Xperience This!

Back in April, several colleagues and I entered a competition by the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Design Trust for Public Space that challenged entrants to envision the future of the Grand Concourse, a boulevard in the Bronx whose grandeur has suffered in recent decades. It was a design competition, so the vast majority of contestants were architects, landscape architects, and city planners. Being experience architects, we were the filly running against the stallions – a long shot to say the least. Two months later, our proposal was selected from over 400 entries from 25 countries as one of seven (7) finalists whose designs are now on display for the fall season at the museum.

Why did our unorthodox entry resonate with the judges? Because we were the only entrants who, instead of immediately diving into a design solution to answer the question, “What should be done to revitalize the Concourse?” considered the most appropriate approach to be the one we would apply to any experience design challenge – ask the audience.

The results of our research are on display at the museum. You can also see facsimiles of some of the deliverables by going to the case study on our website. What I’d like to share here are some of the things we found important when applying basic experience design research principles to this particular challenge.

1. Define success
Defining success for a public space redesign is a research goal, not a starting point.

The definitions of success for a street are less straightforward than many design challenges we face. Since any public space has hundreds or thousands of stakeholders who also use it, finding the definition of its success is a process, not a known goal. Our subject matter experts and highly invested stakeholders for the Concourse made for a diverse group:

            – Artists
            – Community activists
            – High school students
            – Urban Planner for the Bronx
            – Director of Education Policy for the Bronx
            – CEO of a housing and economic policy organization
            – Author and New York Times reporter
            – Professor and amateur rapper
            – Lifelong Bronx residents
            – Recently moved resident
            – Former resident
            – Non-residents

It is inevitable that a wide variety of stakeholders for any project will generate a wide variety of responses to the question, “How would you define success for this initiative?” This means that the first objective of experience research on a public place, where different types of stakeholders exist, is to develop that definition of success. (See 4: “Understand audience goals”)

2. Identify your audience

Identifying your audience requires identifying the multiple uses of the space.
Residents aren’t the only users of a street like the Grand Concourse – professionals, students, visitors, drivers, sanitation workers, unemployed people, retirees, and people who come to access services (e.g. a hospital) also experience it regularly. Depending on where certain destinations are located, the population may be different: a university area draws people from near and far, a supermarket draws local residents, a hospital draws a mix of visitors and locals. But these destinations are not isolated locations –  the roadway connects them to transportation hubs as well as each other. So, identifying audiences for a public roadway must take into account the multiple uses of the space for each audience profile.

3.  Identify the context of use

Many audience profiles + many uses of space = many contexts for experiences.
The diverse population on a street does not complicate user research as much as it may seem. It simply means that recommendations for improvements of a public space must be based on a variety of contexts of use. Context is determined by the services and destinations near a location, as well as the day, time, and the needs of people accessing them. For example, on a Saturday afternoon, Jocye Kilmer park along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx is a safe place for kids to throw around a baseball or hold little league games. During rush hours, hundreds of commuters walk through the park from their homes along the Grand Concourse to the subway station on the other side. On weekday evenings a local artist gives tours of the Tree Museum that begins there. On Yankee game days fans cut through the park as a shortcut between their parking places and the nearby stadium. And every day, the man whose apartment on the Concourse looks out on the park admires (or laments) its aesthetic value.
 
4. Understand audience goals

Public space is not only for individual experiences.
In outdoor public spaces like parks and roadways, people with different purposes and aspirations affect each other’s experiences. When looking at public space, we have to pay equal attention to people for whom a park is a destination and those for whom it is a way to get elsewhere. The tourists coming to see the Tree Museum may prefer a calm, quiet environment. The rowdy Yankee fans disrupt the quiet of the Tree Museum tour on their way to the game. And the kids at little league practice need a place to play to keep them involved in safe after-school activities. Understanding, appreciating and accommodating the validity of these various uses is the ultimate goal of any final design recommendation.
 
5. Identify Positives and Negatives

Public space users expect usable space for all types.
Despite the contrasting goals that different people bring to an outdoor public space, asking them about their likes, dislikes, and areas for improvement does not necessarily result in irresolvable conflicts. Public space is not meant solely for one individual’s experience. Most people tend to expect and tolerate, if not actively appreciate, the presence of other people around. In fact, the presence of other people is often one of the key benefits of a public space. This means people’s ideas for the improvement of a roadway may include improvements for people with different needs than their own: A single, childless working adult may primarily use the street as a transportation corridor to and from work or the store, yet she appreciates the amount of families she sees on her way. Therefore, her suggestion might be to create more playground space nearby, to encourage that kind of activity. A long-time resident may see new immigrants struggle with a language barrier on public signage, and hope to facilitate their integration into the community by suggesting that signs be bilingual. This kind of feedback is focused on a community, not individuals.

6. Determine how to make improvements

Research-based audience-centered design extends beyond physical space.
We have determined that experience research of outdoor public space involves different people/profiles using a place in different contexts with different goals. They know what would improve their own experience, but that experience often includes other people, so needs are not individually-focused. 

So how does an experience architect pull all of this into recommendations for the improvement of a public space? As I mentioned earlier, understanding the multiple definitions of success for stakeholders and the various people using the space is key. Once we know who uses the place, why, how, and what about the place helps or hinders their experience, we can prioritize their needs and recommend solutions.

Summary

Complex initiatives like this go well beyond physical redesign. Any solution needs to speak to the soul and aspirations of the people who use the space. Coming up with a “cool” visual design concept or an environmentally friendly technological solution is a fun exercise for the architect as artist. But without the audience-centered research process, the designer does not have the advantage of knowing the deeper community-based issues that must be considered for the redesign to be truly successful. In public space experience design, the solution serves a diverse community of stakeholders, so it is not only worthwhile from the designer’s standpoint to look at the place from multiple perspectives, understanding how changes affect the whole community is the responsible, respectful approach to take.