How can we create participation of users in our project? We decided to make our blog interactive, so the residents of the Agavestraat can comment on our work or give advise to improve it. To gather information about them we also created an online survey that the residents can fill out. It contains questions about the current light in their street, how they would like to improve it and some personal facts (gender, age).
Marcel Bolten, an urban and public designer, told us that there are more ways to get information from users. For a design concept in public space it’s necessary to know exactly how the users think, what kind of assocations they make and what their daily routines are. Useful techniques to discover this are context mapping, intervening in peoples rituals, observing, and focus groups. Context mapping is a method of contextual research with users, to discover the context of our concept and what its use will be. Focus groups are like surveys (it has the goal of questioning the user), but than in an interactive way. This way you can really get an in-depth conversation with the users and you can discover their daily routines.
Marcel Bolten also gave some advice to brainstorm about a possible design for our light concept. Techniques like making collages and the ‘Wiebertjesmodel’ can help to stimulate and organize thinking on a design. The concept really has to fit to the needs of the users but we must also think for ourselves and come up with creative out-of-the-box ideas for a design concept. One thing we can really use is the problem of the dark alleys in the Agavestraat. In the night time this place is so dark that you can’t see anything. How to come up with a design for this? We have to generate a lot of ideas, and must not be afraid to throw older ideas away. Decision making is the key to the succes of a design concept. In this link you can find more information about urban and public design projects of Marcel Bolten: omgeef.nl