The Sand Project: Reflection
The Sand Project aims to contribute to the user’s intrapersonal relationships by creating an interactive and relaxing environment at the Community Garden of the retirement village of Aveo . On the context of Smart Cities, our installation uses the data collected by another installation in the garden to provide an alternative visualisation of data .We used this data to follow the number of visitors the garden had on a specific time of the day and display it in the installation.This intervention was inspired by the reflective art piece by Studio Ayakasan called Sand.
During the last two months, we went through a design process that involved user-centred design techniques to explore an alternative view of smart cities. To achieve this, we aimed to construct a community garden that enhance Aveo resident’s experience.In this process, we had to phase many challenges like relating to our target audience and by doing constant research move past assumptions of the elderly community and their link with technology.
The Design Process
To undertake a design sprint applying people-centred design methods, we researched existing technologies and spaces to gather relevant insights to develop concepts to later present them to Aveo’s residents.
During this visits we obtained valuable feedback from our target users .Some outstanding information we got, were the different understandings Aveo’s residents have about community gardens. Some of them see a community garden as a place to do gardening activities, others as a social place to gather or relax. This was a key finding given that we could narrow a specific type of user we wanted to target our installation.
In contrast with the feedback obtained from our first visit, we did a ‘Site Survey’ this consisted of photographs of different community gardens.We observe and analyse the images to notice relevant insight.Some outstanding aspects we noticed were, that this spaces could create awareness of sustainability to its visitors, they could also create a sense of belonging or ownership by giving its users the opportunity of customising and personalising individual spaces.We applied some of the finding like creating awareness of sustainability in our design by powering it with a solar panel.
Our next step was creating a low-fidelity prototyping , to form a connection between our insights and our audience’s needs.The main takeaway from this session was the appeal of a tactile experience and their concern that their friends or family could spend time together in an attractive environment, without worrying about maintenance, and being able to relax.
What I learned during this session was that technology like screens or apps not always are the best choice to use in all contexts, another major takeaway was to be thoughtful of how we describe our interventions to avoid intimidation.Our target users are elderly people, in this testing, we experienced that the term ‘technology’ made them less interested in what the installation could offer.For them , this technologies were associate with chores like revising email, filling up forms, etc.
The use of Human Values to create design goals was an important undertaking during the design process.It is important to consider the target user’s beliefs and modes of conduct to create a user-centric design.By using this method I learned to analyse the user’s needs we wanted to satisfy with our design desitions.What is important for them?, why would they use is?.
After constant cycles of taking insights from existing projects, technology and our target user’s feedback we came up with a High-Fidelity Prototype. The installation consists of 4 layers of laser cut acrylic sheets.On the base layer 12 NeoPixels were placed in a radial pattern to follow the time of a clock, each LED light represented a person in the garden.This data is collected by a sensor from another installation.On top of this layer we used sand to provide the users a tactile experience.
To know more about the design and how The Sand Project works read my blog Evaluation of The Sand Project.
Recently, we develop an evaluation to obtain feedback of what could be improve in our design.Many people showed interest in our installation, however most of them couldn’t associate their presence with the light.This may have happened because the time of feedback between the data displayed and the interaction was to long.The major thing I learned from this process was that if you want to display data without using traditional methods like tutorials or information sheets, the feedback to the user must be immediate and personal.
In this post I have showed you what I considered the relevant parts of my design process that helped me make my design decisions.Between the methods I talked above, the most valuable to shape my design was the user-centric approach we did during our first visit to Aveo, by getting this information of what our target audience believed a community garden is and their needs, we could develop an installation that intents to satisfy these needs.I would suggest this method before starting to design because it helps to obtain your users expectations and demands of what you propose, it also provides a starting point to develop further research and set set design goals.
