal of building authentic, reciprocal, and sustainable relationships with the New Haven community.
The first section of the book will include data from our research. We will pull quotes from interviews and focus groups that we conducted with community leaders, parents, and students of New Haven, and make graphics that show survey responses from various groups including the Community Management Teams. This section will make clear the lack of connection between cultural institutions in New Haven and the community, and the necessity of alternative educational programming in the era of COVID-19. Our goal is to inspire New Haven cultural institutions to re-evaluate how their missions play out in real time, and find innovative ways to serve their community during the pandemic and beyond.
The following section will include our XS, S, M, L, and XL project ideas. We will be as detailed as possible here, providing precedents, renderings for potential designs, collages for truly visualizing how these designs might work programmatically, and potential locations in New Haven where these designs might take place. As our professional advisor, Nick Novelli, told us last week, we want each of our ideas in this guidebook to tell a story. Whoever picks up this guidebook, whether our original clients or another organization in New Haven, will be able to understand the setting, the characters, and scenario of each design proposal, easily visualizing themselves as the protagonists of the story.
One of our XS ideas is Coronavirus Visual Journal for children; we will encourage cultural institutions to distribute visual journal template to the community either through their mailing list or a pick-up booth outside their buildings, collect pictures of journal entries from families through their social media, document how New Haven children are handling the pandemic, and possibly exhibit them online. One of our M ideas is Bike Outpost; we are going to specify where in New Haven one can purchase bikes and bike trailers, how and where the plywood would be cut and assembled, and what route around the city is recommended for the Bike Outpost.
Next Steps
In the following week we will be scheduling a few professional advisory meetings with Liz Ogbu of Studio O and with our clients on Friday. On Monday we will be welcoming two additional members to the team in which we will brief them on our progress throughout the week. With the additional four weeks of Design Brigade, we want to dive back into meeting with various members of the community, especially as our “client-base” for the guidebook has expanded to all cultural institutions in New Haven. As we build relationships, we will create and continually update a web of connections, people and communities that will allow the Design Brigade and clients to facilitate planning and workshopping conversations in the future.
Our primary next steps are to produce a draft of our guidebook and to establish a cohesive visual language by testing wireframes, document guidelines and ideal formatting for our content. In Design Brigade’s continuation, we will iterate options for online and physical distribution for local organizations.
Team:
Cat Wentworth — ’22 — Grad Student — MFA, Graphic Design — School of Art
Matthew Liu — ’20 — Grad Student — MArch — School of Architecture
Soomin Kim — ’21 — Grad Student — School of Music
Robert Skoronski — ’21 — Undergrad Student — Architecture Major
Kayley Estoesta — ’21 — Undergrad Student — Urban Studies Major
