When generating ideas as a group, it became rather hard to generate ones which didn't take inspiration from social media videos (e.g. money on the floor, sweets on the floor etc). These ideas were too gimmicky and strayed focus from the simplistic ad effective designs of things such as arrows. When brainstorming ideas for the group project I came up with many different ideas:
Arrows on Stairs
This idea looks at the effectiveness arrows could have on the ways in which one walks up the stairs. This idea was inspired from going up the stairs in Leeds College of Art and bumping into someone who was coming down the other way. By having a simply arrow on each side, could it become an effective way to tell the public to go on the correct side?
Our group decided to go for this idea, and we decided to place it in the location of Liberty Park; this was due to easy access to the stairs, the easy access to permission, and due to it being a highly populated place. The arrows were created with tape (for easy removal and no permeant effect to the stairs), and of different colours to help associate the difference between the two parts of the stairs, and the two different directions.
The overall outcome did prove effective, there were some brilliant responses where residents went to go put the wrong stairs and then corrected themselves by following the arrows, this clearly proved that the use of the arrows on the stairs were successful. However there were some moments which proved unsuccessful, however this was due to the fact some residents were either in a rush, oblivious to the arrows (on their phone) or followed another group of people and their actions instead of the arrows on the stairs. Ways in which this task could have been improved could be maybe placing more arrows before and after the stairs to help create a path for residents, and help the residents follow, and understand the process easier.
Hopscotch
This idea that I came up with was from the idea of using shapes; I thought of the ways in which shapes have been used in the past to distract people and thought of hopscotch, which is simply just squares constructed in an ordered fashion. If we were to place the hopscotch in a crowded place and see what people may do. It was already quite obvious to us that only teenagers and younger children will part take in this activity so we tried to look for areas in which children and teenagers may go. One place was on the way from Leeds college of Art just before an underground tunnel, this would be where a nearby school would finish school and possibly walk past. When the hopscotch was placed out, the tape proved quite stubborn to stick to the cold floor, resulting in some parts lifting from the floor. As people passed by around midday there was no reaction, other than people walking around it (diverting them), so the team decided to leave that area and try a more crowded place (outside St Johns Centre). In this area, there were minimal reactions, what distracted people the most was our team actually placing the tape down in the middle of the street, which proved quite interesting. People payed no attention to the hopscotch and walked over them while oblivious on their phones. One little girl was very close to interacting with the hopscotch and sadly was pulled away by her rushing mum. At the end of the day we believe that this task idea wasn't successful, however the next day through social media we found out that people from Leeds College of Art were using the hopscotch near the underground tunnel.
Overall we were able to successfully fulfil the task asked of us by producing these two sign systems which were able to:
- Create a Diversion
- Make a member of public pause or stop
- Create a new connection
One thing that I personally took notice of was those who were stuck on their phones, oblivious to what had been placed in front of them. This reminded me of the phone lane in China, which was created to remind pedestrians the dangers of walking when looking on your phone.
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