DigiBloom.
The aim was to create an engaging and interactive urban experience centred around fostering creativity in the Architecture and Design building courtyard of the University of Sydney.
Duration
13 weeks
UX researcher, Product Designer
Role
Jermaine Issa & Caroline Bates
Team
High Distinction (85%+)
Grade
Research Methods
Synthesis Methods
The Product
A whimsical installation that invites design and architecture students to take a cube from its branches and create. A once boring, dull and unimaginative space is brought to life by this interactive installation. Whether you are collaborating with friends or sketching on your own, the cubes are the perfect way to cultivate your creativity.
These magnetic cubes have screens on all sides, allowing you to draw, stack and design. When finished, simply add your cubes back to the tree and watch your designs fade back into the digital ether.
In its idle state, the tree brings light, colour, and auditory beauty to the Courtyard, oscillating hues of pink, green and blue with soothing ambient sounds. A source of calmness and intrigue, the tree gives a unique ambience both during the day and night.
Research Phase 1
Contextual Observation
We noticed the courtyard is very shaded, hidden yet open, and quite bleak. There was a high amount of foot traffic through the courtyard but not many people stopped to interact with the environment or spent time looking around. But why was this? We noticed few places to encourage interaction besides the few benches and bike racks.
Surveys
Surveys were used as a source of quantitative data. We collected 30 responses from our target audience of USYD students, that also were familiar with the Courtyard. This gave us a broad overview of students’ use and the general sentiment of the space. In our surveys, we used a mix of open and closed-ended questions in addition to Likert scales for clear structure & standardisation. Questions included Please name 5 characteristics you associate with spaces that encourage you to be creative, and rate how strongly you disagree/agree with the following statements.
Cultural Probes
To gather qualitative data, we used cultural probes. We wanted to unpack their creative process, how they used the courtyard and what inspired them. We used a variety of different activities including collage making, photo diaries and written responses, which was in line with research by Kruger et al. We unpacked these responses in 2 focus groups of 3 to better understand our participants' responses. We used smaller groups in order to minimise the disadvantages of group conformity or dominant speakers, however, we definitely acknowledge that because of our small sample size, the data we collected is not going to be representative of the entire student cohort.
Completed cultural probe by one of the participants
Findings Phase 1
Surveys
Our survey confirmed our observation that the space was largely being used as a passageway with 43% of respondents using it this way. When asked to name some characteristics they associated with a creative space, the words social, colourful, playful, interactive and open were the most common, with other words such as nature or collaboration coming up occasionally. This was in great contrast to characteristics they associated with Wilkinson, which most commonly were Concrete, Boring, Dark, Old and Quiet at around 15% each. This was consistent in our Likert scale questions, where we found that most participants did not enjoy the courtyard, find it relaxing, nor inviting.
Cultural Probes
For our probe and focus group, we analysed the data with an affinity diagram. We used this particular method as we had a very large data set to sift through, and wanted to use a method we were both familiar with. We also wanted the benefits of an iterative approach because of the large set of notes.
From this, we derived 6 key themes in first person voice. These largely came under collaboration, engagement, creative process and physical environment. We then synthesised these into 4 key insights.
4 key insights
In our research, we found that students intertwined creative spaces and workspaces, which makes sense as a large part of design students’ assignments are creative. Students’ workspaces should be engaging and interactive, inspiring their work.
Students often need to collaborate on their assignments or like to gain inspiration from their peers. Their environment should facilitate collaboration and support.
While students wanted an engaging setting, they did not want to be distracted or overburdened. Their space should be calm and non-distracting, with natural elements, light and open space.
Students value taking a break and relaxing as part of their creative process. The space should be a low-stakes, low-stress setting where they can relax.
Leading to our problem statement:
How can Wilkinson Courtyard be transformed into a supportive space that fosters collaboration and ideation?
