Airport Experience — Environments Studio IV
Compilation of learnings
Case Study 1
Learnings found from researching inclusive designs.
Case Study 2
Insights from the movie “her” regarding possible design solutions and future visioning.
Readings 8/30
Kat Holme’s readings introduced to concept of the social model to me. I learned about this briefly during a human computer interaction class; however, the class did not go into that much depth. She mentions how the social model puts the strain on designers for creating a world in which disabled people are able to navigate naturally, and I think that as a designer this is something we should burden.
Readings 9/6
I thought that the Ted Talk “I’m not your inspiration” by Stella Young was insightful because gave me a different perspective on disabilities. Similarly to the social model, this Ted Talk highlighted that disabilities are caused by the mismatch of their abilities and their environment built by society. I thought that it was also interesting that people around her put her on a pedestal as inspiration just because she was disabled, and were unable to see her as an individual.
Moreover, I thought the train station article was interesting because I think it is more common in the western world for trains to be viewed as an “ancient” method of transportation. In many asian countries such as China and Japan, have modern, sleek, and commonly used bullet trains.
Readings 9/11
I thought that the reading of “Becoming a passenger exploring the situational passenger experience and airport design in the Copenhagen Airport” was interesting because it detailed the methods of how user researchers went beyond just statistical data to fully understand the passenger experience. Moreover, this paper deals with the transitional period of an airport when it is under-construction and the effects on passenger’s sense of freedom.
Readings 9/13
I enjoyed reading about CMU’s own director of disability resources. She mentions how typically accommodations for people with disabilities is not as difficult, time-consuming, or expensive as most people think. That made me evaluate my understanding of inclusive design and think about how adding accessible features is not as arduous as I thought it would be.
Moreover, the article about airport design and operations was insightful because it talks about the logistical limitations of airport layouts such as accounting for future expansions and creating a short-as-possible path for passengers to take to their gate. Through my own research, I was not able to find information on regulations and limitations of airport design, so this paper was helpful.
Readings 9/20
In, “How can we design ‘for all’ with the constrictive persona” I thought it was interesting how the author discussed actors and the methods of getting into character as a learning point for designers. Although I recognize that design involves a lot of empathy, I have yet to consider the empathy to be as straight forward as “acting” as your intended audience to understand their needs. I thought that this different lens of considering the audience was an interesting take and may help if empathizing with the user is difficult.
In, “Persona Spectrums: Building for Inclusion and Accessibility” I thought that the method of including permanent, temporary, and situational levels was interesting. It makes the conversation move away from focusing on a specific disability to understanding the range of people who would require inclusive design. This not only widens the understanding of who would be involved but also makes it understandable that designing for disabilities benefits all kinds of people.
Readings 9/25
I think that this article echos the sentiment that many disabled people have tried to convey about current accessible infrastructure and society. Simply having accessible things does not mean that it is inclusive. She mentions how she felt unwelcome and the process of completing a simple task was way too arduous. I think that accessible design needs a lot of work in terms of helping the user not feel alienated and allowing them to have independence.
The video was interesting because she mentions how they design thinking about people with disabilities before designing the service for other people, which I think is the right way to go about it. With this mindset, it is easier to design the service or space to be inclusive since non-disabled people will be able to use the same services or structures that disabled people do either immediately or with some slight adjustment.
Research on departure experience
Mind map
Process
Initial Direction
How might we offer international passengers an effortless method for connecting with the local culture while fostering a sense of tranquility from arrival to exit?
Research
User Interview with an international passenger at YVR
Insights:
- Baggage claim lack of organization/notification of where passenger’s bags are currently
- Immigration entry line-up queue length/time transparency
- Not many people stopping to look at the exhibits while walking to the exit
- There are play areas near the exit for people waiting to be picked-up or for public transportation.
Idea generation
- Utilizing the hallways (with the high-speed walkways) to play projections showing some local culture or mention information about queue times, etc. (Kind of like Heidi from Switzerland)
- Escalator area is quite barren, could utilize the location.
Lenticular printing? Dynamic sculpture - Showcase an indigenous tale
Pivoting Directions
How might we create a pleasant and memorable experience for long layover passengers at the airport that can help alleviate the boredom and fatigue of extended stays?
We decided to change our direction for the project because the first idea felt too disjoint and not cohesive enough.
We tried to think of many different ideas in order to understand the possibilities of different machine interactions for overnight layovers.
These various interactions are distinct and separate, so we decided on different ways to combine them to make a cohesive experience.
Research (part 2)
User Interviews
Full user interview scripts
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KXi5cd6-yTk1awa5LckZMiCVPpfGgiT_avcKBBQ74ac/edit?usp=sharing
Insights from user research:
- People seem to enjoy the ideas presented with minor caveats
- The most important thing to people after a long flight is rest, food, and electronic charging, after that they want entertainment
- Specific feedback on ideas: Local culture foods creater — would not know what kinds of food would be good in combination so would probably avoid, would like more food and drink options. Free gift — would always enjoy this but be careful of small things for children. Immersive visiting — would like this since people don’t always get to visit the city due to the short time there.
