Background Research

"WALKABILITY"
Making a city more accommodating for pedestrians not only increases the way people feel about their environment, but has been proven to increase the value of a place.

ATTRACTIVE CITIES
People are more likely to walk and engage with their surroundings in interesting and novel environments.

EMPATHY
Walkable cities allow people to be more empathetic to other pedestrians.

Market Analysis

CHANGING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Creating positive, enticing and channelised walkable experiences by refurbishing the environment.

USE OF TECHNOLOGY
Creative use of technology to introduce new methods of displaying information or feedback.

PLACEMAKING
Utilising space within cities to create places people want to be in.

Contextual Observation

We observed the state of Sydney pedestrian traffic. We found that the space is being used by people of different needs, with these priorities shifting as time changes. Additionally, people walk primarily out of necessity, and prefer shorter routes when other routes seem less effective.

Survey and Affinity Diagramming:

After surveying 24 participants on how they feel and what they’d do to change the way people move throughout cities, we found some key insights to define the areas we should focus on for concept generation. These insights were expanded upon through some affinity diagramming to get to the crux of the issue.

Ideation Phase

The Proposed Concepts

We came up with about 7 unique concepts to solve these issues out of which 3 concepts were further prototyped and tested.

Concept 1: EMOTIONS OF THE CITY

An interactive display that detects the emotions of passersby that engage with the display, and reacts appropriately, creating a mosaic of visual representations of emotion.

Increasing Walk Appeal
A wall mounted display would be used to present the array of general emotion from people that pass by to engage people and increase the visual variety and walk appeal of an area.

Storyboard

Concept 2: Musical Nexus

A vision-based, interactive musical experience which allows anyone, even untrained musicians, to dynamically influence music, like what a real conductor or DJ would do.

Utilising Placemaking
Place-making refers to the use of underutilised or underappreciated space in creating new and unique experiences, distributing pedestrian density more accordingly.

Our research highlights that shared musicmaking is a sophisticated example of the potential of music to express emotion and stimulate empathetic understanding between the community.

Concept 3: Global Footprint

A live, interactive information visualisation that calculates the number of footsteps in a specific area, and compares it with travelling distance between different pats of the world/universe. Long-Term

Increasing Walk Appeal
By creating an interactive information visualisation that changes over a long period of time, we thought this concept would give a sense of familiarity to pedestrians as well as an opportunity to streamline flow by pulling away idle people.

Additional Concepts:

1. Street Heat Sign:

The Street Heat Sign utilises problem solving through detour encouragement by creating a gradient map of the current pedestrian congestion in the specific directions people want to head. By just looking at the sign pedestrians will have information on exactly what part of that street is congested and can route accordingly.




3. Escalator Handrail Tap:

Escalators are currently being used inefficiently due to cultural norms of splitting people who want to stand still and walk. This inefficiency becomes a major problem in terms of safety due to uneven distribution causing escalators to malfunction and collapse harming masses amount of people.
This design looks to prevent people from walking up the stairs and standing still on both sides through an interactive music making with all it’s participants.

2. Seat Seeker:

Interactive seats are a way to encourage people who stand still to take a seat next to the walkways to prevent them from obstructing pedestrian walkways.
The faces displayed through a digital screen will look inquisitively as people walk pass, but stare at and target people who stand still in one spot for too long. Once detecting a person sitting on it, the seat or the whole square block will lightly glow and the face will go to sleep as a sign of it’s done it’s job.


4. Pixel Grid Floor:

The Pixel Grid Floor concept depicts business/congestion within an area with a floor covering certain areas of a walkway/footpath. Congested points will produce a lot of coloured lights which spread out in a gridbased space.
The Pixel Grid Floor enables movement and interaction within that area, and by encouraging movement for more interaction, loitering and any idle waiting can be pulled towards the outside of the congestion.

Stage 2

User Testing and Analysis Methods

1. OBSERVATIONAL TESTING

Observational Testing is a live testing method in which specific indicators for the function of the prototype is assessed on the fly.Contextual Observation was also conducted to develop a better understanding of how users interact with our prototype. by analysing the facial expressions, gestures and actions of users.