Research Phase 2
Personas
Based on this information, we created 4 personas. We did this to avoid our own personal biases by using objective statements and findings from our interviews and surveys. We included a radical persona which was a lecturer who loved everything about the courtyard, while the other personas indicated personification of our findings and results — general disliking for the courtyard but some would still use it socially.
Empathy Map
We created an empathy map and user journey map based on the qualitative data collected and personified it as Billy — an architecture student who feels uninspired for his classes, wants to meet more people from his faculty and gets distracted easily. We did this to establish a common understanding of user needs and map out how, why and what the users may experience to empathise with their experiences.
User Journey Map
The journey map conveys how the courtyard makes him feel bleak and bored yet he enjoys the natural elements that are there. A key point created was — while there are good elements such as benches and trees, there is a very small amount and it feels under-utilised.
Ideation Phase
Storyboarding
We started our ideation process by creating 3 storyboards each. This allowed us to quickly ideate low-fidelity concepts, and evaluate them against our insights without committing too much of our time. With feedback from our tutor and some of our fellow classmates, we narrowed the 6 ideas down to about 3. The feedback provided a strong preference towards colourful elements, ideas that contained points of interaction that were not overly obvious, and sympathetic design.
Decision Matrix
Based on the brief that we have to create something that encourages people to engage, interact and play, we created a decision matrix with the following criteria:
Encourages Collaboration
Inspires (Ideation)
Fosters a supportive environment
Suitable to Wilkinson’s physical space
Is fun and playful
Interactive and engaging
Innovative and new
We found that Caroline’s ‘DigiCube’ and my ‘Breathing Tree’ were most suitable as they equally ranked as a 9.
Crazy 8’s
From here, we undertook rapid ideation through the Crazy 8’s method and tried to find a concept that aligns with these two ideas. This allowed us to generate 16 new concepts with a low effort that promoted lateral thinking. These concepts addressed our key user findings, specifically how nature helped foster creativity, how colour helps make a space engaging, and how the interactive cubes fostered collaboration and playfulness. But, how does this address our problem?
Physical Digital and Spatial Attributes
DigiBloom will be a tree installation in Wilkinson Courtyard. The tree’s foliage is made up of 15x15 cubes that illuminate soft colour tones. While the tree adds to the ambience in its idle state, users will also be able to take individual cubes from the tree's branches and draw on their screen surface using their finger. The cubes are magnetic and can easily connect and stack together and, when attached back to the tree, their drawings will be erased. By using this tree display, we hope to entice users when they are not using the cubes, and add an engaging spatial element to the courtyard.
Playfulness
The ability to draw on the cubes allowed individuals to channel their inner child and is in line with our previous user research that indicated tactile experiences as a source of playfulness. User’s are able to draw whatever they like on the faces, which will then be erased once readded to the tree. We found that this ambiguity allowed user’s to be experimental with their approach, and encouraged them to use their imagination in a playful manner. Alongside this, a glowing tree is not something you find everyday, which we believe brings a whimsical element to the space.
Collaboration + Community
The cubes are physical objects that can be moved around, stacked and combined in different ways. This feature invites collaboration and allows individuals to work together in a hands-on, tangible way. In addition to this, users have an impact on their shared environment, reshaping it to be more visually diverse. We believe that this shared involvement creates a greater feeling of community within the space. Furthermore, by drawing on the cubes and connecting them together, users are able to collaborate with the visualisation of ideas and by combining different sections of a project into one.
Creativity + Ideation
From our previous user research, we found that elements of colour, nature, relaxation and collaboration facilitate creativity and ideation within our target audience.
With Digibloom, the urban environment is enhanced in a colourful manner, eradicating the bleak and dull attributes as described by user’s of the area. The different glowing colours stem from our initial desk research, which indicated that both colour and nature in an urban environment promote curiosity and a flexible imagination. Our feedback from our recent prototyping also showed us that the unique 3-dimensional surface forced users to think laterally, and therefore promoted creative thinking. In our focus groups, participants stated that calm and collaborative environments helped their idea flow, thus, by having an ambient installation it enhances the relaxing atmosphere.
