Joining The Data

A class blog documenting our college project.

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Team 3: Initial Concept Generation and Exploration

April 20th Concept and Team Assignments


Today, we went through our individual concepts and took we each voted for the concept that we wished to pursue for the remainder of this project. It really was a good way to nail some final concept directions ahead of the next presentation on Friday for the EPA and Intel. 

In this group is myself (Billy T) Venu and Tara and we are undertaking the concept of Public Data Displays. The design challenge we face is trying to encourage the general public to become engaged in the data that is generated by bodies such as the EPA and DCC. However, as part of our concept we hoped that further data collection to provide more localised data to citizens through an element of citizen science engagement and using existing infrastructure.

Our afternoon involved some rigorous research and brainstorming. Through this, we were able to pull out some additional concepts.


Below is the first prototype


The concept was an interactive installation which reacted to air pollution levels and was retractable. It would also have a digital informational element which would promote awareness and engagement in Air Quality data and ultimately change behaviours.
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Team 1: Early Concepts and Body-storming



Today after much deliberation our team of 10, from the research phase of this project, was broken into 3 teams based on the concepts that we choose to carry forward into the design phase. Our team choose to focus on the most vulnerable road users to emissions and particulate mater from vehicles, cyclists. Our goal is to promote cleaner air routes for inner city cyclists to improve their experience of commuting throughout the city and to maintain healthy lungs for those who are using a form of transport that has know impact on air pollution.

Once we had decided to cater our design towards this demographic of road user, we explored the potential of a cycle helmet that feed live air quality information to the user, based on google glasses technology, we moved swiftly into a workshop of quickly paper prototyping the idea and bringing it out into the world to test.

The artefact that we prepared was made of cardboard, and using the Dublin Bike service we quickly began to examine how the helmet may work and be received by the public. The helmet is fitted with a visor that acts as a heads up display feeding information directly to the user in really time, indicated the quality of air in the current area based on the EPA's data read from their city monitoring station.

This body-storming session provided the team with some very valuable insights into how the product might be received from the public, generally inner city cyclist's avoid wearing helmets for many reasons: journeys are generally short and travelling speeds are slow, also aesthetically helmets are seen as 'uncool'.

Also there was a general consensus amongst the members of the public who performed usability tests, that the information appearing visually or through audio could be very alarming and a potential hazard to a cyclist who is trying to concentrate on safely navigating through traffic, without the addition of avoiding air pollution pockets.

After this day, we learned valuable lessons about what types of information and the form that information has to be delivered to cyclists. We returned to the studio to work...............
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Team 2: Initial Concept development & Getting out in the wild

Overview
As a newly formed team of 4 people - Yana, Louise, Joe & Paget we were ready to tackle Education & Awareness using a service design approach. We quickly outlined some initial tasks for the day which we hoped would help reach our goal of defining our problem.




Defining the Problem




We used a technique called, 'Frame your design challenge' to help the group identify our main problem statement. This also gave each member of the team the opportunity to talk through how they saw the problem being resolved.


As we drew out each aspect of the story it was clear there were some common themes and ideas but also very different solutions arising.

Writing out the Scenario


The next activity we approached was for each of the team to tell a story of how they saw the product/solution helping a persona in their day to day. This activity of storytelling was to help the team verbalise some potential solutions.


Again the most common theme emerging at this early stage was that we wanted to send our personas on a hunt or to discover the sensors around the country. An early stage idea of a treasure hunt was emerging. This was also identifying some key touch points for the group - an app, website, book for users, etc

Out in the Wild
As the theme of a treasure hunt was emerging we took the opportunity to get out in the wild and validate some of the questions we were initially posing:

  • Would people engage with an activity in an outdoor space?
  • Would people feel a reward is necessary after completing an activity?
  • Would informing people of Air quality as users engage be a positive way to make data meaningful?
  • How intrigued or curious would the general public be if they were to see something unusual in a public space


Outcomes
As a group we found the exercises of the day to be very fruitful in some early research. Our key takeaways at the end of the day were:
  • We need to agree and narrow our focus on one key user group.
  • We need to formalise the problem statement that we are tackling.
  • We need to identify the key location or intervention point which would yield best results.

