Jumping the Fence
After defining the problem, this portion of the project was geared towards converging on a singular idea. In order to do so, we needed to consider all of our initial hunches, while adding more ideas to the mix.
Starbursting (WWWWWH)
While the problem statement certainly gave us a more pointed direction, we needed to transform it into a specific set of questions, in the form of who, what, when , where, why, and how. We chose this method in order to make sure that we were exploring every potential fault in the project’s scope and to lead us to be inspired prior to our initial brainstorming session.
In many of the questions, we referred a lot to “it” — this is a pseudonym for the scope-as-product. A few of these, sometimes intentionally provocative, questions were: “Who could it piss off?”, “What is the incentive?”, “When can we interrupt other people?”, “Where could it be purchased?”, “Why is this important in people’s lives?”, “How would it be percieved by others?”
Initial Brainstorm
Following the starbursting (?), we took inspiration from the many questions and sketched down as many ideas as we could muster, interspersed by rounds of listening to each others’ thoughts and further open questioning.
The ideas from the brainstorm, in addition to our hunches (ideas generated throughout the process, especially following user research and interviews), were then sorted into categories defined by similarity.
Comparing new Ideas to Hunches
The categories were then given titles, consequentially unifying groups of ideas into catchy soundbytes. We drew a table on the whiteboard and attempted to draw comparisons between our hunches and our initial brainstorm. The purpose of this was to pull inspiration from throughout our process, leaving no stray thought behind. Identifying core themes that underlie the process is integral to maintaining a solid footing. The main topics that emerged after this comparison were “Reactive Architecture” and “Grouping People Together in Public Spaces”.
Connection Whale 🐋
Okay, so this didn’t help us. We were hoping to draw more connections between the topics, but we ended up drawing a useless whale instead. It’s kind of cute though, so we might have to write a paper on this newfangled design tool.
2X2 Framework
Enter the 2X2 framework: Keeping in mind the topics, “Reactive Architecture” and “Grouping People Together in Public Spaces”, as a result of categorizing our ideas, we defined multiple metrics by which to evaluate the latter.
First, we defined the horizontal axis as directness of communication (eg. How much friction between information and the user) and the vertical axis as the proximity to body (eg. Whether it is something users interact with on their body or within the environment).
After plotting each idea on these two axes, it was clear that the majority of them communicated information within the environment — not on the body. Additionally the ideas were evenly dispersed on the communication directness axis. While plotting our ideas by these metrics told us a lot about what we had to work with, we weren't any closer to understanding why one idea might be more relevant than any other.
We then chose to define two new axes: The horizontal axis, inspired by Myers-Briggs’ psychological traits, represented the spectrum of perceiving and judging said ideas, and the vertical axis represented the spectrum of passive to active communication with each idea. This gave us a much broader distribution of ideas, which aided our discussion in that it gave each idea a greater argument for the purpose it serves.
To move on, we evaluated the axes against “Reactive Architecture” and “Grouping People Together in Public Spaces”. The concept of reactiveness felt important to us, due to our goal of increasing engagement between seemingly unwilling strangers in Denmark, which led us to narrow in on those ideas within “passive” and “perceiving”.
We repeated the same 2X2 framework only to the ideas in the lower-left quadrant. This was effectively the ultimate moment of convergence in the arc of our design process. By plotting these more focused ideas by the same perceiving-judging / passive-active metrics, it became much easier to see similarities between them. We, again, gave a name to each group.
Tags and/or Directions.
Adaptive Architecture.
Pushing and/or Pulling People.
Wearable Feedback.
Broadcasting Emotions and/or Information.
…But what could this all mean?? Stay tuned!
