YUJIA ZHAO Interaction Design
Puzzleye
product design
eXchangeFun
web application design
Web GIS
web application design
The bee
museum exhibits experience design
Explorability
strategic design
UReader
software design
Explorability
“Explorability” means explore possibilities. It is our strategic design concept system that encourages, promotes, and facilitates people to explore all the possibilities offered in Bloomington utilizing the existing bus network. Our goal is to support wayfinding as well as to enhance Bloomington citizenship by getting people familiar with and involved in city life via explorablity. We conducted documentary photography observation and literature review, and developed appearance prototype and concept system.
Challenge
Strategically design online and on-street digital and physical artifice to support wayfinding in Bloomington and promote citizenship.
Research & Insights
We started off with observation and documentary photography to build a personal connection with Bloomington, looking for design opportunities and insights. We noticed that Bloomington offered numerous fun places to visit such as galleries, various restaurants, parks, museums and so on. Getting familiar with the town and getting involved in activities happen locally help to enhance civic pride. But many people don’t know about all the places and activities especially students, most of who stay here temporarily and lots of them do not have a car and only rely on public transit. In terms of public transit, the bus routes go pass many worth-visiting places, but the current bus system doesn’t support visiting activity very well. Thus, we narrowed our design core to encouraging and facilitating people to explore Bloomington within the existing bus network by developing a strategic design concept system around public transit. Our project name ‘explorability’ derived from this core, which means ‘explore possibilities’. Then we did research on bus riding experience, looked at exemplars and potential technologies we can leverage.
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Documentary photos: Bloomington Signscape
Concepts & Prototype
We brainstormed and sketched many concepts that address our design core-encouraging and facilitating people to explore all the possibilities offered in Bloomington utilizing the existing bus network. We produced initial concept appearance prototype and mockup using Photoshop to communicate what the design looks like, how it works, and in what real-world context.
Concept System Development
We refined all the concepts, analyzed their values, and discussed how they work together as a system. According to the context of use, we organized the concepts into three categories: at the bus stop, riding the bus and, expanding the bus network. We examined the problems in each area and analyzed how our concepts turned the problems into design opportunities in terms of encouraging people to explore the city and improving bus-riding experience.
go to the topPresentation with notes. Please watch it in full-screen mode by clicking the forth icon at the bottom.
concepts sketches
appearance prototype in progress using photoshop
| interface mockup | appearance prototype of iPhone Guide concept |
Reflection
Having a wide range of diverse concepts is important to strategic design. Team members in a design team should inspire each other and notice the value of each concept instead of abandon ideas too early. Strategic design also requires systematic thinking and the quick shift of mind from single concept to broad picture, from detail to the whole, in order to understanding how each detail builds up and impacts to the whole. Appearance prototype is a very good way to visualize and communicate concepts in strategic design, during which my visual aesthetic sense and skills got plenty of practice.
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