Interview Process – Survey / Sign Activity

Today our team was out in El Cocal trying to gain some insight into what made people happy their community. We created a survey-like activity that would allow the residents to have a say in the visual identity of the community. One of the projects we believe would be beneficial to developing a visual identity is creating a welcome sign that could be displayed at the boating dock. Upon arrival a welcome sign could evoke an artful connection to people’s sense of place when arriving at El Cocal.

The activities we conducted asked participants to choose preferred typefaces, colours and icons they felt best represented El Cocal. Imagery including palm trees, boats, fish, coconuts and other fun beach icons. Our survey was the mobile version of the key design activity we had the pleasure of conducting with the English class hosted in the GVI community centre.

Participants in this activity were asked to assemble a welcome design in a master-chef-like environment that they felt would best fit the entrance of El Cocal. Our team provided cut outs of a variety of typefaces, short greetings, icons and coloured paper for quick and easy assembly. We started the music and gave the class only 1 minute to design! Some even running over to the table to get first dibs colours and cut outs.

The activity was a huge success and most importantly the participants seemed to have a lot of fun doing it. From this we were able to get a sense of what the community may prefer when designing a sign El Cocal. In hopes to keep our designs as participatory as possible this insight was a great addition to our design process moving forward.