GDES1B26 — FW2010 — 14

Congratulation on the successful implementation of your Urban Intervention! A lot of you worked very hard to make it happen. Everyone I spoke with had a wonderful day in Trinity Bellwoods last Saturday, thanks to you (and the weather).

I look forward to having one final chat with you on Friday about all of the different interventions, including yours. A couple of notes:

• Anything and everything that needs completing — e.g. documentation, recycling, refunds, experience evaluations — must be complete and posted to the blog by the end of class on Friday
• Friday is our last class, and is not optional. Please be there.

See you Friday!

If necessary, my phone number is:

(647) 201-4255

I’ll be in the park 11:30-3:30.

-Jesse

There will be six other Urban Intervention experiences taking place in Trinity Bellwoods Park on April 2.

One final task that requires volunteers is the observation and documentation of these experiences, for discussion during our last class on April 8.

I’ve prepared a form that can will help you perform this task. Part 1 features space for ethnographic observation, and reminders regarding how to best do this. Part 2 features a matrix conflating the five stages of experience with the five senses: how are the users’s senses stimulated in each stage, and what is the user’s response?

Each volunteer should prepare a blog post that includes:

• A description of the experience,
• Some documentation of the experience (as always, any blog-friendly medium is encouraged),
• The field notes collected in Part 1,
• The stimulus/response data collected in Part 2, and
• Any commentary or critique.

Volunteers, please organize yourselves so as to cover all six experiences. There can be duplicate efforts, but please don’t leave any of the experiences out (other than your own). So far, Keight, Melanie, Inwoo, Ainura and Queenie have volunteered for this task. Anyone else who wants to volunteer, simply comment on this post.

This is an essential task, and a great opportunity for anyone who feels like they haven’t sufficiently contributed to the Project Three effort.

Click here to download a PDF of the Experience Evaluation Form.

Hi Class,

Congratulations on all of the progress you made today consolidating around an idea. Your idea has a great deal of potential but much work remains to be done. Remember that this project came from you – all of you – and it will only shine if you all bring your energy to bear on it.

Your Urban Intervention will launch at 12:00 on Saturday, April 2 in Trinity Bellwoods Park. I will gather all seven sections together at that time in the centre of Trinity Circle (see attached map). Tori, Shawn and I have each invited guests to experience your Intervention, and we will introduce them to you at that time. Please remember to actively seek feedback from each of them at some point in the afternoon. Your Interventions will end at about 15:00.

Four final thoughts:

• The blog is yours: make use of it. Each task-specific team should report their activities on the blog on a regular basis. If you need something – feedback, an item, an idea – ask for it on the blog. Everyone should be checking the blog at least once per day between now and next Saturday.
• High quality documentation is essential. Documentation is the most useful way that your experience lives on once it’s over.
• No decision should be left until next Friday. Task-specific teams should feel empowered to make decisions as necessary. Use the blog to obtain feedback as necessary, but don’t defer any essential decision for too long.
• Let me know right away if your Urban Intervention requires a specific location in the park. I need to confirm that none of the other sections are using the location. In general, be flexible: the park is a public place, and there will be other users there.

You have seven days, sixteen hours and fifty-eight minutes: use it wisely!

You have chosen three ideas that demonstrate promise as compelling interactive experiences for Trinity Bellwoods Park on Saturday, April 2. You have also been organized into groups, each charged with the task of propelling these ideas forward. These ideas and groups are as follows.

• The Vintage Communication Experience: Dayna, Ainura, Tanya, Sara and Josephine
• The Pinhole Camera Experience: Reid, Melanie, Inwoo, Heejae, Min Jee and Josef
• The Question Tree Experience: Anna, Debbie, Katie, Talisa and Eman

1) A fully specified experience. In your groups, re-read the project brief, and contemplate the idea you have chosen. Brainstorm variations on the idea, and develop a fully specified version of the idea that best suits the constraints described in the project brief: limited budget (make it cheap), material flows (make no waste), intuitive functionality (make it easy to use), temporal sequencing (12:00 – 15:00 on Saturday, April 2) and site specificity (Trinity Bellwoods Park). Explicitly account for how your version of the idea satisfies the five phases of a compelling experience that we discussed in class: Attraction, Entry, Engagement, Exit and Extension.

2) A storyboard of your fully specified experience. Make a storyboard that outlines your new version. Post the storyboard to the blog, and annotate it (i.e. describe with text) with any important details. This storyboard will necessarily be more elaborate than the ones you prepared individually. Bring a physical copy of the storyboard to class.

2) A role-play of your fully specified experience. Come to next class prepared to role play your new storyboard: act it out for us. Bring any props and equipment you might require. Engage your colleagues: they can take part in your role-play too.

This is effectively a competitive exercise. May the best idea, that is the most convincingly storyboarded and role played, win us over.

In the Third Stage (Scenario Storyboarding), you will each develop one experience for presentation to the class. This presentation will take the form of a user scenario storyboard: a graphical narrative of the experience through the senses of one or more specific persona(s).

