Transparency — W5
Designers | Damul Yang • David Han • Maria C • Rikkie • Sue Heeyeon An
External Partner | R/GA
Brief | Design a way to mitigate the effects of loneliness
Rescoping
To rescope the opportunities and threats of our AR Geo Caching concept I suggested to go through the feedback questions we received. From this, we realised there are a lot of things the current idea lacks such as clear process / user journey, accessibility, contents, sharing and more.
Fig 1. Answering Feedbacks. Made by group.
Iteration
We un-digitalised the AR into a physical experience using a transparent board in a public area, inviting the passersby to share their memories and stories about the location and to create a new memory from it. I was very intrigued by the idea of using the transparent element to make it blend into the environment. However, before we move on I questioned about people’s behaviours if they would be willing to participate or share their stories in a public space. So I suggested taking the transparent board outside to test since it will open up new challenges in the real world or might give us inspiration from people. At worst case, if no one prefers to write anything down we decided to interview people on the street to understand their viewpoint of the experience of sharing.
Fig 2. Transparent Board Idea. Image by Sue
Fig 3. Creating Transparent Board. Image(s) by Sue
Fig 4. Low Fidelity Transparent Board. Image by Sue
Testing Outside
People weren’t voluntarily eager to write down their thoughts on the board. For them it was hard to recognise the board or even if they saw the board, the question “Anything you would like to share today?” was such a broad question which made them hard to think and participate or trigger anything specific. Yet, people did appreciate the idea of sharing and reading others’ comments which made them feel relieved and they are not alone. I was intrigued by the thoughts of people that they were feeling the sense of togetherness which we were aiming for, building social connection, partially the concept was working.
Fig 5. Conducted Interview Results. Image by Damul
Vid 1. Test and Interviews. Filmed by David and Edited by Sue.
Fig 6. Street Interviews. Image(s) by Sue
Iteration Again
We again started to brainstorm how to intensify the sense of togetherness in our current design work. David had an idea to scale up the experience from having a simple prompt question to a deeper question on multiple boards to divide and group people throughout the experience in order to gather people who have similar interests and hobbies. I liked the idea of sharing the same interests in a smaller group however, I had a question if this would make the process of the experience too complex. It creates even more steps and requires a lot of interactions which makes people even harder to participate in and it can run only with a group of people. Personally, I thought the experience should be quick and short without being too long and give more freedom if the participants are willing to stay or not. We had to think more about the design of the interaction also to consider the time left.
Fig 7. Multiple Boards. Image by Sue
Another Iteration
The feedback our tutor John gave us during the tutorial made us realise we did not go deep enough to answer what we exactly wanted people to do or what we wanted to get out from the experience.
During a team meeting, we discussed how we can visually collect opinions from people rather than writing or drawing - something more simple and quick. I brought few creative interventions for inspirations and one of them was a cigarette ballot bin by Neat Streets Campaign (fig 10), allowing a public opinion poll as the cig butts piles up - using sensitive topic amongst football community.
From this we decided to twist our concept of our experience to collect the values from people of London think are the most important to alleviate the feelings of disconnection but also aiming to raise awareness of the invisible epidemic of loneliness (fig 11). Moreover, we are not solving the effect of loneliness but providing people a way, an event to reflect themselves, look back at their experiences and show an act of kindness to others, being supportive. Additionally, the concept behind the figure is to visualise the invisibility of a person in the crowd and as it fills up with attention and support it becomes visible.
Fig 8. Brainstorming. Image by Sue / Fig 9. Moodboard. Image by group / Fig 10. Negative to Positive. Image by Sue and Rikkie
Fig 11. Lonely Boy. Image by Sue
Building the Prototype
Fig 12. Lonely Boy Prototyping. Image(s) by Sue
Vid 2. Process and Testing. Edited by Sue.
Reflections
I completely agreed with the feedback we received. There was a lack of storytelling around the experience which created a less emotional approach. Also we needed to consider more details and plans about the experience whether it takes place in one location or more and whether it will be a weekly or monthly event.