Our in the wild testing showed:
  • People are happy and willing to engage when in a crowd
  • People are slower to engage in a activity that involves other people (us as stars!)
  • People expect some level of reward but are happy to take part if it has a competitive edge
Onwards to Thursday where we hope to address these concerns and build on our concept.
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Turning Themes into Concepts

Week 3 into our project, we began by working with the themes (as the insights from all of our research) and trying to somehow turn them into concepts.


Before we got into that, we unpacked the information and feedback we received during Friday's presentation session. That feedback we put into the rest of our research and then into the theme wall. For each of the 5 themes we developed some "How might we...?" problem statements. Under each problem heading we arranged the 5 personas and got everyone to post concept ideas that would be suitable for each persona. We did a few similar sessions like this one, iterating the problem statements into something that made more sense for this project. After reworking the problem statements, some themes began to emerge.
  • Everyday lives
  • Student education & gamification
  • Service
  • Visual in Public
  • Platform
We realised immediately that some of the themes relate to each other but for us it made sense to go with them for now. We broke off into 2 groups of 5 and under each heading we began to brainstorm and build on ideas and concepts. 


We found this session very useful because we got some really great ideas and real concepts began to emerge. Also working in a group of 5 meant there was plenty of good input.


From here we began to narrow down our ideas. Each person choose their favourite and we began to funnel these down until we could see the 'popular' choices and the other ones most liked that we could build on. 


Some of the ideas/ concepts that emerged from the sessions were sending Air Quality Packs to schools/ cyclists/ homes, Public Displays showing the local air quality, Air Quality Mascots that represent the problem, Education and how to engage schools, businesses, the community, Clean Town/ Air Quality sort of competitions etc.

We ended the day by taking a break from post-its and instead drew some sketches of our favourite concepts, the ones that we felt most passionate about. From this we could see the potential some of the ideas could have. Next step is to solidify the concepts and to take a deeper dive into them.
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Finding Insights & Themes

Over the past two weeks the team had done a huge amount of research, primary and secondary. Our interviews helped feed into our personas and it was now time to help form potential themes that we could use as starting points for ideation. Before beginning this process we understood there would be a lot of converging and diverging of thoughts before we would find our emerging themes.

To ensure all insights were captured and as we all were involved in different interviews, we decided to have a whole class exercise. Using colour coded post-it's (pink for industry, blue for secondary & green for user research) we revisited all the work we had captured on our walls and noted key insights across the areas. We hoped to have a blend of insights and have them all feed into our emerging themes.



This activity took 30 minutes ( a lot of research to digest :) ) and at the end we had a very colorful white board. To start moving towards seeing patterns we grouped similar thoughts together and gave them a category heading. We took in turns to read an insight you had captured and placed it on a new white board. If someone felt they had a similar thought they would read out that post it and add to that grouping. Doing this resulted in large categories but did make tackling the number of insights a bit more manageable.





Next a steps were to diverge again by breaking apart a grouping to find anything distinct inside and see if there was a lose connection to some where else. This was a slow and thoughtful process, questioning each post it and maybe asking other team members for clarity when needed. This activity was done by a smaller sub group over a number of hours. At the end we had 5 emerging themes that we recognized needed more work to present at our research client briefing on Friday.


Emerging Theme 1: Education & Awareness


“I never really think about the quality of the air I breathe”
This emerging theme came from insights about lack of education in air quality.We feel there are different ways to generate awareness around a topic, something to explore further and how to adapt solutions based on personal situation.

Emerging Theme 2: Making data more accessible to others

“No I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for that type of thing”
From research we found that citizens did not know where to find the information. There’s an opportunity to investigate potential digital or physical locations so it is integrated more seamlessly into people's daily lives.