“In a sense, scenarios are prototypes built of words. Scenarios are, at their heart, simply stories – stories about what it will be like to use the product or service once it has been made. The protagonists of these stories are the personas. Using a scenario, designers can place their personas into a context and further bring them to life. Indeed, scenarios are one of the factors that make personas worth having. Running through the same scenario using different personas is an excellent technique for uncovering what needs to be included in the final product. . . . Once a scenario and sketches have been created to show what a product or service could be like, designers can create a storyboard (figure 5.10) to help illustrate the product or service in use. Storyboarding is a technique drawn from filmmaking and advertising. Combining a narrative with accompanying images, designers can powerfully tell a story about a product or service, displaying its features in a context.”

(from Designing for Interaction)

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For next class, propose an experience that would be appropriate for Project Three. Storyboard the user scenario experience: a graphical narrative of the experience through the senses of one or more specific persona(s). You may use the personas we began to develop in Class 8, or you may develop your own. Your graphics may be hand or computer drawn. It is likely though not essential that your storyboard include text; like a cartoon or graphic novel, your storyboard must narrate itself. Post your storyboard, as well as any necessary supporting information (sketches, personas) to the blog, and bring a hard copy of your storyboard to class. We will be reviewing each of your storyboards as a springboard to our collective development of a single proposition.

Your individual storyboards are due at 12:00 on Friday, March 18. Their evaluation will form a significant proportion of your mark for Project 3.

Click here to download Project Three: Urban Intervention.

The working prototype and the formal proposal are the key deliverables in Project Two.

The purpose of the working prototype is to complete the design process loop we began in Project One. So far in Project Two, you have ethnographically observed people playing with toys, and analysed and interpreted this data in an attempt to deconstruct the nature and structure of fun. You have spent some time pondering the people you observed, by developing a set of personas that represent a cross-section of your target audience: OCADU students. You brainstormed several toy ideas, shared them with your colleagues, and questioned their “fun-ness” by subjecting them to the metrics you have developed. You will now build a prototype of the toy that seems the most promising (and feasible). “The prototype need not be exquisitely constructed, but should be robust enough to survive user testing. You will not be permitted to explain your toy, so any required instructions should also be prepared in prototype for.”

“With your colleagues, instructor and a guest expert, user-test your prototype.” It is through user-testing that the prototype becomes valuable, and we will devote substantial energy to this task during Class Six. You should once again ethnographically observe people playing with your toy. You are responsible for maximizing this observation phase, through photography, video footage, audio recording and careful note taking. You should continually be asking yourself the unanswerable: why is this fun, how is it fun, where is it fun, who is it fun for, and: what is fun?

Your observations will play a critical role in your final proposal. Think of this deliverable as a pitch to a toy manufacturer. It doesn’t need to be long, and it can be delivered in any medium that the blog supports. It does need to establish that the toy is genuinely fun, a fact which can be validated by incorporating user-testing results, such as raw observation (e.g. photographs of a dozen different users happily playing with your toy), representing users in their own terms (e.g. a video where a user exclaims “this is awesome!”), and analysis and interpretation of your observations (e.g. a statement such as “users were consistently attracted to the toy’s soft corners and playful colours”). User-testing will also help establish which parts of your toy are less fun: any potential design improvements that become apparent should be incorporated into your proposal. Finally, remember that you do not need to fabricate the final product: it is not subject to material and constructional limitations that your prototype was. Propose the funnest evolution of your prototype that you can muster.

As discussed today in class, your feedback on a minimum of three of your collegues’ detailed toy concepts should take the form of answers to the following questions:

How (or how not) is the prototype fun? Here, discuss the design specifics of the toy–communication strategies, clever mapping, appropriate affordances, etc.–either in terms of design successes, or missed opportunities (and suggestions for improvement). If possible and pertinent, make reference to course material presented to date.

Why (or why not) is the prototype fun? Here, discuss your gut feelings about the toy’s “fun-ness.” This is a more subjective, synthetic and ultimately difficult question than the previous one. Make reference to our Exercise Six deconstruction of fun where possible.

Who (or who not) is the prototype fun for? This last question should be answered in terms of the personas you created in Exercise Eight. In short, list the which persona(s) the toy or game would appeal to. If none, posit a missing persona, or discuss why this toy is inappropriate for the target audience.

Click here to download Project Two: Design for Fun.

Some final thoughts in advance of your Project One deadline:

• Use an imaginary client to give your project substance.
• Use the title of your project to clearly and precisely establish its scope.
• The structure of your presentation is as open to possibility as the structure of your interaction: craft it thoughtfully.
• Don’t speak for more than 10 minutes: I will cut you off. Less presenting equals more discussion.
• Make it awesome. Remember, we’re designers: nothing we do should be boring. To wit:

See you Friday,

-Jesse

Click here to download the release form required for Project One: Deconstruct an Interaction.

Click here to download Project One: Deconstruct an Interaction.

Below is the list of common interactions between people and their environment that we brainstormed in class.

Gettting on the subway
Watching television
Turning on a tap
Brushing teeth
Climbing stairs
Accessing a website
Cooking a turkey
Signing out a book from the library
Being woken up by an alarm clock
Putting on glasses
Tying a tie
Grocery shopping
Digital painting
Locking a door
Eating food
Reading a book
Reading a e-book
Flushing the toilet
Putting on shoes
Applying lip balm
Listening to music
Making coffee
Baking a cake
Buying a drink
Riding an elevator

This is not an exhaustive list. You’ll be spending four weeks on this Project: select an interaction that is compelling to your group.