Feltre district : A new way of co-design
Virtual meeting for concept development
After the first phase of concept generation was concluded, we took in consideration the critiques made by the professors and improved our concepts. In order to prevent possible overcrowding generated at the start and end of the school day in front of the gate, we decided to distance the play areas by sliding them down the main streets. Moreover, in an attempt to make the first concept more versatile, we decided to paint the sun by Munari in the intersection of two main streets, which underlines both the idea of connecting generations and the presence of the Bruno Munari primary school.
To improve our designs even further, we started planning for a crucial phase of tactical urbanism, the co-design session. This approach activates a quite wide range of people to make a creative contribution in the formulation and resolution of a problem to ensure that the concept meets the user’s needs. A traditional co-design session concerns in a collaborative meeting between designers and citizens. However, as the lockdown caused by COVID-19 continues, we were forced to develop our session, as everything else during the last few weeks, through an online platform, representing a challenge to both us and collaborators.
Finding six stakeholders in such a short time was not an easy task: besides asking Eugenio Santoro, president of the students’ parents association, we also created a Facebook page to get in contact with residents through a local online group. Surprisingly, many people expressed their willing to take part to the co-design session, leaving us very gratified. The collaborators we chose at the end were six people that either live or work in the Feltre district, apart from Eugenio. They consisted of an ex-student who still lives in the area, two parents and two teachers of Bruno Munari primary school.
Regarding the medium to fulfil the co-design session, we decided to choose Miro as our tool of collaboration. Besides being a flexible and free platform, Miro has other convenient advantages, such as the possibility to use a microphone while working and, most importantly, it is accessible without downloading a program. The key tenet of co-design is that users, as ‘experts’ of their own experience, become active participants of the design process. In order to support this idea, we displayed on Miro a series of boundary objects that could help the collaborators evaluate the potential solutions and give creative suggestions.
Our co-design session was divided into five steps, each having its own goals and dedicated time. The first one concerned in a brief introduction of each participant to get to know each other a little better and to make sure that our guests felt welcome. To achieve this, we created personalized avatars seated around a virtual table, to make everyone feel part of the team. Fortunately, our guests seemed to really appreciate this idea and thought the avatars were very nice. In addition, we also provided some guides and tips about how to use Miro to make sure everyone was able to express their ideas through the session.
The second step consisted of a concept walkthrough composed by moodboards and 3D maps, in which we explained the main elements of the two concepts and the ideas behind them. The 3D maps we prepared were filled with signs and stickers which could help understand the interventions better. To facilitate the evaluation process, we created reaction stickers that could reflect some basic emotions such as interesting, boring, useful, unfeasible, etc. which were sticked next to the activities and elements on the board by the participants. This tool helped us to start conversations on some of the opinions that were expressed though the sticker. Generally speaking, people manifested positive feedbacks for the most part of our interventions, finding them very interesting and useful, with a few exceptions. For instance, some people found the kiss and go area unfeasible, because it is a quiet small space and usually crowded with people and cars. Others thought that the vegetable garden could be interesting for the informative teaching purpose, but it is necessary to find a group of either residents or teachers to take care of the plants. Also, in the case of the second concept, it was pointed out that the area near to the gate door is very boring comparing to the first concept.
After the first three steps, we moved on to the SW analysis in which the participants were asked to point out different strengths and weaknesses of each concept to make us better understand which were the strongest components and which needed to be improved. For example, the idea of creating connections between different generations was much appreciated as for the drawing of Bruno Munari’s sun put in the cross of the streets. Nevertheless, they pointed out a lack of activities in the first concept compared to the second one and that the colour palette was very narrow. Moreover, for the second concept someone underlined that the entrance of the kindergarten was neglected and that we should consider in expanding the area in our future design.
In the last step, we asked them to propose other ideas regarding suggested topics such as events, target, activities and implementations of the toolkit. Some suggestions we got from them are creating a bookcrossing stand for inhabitants of the neighbourhood but also teachers, implementing tables with boardgames like chess and card games to reinforce the socialization area, etc. Several suggestions were extremely helpful, some unfortunately unfeasible, but nonetheless we are profoundly thankful and satisfied.
At the end of the co-design session, as a small reward to thank the participants for the help and availability, we decided to send them the avatars we created as well as the logo of the co-design session. Unfortunately, it is not much but it is one of the few things we could do during the quarantine period, and we hope participants can feel our sincerity. Thanks to this co-design meeting, we now have a better idea about the feasibility of our proposals. With the aim of responding to the stakeholders’ needs, we have mapped out a new concept which combines the strengths of two previous proposals to the new suggestions.
In the new concept we kept the idea of comparing the district to a “little village”. However, in addition to the play areas filled with games of the past, that experienced a little twist from tradition to encourage social distancing, we decided to add a socialization area and a relaxing area to favour the social interaction between the inhabitants of the district. The painted sun of Munari on the ground is maintained, but the pattern on the streets is slightly modified: our aim is to encourage people to keep distance from each other by redesigning our pattern with lines and squares to be exactly one meter wide, because we deeply believe that our relations in public spaces will be permanently affected by the pandemic. Moreover, the dimension and distribution of pallet furniture we planned to put in the relaxing and social areas are also designed with thesame purpose. Other interventions such as the kiss & go area, the vegetable garden, and the wishing tree are all preserved since they contribute to the safety and vitality of the district.
Group n°3
Bai Xiaoman, Cattani Carlo Leone, Eugeni Marco, Masini Nicolò, Volpato Eleonora