Emerging Theme 3: Making the air quality visible
“They were all going around with face masks in China, it made it very obvious”
Resulting from rural and urban interviews it became evident that there is a perception around air quality that if the problem is not visible it is not an issue that demands attention.

Emerging Theme 4: Future understanding of Air Quality

“People need to see the problem to make things better and think of their grandchildren”
After gaining substantial knowledge on the subject of Air Quality both nationally and internationally, the exploration of citizen science has the potential for user to create, understand and impact on air quality.

Emerging Theme 5: Making data understandable and relevant

“The information that is provided is not relevant to me”
Further user research is needed on this emerging theme but from initial findings we discovered that there is an opportunity to adjust the data to meet the user's interests in a more emotional way.

As part of our research presentation we ran an activity which gave the attendees from Intel and the EPA the opportunity to do a SWOT analysis on each theme.

After the briefing, on Monday we broke into 3 sub teams. 1 team revisited all the research again for  insights that may have been over looked and capture any insights that came up as part of Friday's discussion. Another team depacked our SWOT analysis on each of the emerging themes with the clients to ensure we were gathering all the feedback. The insights from the activity were added to the master insights board. The final team continued to break down and re-evaluate the emerging themes and examining the new insights.

At the end of this process we came together again as a whole team and looked at the now 9 themes to see where we could merge or if any could be discarded. To help frame the final 6 themes we then wrote them  as problem statements, starting with "how might we..."

Next stop ideation!
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Creating Personas


Creating teams of two, we dispersed ourselves around Dublin City to conduct interviews on the topic of Air Quality. We were able to go to over ten locations, all giving a different view on AQ, as some areas would have a perception of having cleaner air than others. As a collective we were able to conduct 95 interviews, each giving profound insights that were able to clearly guide our decision making.
We came back to the studio and unpacked each interview onto sticky-notes and filled each other in on what we found useful. We then created five blank persona templates with a title over each.

1- Rural Persona
2- Urban Persona
3- Negative Persona
4- Vulnerable Persona
5- Parent

We then picked quotes and insights from all 95 interviews that we unpacked on sticky-notes on the studio wall and placed the relevant ones into the persona template that seemed to fit. Through this process we were able to create fake profiles that represented all interviewees in just five personas. We then gave each persona a story and personality

1- Rural Persona - Michael and Mary, 50's, B+B owners. Living in Enniscorthy

2- Urban Persona - Stephen, mid 20's, Designer. Living in Dublin City

3- Negative Persona - Tony, mid 50's, Mid Level Manager. Living in Blanchardstown

4- Vulnerable Persona - Claire, 20's, Graduate. Living Ranelagh

5- Parent - Karen, 40's, Nurse. Living in Greystones

Stephen
From these personas, we can now work on concept ideas and work off the personalities we have created as a group.
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Research Presentation

Our week and a half of research culminated in a 2 hour presentation on Friday morning. This presentation was delivered to five industry members connected to the project, with representative from Dublin City Council, Intel and the Environmental Protection Agency present. Over the week leading up to this presentation, areas of discussion had been divided between the team and the room was prepared to showcase all the work we had completed up until this point. 


The running order and speakers were decided on between the class and a breakout activity was organised for the end of the presentation. For the breakout activity it was decided that we would discuss our key insights that had been gathered up until that point and conduct a SWOT analysis with industry members, in order to gain valuable feedback on our themes and insights and to identify areas we may have overlooked previously. 


The presentation ran smoothly and we feel that the large volume of work we completed over the initial research phase was highlighted and properly presented to our clients. Thankfully the SWOT analysis conducted as part of our breakout session ran smoothly and allowed us to gather some extremely rich feedback on our five themes. It became clear to us while conducting this exercise which themes has more potential in relation to our brief. 


This presentation as a whole allowed us to receive massively helpful feedback related to all the work we had completed and the direction we were taking with our themes and insights. We will be coming together again on Monday morning to unpack all the feedback received throughout this presentation and to begin working on initial concepts.