2. INTERVIEWS

Interviews is a crucial part to a human-centred design as it allows potential stakeholders to be an active part of the design process. Semi-structured interviews allows us to go further than first impressions and helps users empathise with the reasons behind each prototype.


3. SYSTEMS USABILITY SCALE

The System Usability Scale consists of multiple questions and a couple of open-response questions, mostly judged through a ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’ Scale. It’s a useful tool for measuring the usability of prototypes and differentiate between usable and unusable systems about the prototype.

4. Think Aloud Method

We conducted the Think Aloud method as it allowed us to grasp a deeper understanding of the thoughts and feelings of users as they are interacting with our prototypes. The participants are made to talk while interacting with the prototype.


5. AFFINITY DIAGRAM

Affinity Diagramming is a data analysis method that addresses users/audiences’ needs and wants with a single sentence. The large amount of data gathered is broken down into opinionated, suggestive or emotional phrases, then grouped up into similar perspectives that target the general need and want of the user/audience. Affinity


6. HARRIS PROFILE / DECISION MATRIX

The Harris Profile or Decision Matrix is a simple but effective analysis method that allows prototypes to be judged overall with an emphasis on how effective each aspect of the prototype was. Each aspects of the prototype is weighed, then given a scalar score in order to find the total effectiveness of the prototype

Global Footprint

To prototype this concept, we created a large poster to represent a display and presented it in a high foot traffic area.

As people walked by we counted each one and incremented to the stats on the visualisation, using thread to mark paths the people have collaboratively walked.

This was to see if people would engage with the information being displayed, and if it would catch people’s attention.

Emotion Capture LowFi

To prototype this concept, we used paper to represent the displays with printed paper strips to represent the emotions being contributed. A mirror was also used to represent a camera. This presented on an easel within a busy walking area as to test if this idea has the potential to attract people passing by.

As people look into the mirror of the prototype, they would be asked what emotion correlates the most to how they currently feel, to simulate how a potential facial recognition API would detect their emotions. Their emotions colour was then pinned up on the corresponding visualisation, resulting in a mosaic of colours.

Music Interaction LowFi

To prototype this concept, we used Wizard of Oz testing to simulate a user having control over a musical piece. To display these controls to the user, we displayed the default kinect skeleton motion tracking over some static buttons, to see if users would instinctively know how to control a motion controlling system.

This was testing in relatively high traffic area also, to see if people would engage with an interactive system like this if it was presented in a public area.

Prototype Construction

We decided to iterate on this concept using the feedback we got from our user testing for the previous version about lack of interactivity, continuity of interaction, incoherent feedback and visualisations, privacy issues.

We used a digital display to help visualise the art and give us a higher level of interactivity, as well as a kinect to add some more advance controls. We also used a silhouette instead of camera footage display to address privacy issues.A QR code was also added to help people learn more statistics and information about the project.

User Testing Findings

UI and Interactivity needs to be clear and precise, as well as making the objective of each clear from the initial introduction to the concept. People want to have simple but engaging interactions in cities, that don’t necessarily obstruct them but enhance their average experience.

A balance needs to be struck between interactivity, usability, and the potential to solve the problems - the Musical Nexus may be more engaging on an interaction level, but ends up being less usable or feasible than the Emotion Tracking Idea.

People may gravitate towards novel installments or objects in an urban environment, but for regular pedestrians this novelty wears thin and reduces the impact of repeat experiences.

Core Functionality

It works through multiple pieces; Starting with a physical interface, people are prompted to stand in front as it captures an image of their face and sends it to an API which returns a general confidence rating of the different emotions the person may be experiencing.

After this, a colour is calculated based on combining different colours we assigned to each emotion and calculating a weighted average, which ultimately assigns each person with their own colour of emotion, meaning two different people will be unlikely to be assigned the same colour. After the colour is created, the user is prompted to press a button which sends their emotion to the larger visualisation display which is projected/presented on a wall next to the physical interface.

The visualisation presents a large animation on new animation entry, to show users their place within the larger picture of emotion of the environment.

Responses

The Project was setup at the D19 Exhibition 2019 at University of Sydney and Design Careers fair 2019 Sydney as well. We received an overwhelming response from people. Over 1000+ users interacted with the exhibit on the day of the exhibition.