Remembrance
The role of nature in cities
The goal of the project is to remind people of the beauty and value of nature and want to have more nature in their cities (think: city green spaces).
My Role:
Interaction Designer and User Experience Researcher
My Team:
Signe and Me
Tools:
Figma, Sketchup, Canva, Google slides
Context :
HCDE 536- Interaction Design
WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE TRYING TO SOLVE?
Most cities lack sufficient green spaces today, yet research shows that green spaces are strong drivers of well-being.
Green spaces in cities have numerous well-researched benefits, including:
- increased socialization of citizen
- better mental health
- faster recovery from sickness
- increased activity and exercise
- improved critical thinking and focus
- stronger connection and understanding of nature
Through our project, we aim to inspire people to want more nature in their cities and encourage them to add more green spaces in their urban areas.
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ORIGINAL VALUE STATEMENT:
We seek funding to create a series of nature-based art installations scattered across the city that are intended to inspire people’s appreciation of nature. The pieces are interactive and intended to demonstrate the contrast between industrial city life and nature and to highlight the detachment and lack of nature in today’s cities. The pieces are lovely, interactive, creative, and inspiring. They are closely rooted to natural things (e.g the sound of actual bees). The intended emotional response is appreciation, learning, and admiration of nature. It will also remind people of their positive memories and interactions with nature over their lifetime, bringing an element of connection and comfort to them. It reminds people that we are all parts of a shared space and ecosystem.
CHANGES / UPDATES
In working through our project, we made the following updates to our vision statement:
- More tied to personal memories. Greater emphasis on the user’s individual memories with nature.
- More tied to history. Greater emphasis on the city’s history (i.e., what it was like before the city was built up)
- More focused. From series of installations to one installation
- More actionable. The original proposal focused on inspiration, the new one is more about action (sign petition)
Assumptions:
- People generally feel positive about nature
- Cities don’t have much nature, but could
- People miss nature and would like more of it in cities
- People have memories of nature; they’ve experienced it many times in many ways over their lifetime
- Experiencing nature often creates a sense of connectedness (i.e. we’re all part of a shared ecosystem)
- People will be eager to engage with the art work
Operative Image:
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User Flow First iteration
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User Flow Second iteration
User flow starting with a person walking out the door of their downtown apartment or office and ending with them taking action to increase the amount of nature in their city can be broken into 4 stages of behavior change: Observe, Reflect, Imagine, and Take Action.
Observe: As the person walks out of their apartment or office, they see an exhibit of nature, such as a community garden or a green wall. They observe the beauty and benefits of nature in the urban environment.
Reflect: The person takes a moment to think about the role of nature in their life and the city. They consider how nature improves their well-being and the health of the community.
Imagine: The person starts to picture what they want in their city. They imagine a city with more green spaces, more trees, and more natural habitats for wildlife.
Take Action: The person takes action to increase nature in their city by researching ways to create green spaces and natural habitats and getting involved in local initiatives.
The user flow aims to inspire people to care about nature in their city by observing, reflecting, imagining, and taking action to increase nature. This approach encourages creative thinking and fosters a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for the environment beyond just adding parks.
System Information architecture
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Story board and Journey map
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The storyboard and user journey are combined to showcase the user goals, emotions, and interaction in the prototype.
Storyboard:
A person walking out of their downtown apartment sees a community garden on the sidewalk.
The person stops to look at the garden and feels a sense of calm and happiness.
The person reflects on the role of nature in their life and the city, realizing that it improves well-being and health.
The person imagines a more nature-friendly city with more green spaces and natural habitats for wildlife.
The person takes action by researching ways to create more green spaces and natural habitats and gets involved in local initiatives to promote nature in their community.
User Goals: To increase the amount of nature in their city and improve their well-being and the health of the community.
User Emotions: The person feels a sense of calm and happiness when observing the community garden. Reflecting on the role of nature in their life and the city leads to a deeper appreciation and understanding of its benefits.
Interaction: The person stops to observe the community garden and reflects on its role in their life and the city. This leads to imagining a more nature-friendly city and taking action to increase nature.
The goal of the prototype is to inspire people to care about nature in a different and memorable way that promotes behavior change. By combining the storyboard and user journey, the user's goals, emotions, and interaction are highlighted, showcasing the importance of observing, reflecting, imagining, and taking action to increase the amount of nature in the city.
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This piece of the storyboard sets up context for the user’s interaction with our solution.
1) User lives downtown and leaves work to go somewhere, perhaps to lunch
2) On their way, they stumble across the exhibit and are intrigued. They start to check it out.
3) In seeing that the exhibit is about nature and hearing sounds of nature, they look around and realize there isn’t a lot of nature in their city.
Prototype Plan:
Prototype - Introduction Video
Prototype:
Prototype starts with the user interacting with a giant screen on the sidewalk that leverages AR and AI to create a unique experience for the user.
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REFLECTION
Reflecting on the experience, there are a lot of things we’re excited about, but a few we’d love to explore more
- Using a more nature-based solution. Our solution is very tech-focused despite encouraging users to be more connected to nature in the city. We’d like to explore ways to add more natural elements to our solution.
- Privacy. The privacy of the user’s face, nature-based memory data, and interactions should be further considered in the design due to ethical concerns and possibly making some users more comfortable with the experience.
- Accessibility. This initial launch of our solution is designed for sighted users. In future iterations, we’d like to explore ways to offer the experience to non-sighted individuals.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- Do users feel that their memories of nature are accurately represented by the AI tool? Do the images created by the AI evoke positive memories and emotions from the user?
- Users are presented with a lot of information and visuals (green space, city history, individual memories). To what extent are each of these different visuals effective in driving users to take action? Are all required? Is the order in which they are presented optimal?
NEXT STEPS
If we had two more weeks to work on this project, we’d first focus on getting feedback from users. We’d conduct in-depth interviews to understand user perceptions (What do they like? What is confusing? Should anything be removed? What excites the users most? Does the action resonate?). We’d then work on additional iterations of the prototype.
If we had even more time, we’d explore more analog solution opportunities. This could help us support the cause of bringing more nature to the city and to possibly better support privacy concerns.