Expert Interview
Interviewing the YVR Brand head
Insights:
- Airport challenge and curation: finding ways to display new media. Projection, video, and sound. A space or light issue, a new installation in new terminal expansion -> non indigenous digital artists; holographic looking. Problem: battling with ambient light, greenery (things that make people inherently calm). Consider the airport environment: pod (what is the security implications -> cameras). Do people have bags with them?
- Not all poles are totem poles. Family posts and house posts.
- Put the large pieces at point of decision. Dwell place. Just come out from security. When people gather themselves. Meant to create a space — Post-TSA.
Center Area Process
I started out with drawing sketches of potential layouts for the center area.
Branding Inspiration
We thought about using the weaving style for the branding where the colors were in YVR blue green and teal colors but the underlying design is related to indigenous culture. The weaving patterns would also be tied into the rest of the airport since there are weaved tapestries within the airport.
However, this was not really working out and it was hard to expand this system.
To look at other examples of indigenous art for branding inspiration, I researched a lot of forms of indigenous art. I found this style that I really resonated with and thought could be expandable, so I suggested it as something we could use.
3D Modeling
I used a mix of three different softwares for developing the 3D model. I used Fusion 360 to create the base of the structure, then moved it into Blender to add the materials. I also used Nomad to create the totem poles and the hill for the nature walk.
We created and printed out a small scale model of the environment of the airport. We thought about 3D printing the whole environment; however, later we would find out that this would be too large scale.
Then I moved onto 3D modeling the hub area.
I created the hub main structure through Fusion 360 since I thought it would be nice to use since it relies on a lot of real world measurements to create the model. However, I think this was a mistake. Fusion 360 is a good tool for creating models following along basic geometries (squares, cylinders, etc) and extruding more organic forms. However, some wonky forms like anything along a curve in 3D space is hard to make unless you can extrude it from a 2D surface. It is still quite good to use, but I would have split up some of the model to create in Blender had I realized this earlier.
I then created the hill structure using Nomad. This was alright and I didn’t experience any major hiccups. It did make me realize how unintuitive Nomad is since I could not pick it back up without needing to rewatch a tutorial I used to learn it in the first place.
I created some murals to have visitors be able to have some indigenous elements incorporated into their nature walk. I then moved these murals into the Blender file and made them 3D dimensional so that they have some depth. This took a long time, although it may not have been worth it since the effect was not very evident. I exported each mural as an SVG and imported them into blender. I then had to clean the vertices of the SVG and make sure that there are an adequate amount along the curved side. This is so that Blender can recognize that there are multiple small faces along the curve since large faces would not be able to “curve” and would look very jagged. This process of cleaning, inserting more vertices for faces, and making the bezier curve the mural would be warped to was indeed a lot of work. Alternatively, for next time, just insert an image and curve that.
3D Printing the Model
I 3D printed the model which took a total of 4 days. It took a long time to learn how to split up the model to print it in pieces. I learned that I could split it in Blender by creating an extremely thin rectangle and doing a exclude function on the rectangle and the objects within the model which would remove a small amount of volume from the model. Then I would manually select each vertex of one of the split sides and make that a new object. Repeat for all other objects in the model.
All other automated options either didn’t work for some reason or involved downloading a software that was only available for Windows computers, so this was the hacky method that I came up with through watching a tone of random Youtube videos and piecing together a process that would work for my model. There was no direct tutorial for what I wanted to do, so it was quite time consuming to figure out. Surprisingly, there is not enough documentation on how to split up models for a model that is composed of multiple objects, even though this seems like something that would be commonly done.
This is what the scale of the model looks like compared to my hand.
Since the 3D model was black, I tried to color the rest of the model to incorporate the white wall. These colors were not really what I envisioned, and there was something off about them. To try and fix this, I looked up different physical spaces that incorporate the branding colors and white together.
I incorporated a lot more wood elements to match with the white and blue of the branding. This version was a lot less off-putting as the colors clashed less. The inside of the rotunda remained black for visitors to feel like they are more enveloped in the night atmosphere for the stargazing mural at the ceiling of the rotunda.
Physical making
Shannon created the small scale version of the gacha machine and then Susan and I worked on creating a larger version. We planned on having the nest on top of the gacha machine and also wrapped the machine with paper.
We wanted the diorama center piece to be able to light up as someone pressed on the wall buttons, and we figured out a cheap and fast way of making the lights turn on through a press of the button. This was because Susan broke the circuit of lights, but that created the perfect system as someone would just have to press the wires together to get the lights to work again.
We cut the diorama using the Cricut cutter and then put it into a reflective box so that it would enhance the brightness of the lights inside. First we print out the solid color onto sheets, then used the Cricut cutter to form the shapes, and then we used leftover foamcore as padding between each sheet.
Arduino/Touch Designer
I worked on creating the Arduino photo resistor sensors and connected them together so that I could have 8 different resistors, 4 connected to each arduino and 2 arduinos. I was not very experienced with Arduino beforehand, but I did work on a project with Arduinos so I knew that it would definetly be possible for me to do. I also created the touchdesigner part for the computer to recognize which Arduino photo resistor is sending the signal and switch the video input based on that.
Final Designs
Presentation
Renderings
Physical Model
Explorer’s Map and Gacha Machine Prize