Breathing Tree Storyboard
DigiCube Storyboard
Decision Matrix
Crazy 8s combining the storyboards
Prototyping Phase 1
Aim: Our first prototype aimed to explore the fundamental logistics of how users interacted with the cubes, as they were the main interaction point for users. We aimed to explore what users’ first impressions were, and how they collaborated. For this, we made cubes of different sizes out of card, and supplied our participants with Sharpies to draw on them. They were then tasked with drawing 5 shapes using 4 cubes. The goal of this was to see how our participants used diverse thinking with a more ambiguous prompt.
Findings: We found that while users were collaborating, they had difficulty drawing across the cubes. Most participants took the approach of dividing the cubes amongst themselves, only drawing across cubes that were on their side. We boiled this down to the flimsy card paper. In addition to this, the prototype had restricted functionality as faces were not reusable once they had been drawn on, and while this did force the users to rotate the cubes more, it was significantly limiting. In addition to this, we found that users stuck to the large 15x15 cubes, and did not touch the smaller cubes. This uniformity seemed to make it easier to use multiple cubes for one drawing.
Prototyping Phase 2
Reiteration: We improved these functional problems by making our second prototype out of cardboard. This stronger material allowed for easier stacking of the cubes. In addition to this, we wrapped our cubes in tape to create a whiteboard-like surface. This allowed participants to ‘erase’ their work, and easily draw and redraw ideas.
Process: We decided to test the cubes against our initial criteria, and used the following user testing plan:
We used think-aloud to gauge the participants’ thoughts and emotions during our set tasks.
This was then followed by a structured interview, designed to generate feedback regarding our insights studied in assignment one. These key factors were engagement, collaboration, relaxation, and focus.
We then used SUS testing to test the usability of our product
Subsequently, we used a non-structured interview to understand SUS ratings.
We gave our 8 participants two scenarios, each where they imagined themselves as our key personas Billy a 20-year-old architecture student, and Valerie, a 22-year-old Interaction Design student. Here participants were tasked with designing two terrace house layouts using the blocks, followed by a second task where they had to come up with 3 different arrangements of a clock, calendar and notepad. Interestingly, participants interacted with the cubes in many different fashions, and no approach was the same.
Findings: The key feedback we received from this formalised user testing, was that users found the cubes were playful and engaging. The cubes were interactive and received an average SUS score of 85. Participants enjoyed collaborating with the cubes and found it easy to focus. However, some participants were overwhelmed by the open-ended nature of the cubes and did not really know where to start when it came to using them.
Prototyping Phase 3
Reiteration: Based on the findings from phase 2, this 3rd reiteration for our prototype included features that guide the users towards how to interact with the cubes, as we hope to make the process less intimidating. To do this, we included a simple interface that appears once the cube is taken from the tree. This will help guide the user on how to use the cube and additional functionalities including pen colours and eraser tools. We also received feedback surrounding the tree’s idle state. We thought to improve the outer environment when the tree is not in use, we could add an auditory element that filled the space. This would be a soothing humming white-noise-like sound, that improved ambience even further.
The Product
Idle State
For the tree's idle state, we altered it so that it would slowly change between colours. This would add to the atmosphere of the courtyard when the cubes were not in use, and also increase the 'calmness' of the space per feedback in user testing. To further add to this element of relaxation, we included an auditory element of the tree, where it would lightly hum.
Individual Cubes
For the individual cubes, we aimed to remove some of the ambiguity in terms of how to interact with the cubes. By adding a simple user interface, users are able to better understand how to draw, erase, and edit the cubes. The interface consists of three tools the user can select with their finger and is simple enough for users to understand without ruining the intrigue and mystery. The first dot (adjustment mode) enables the user to adjust the scale and rotation of their designs. The second dot (erase mode) enables the user to use their finger to erase parts of their drawing or completely erase with the swipe of a hand. The third dot (draw mode) allows the user to draw with their finger and create exciting designs!
