D - Lens

Conceptualizing interactive wayfinding for community public space

 

ENTRY: DIA Student Design Competition

AWARD: Best Product Design

TEAM: Jorge Cazares, Caitlin Helgesen, Megan St. Andrew, Yankun Wang

ROLE: Project Manager

TIMESPAN: Fall 2018 - Winter 2019

CHALLENGE: How can the Cultural District of Detroit better utilize its public space in order to create connections between institutions, visitors, and the greater Detroit community?

TOOLS:

  • Figma

METHODS:

  • Contextual inquiry

  • Low fidelity prototyping

 
 

Background

The Cultural Center Historic District of Detroit is currently in the process of restructuring how it relates to and supports the local Detroit community. Besides contracting professional agencies to present actionable visions for how to do this, they also offered students the opportunity to present their own concepts for how to make the district better serve the community.

Project Goals

As this project was more conceptual in nature, the team decided on exploring this project with the following goals following an initial exploration of the Cultural Center Historic District:

  • Using contextual inquiry, better understand the way the current district does NOT serve the community

  • Using contextual inquiry, better understand the user journey of a community member in the district

  • Focus on how we can utilize public space to create connections between the community and the district without requiring any necessary technology on the part of the user (e.g. explore concepts that don’t require the use of a smart phone or district-specific app)

  • Explore concepts regardless of feasability

Solution

SOLUTION TECHNOLOGY: AR-enabled wayfinding signage

Following rounds of exploring the neighborhood, contextual inquiry with members of the community, and interviews with cultural institutions, the team presented the following concept as a way for community members to more actively interact with the Cultural Center Historic District:

 
 

Submission to Midtown Cultural Connection Student Design Competition ID: 81113477832

 
 
 

Why this solution?

Exploring the problem

A community led contextual inquiry activity allowed us to better understand the goals of both the district and the community which surrounded it.

We organized various data points to scope the problem space since the original problem statement proposed by the design committee was too large.

Following an exploration of the district as a team and a community contextual inquiry activity, the team surfaced the following insights:

  • “Detroit has a culture district?” When a visitor is in the cultural district, there is little signage to suggest that they are in something called the “Cultural Center Historic District.” The district as a whole lacks a singular, unified identity.

  • “It’s difficult to get to the public library because the road is too busy and the crosswalk is far away.” There are many pedestrian walk ways but they can be hostile to visitors (located along a busy road, few crosswalks, etc.) discouraging community members from exploring the area further.

  • “I’m just here to go to the Detroit Institute of Arts…” Most visitors only come for one event or museum and do not realize there are in fact several other museums that they could be visiting only hundreds of feet away. As well as this, the various institutions do not often plan events with one another.

  • “Historically, this district was just for the rich white people. It feels like I can’t walk on the lawns and the buildings seem inaccessible.” The district was originally built to not serve the whole community and many of current Detroit citizens feel the district is not made to serve them but instead white suburbanites (and in fact, many current visitors are in fact visitors, not community members).

These findings led us to scope further and focus more specifically on the problem of a generally hostile public space that didn’t invite exploration or connection to the district as a whole. Therefore:

How can the Cultural Center Historic District of Detroit better utilize its public space in order to create connections between institutions, visitors, and the greater Detroit community?

 

Exploring the solution

The team used sketching (my go-to for any initial brainstorming of any kind) to explore different solutions for disconnection between visitor and district, visitor and institution, institution and institution, citizen and community.

Initial sketching provided a variety of solutions: a unified branding campaign for the district, interactive digital maps in the public space, usable wayfinding signage (based the Legible London system), district itineraries drawn on the road, a periscope at critical visitor journeys in the public space, and see-through glass wayfinding.

 
 

Following sketching activities, the team ultimately combined aspects of different brainstorming concepts—the glass design fo some wayfinding signs, the movement of a periscope, and the interactivity of a digital map to form the first concept of “D-Lens.”

 
 

The team created lo-fi prototypes using images of the district and plastic transparencies with sketched interfaces to explore what a user might see when looking through D-Lens. We used these prototypes to present our initial concept to stakeholders and community members to get feedback.

 
 
 

Future exploration

 
 

At this point, this project is conceptual in nature. Our team has identified the following as next steps to make theD-Lens project a reality:

  • AR/VR implementation

  • Exploring accessibility

  • Hi-Fi prototyping

  • User testing with hi-fi prototypes

  • Funding strategy for construction and maintenance