Quintessence of life
A UX Research and Ideation Process
Designing an alternative pedestrian experience to encourage walking, revive outdoor interactions and increase community engagement in the heart of India’s first heritage city, Ahmedabad.
Case Study Overview
Design Challenge: To design an alternative pedestrian experience in the busiest part of the old city of Ahmedabad, Mandvi Ni Pol.
Tools: Survey, Observations, Interviews, Prototyping, Sketching, Physical Models, Figma, Rhino 3D, Adobe Creative Suite
Duration: Six Months
Team: Individual Research with comparative analyses and learnings
Chai: Countless
The Design Process
1. Identifying pain points and goals
2. Brainstorming design ideas and solutions
3. Presenting designs, taking feedback and surveying
4. Prototyping and testing on site to analyze user experience and access
Identify
The main focus was to establish trust, friendship and familiarity with the users. This helped empathize with the audience I was designing for, as it blurred boundaries of the designer and the user, to make it feel personal. This allowed users to confide in me and share their honest thoughts and emotions, which is always a vital process in identifying pain points.
Primary site visits and observations included daily visits to the site from 8am to 9pm, in order to better understand the site, the users and the current situation.
Understanding and identifying points of tension, as well as areas for collaboration.
The site being a Heritage B listed UNESCO site, there was involvement from the Municipal Corporation, Government, as well as the local community, which caused severe tension due to a conflict of interest not only on the status of the site, but more importantly its use, access to public and maintenance.
Having been a site loved and used by the local community for years, a formal status led to them losing rights to their access on grounds of preservation.
Does preservation mean no user engagement though? If so, then what is the point of it?
Understanding the scope of intervention, collaboration and my own role as a designer.
The site being the busiest business area in the old city, had collaboration at the heart of its functioning. And hence, it made it of utmost importance for me to understand what my agency was in this setting.
Conversing with, interviewing and observing people helped me develop a clearer understanding not only of the problems the design would have to address, but also the potential it had, of turning into a collaborative collective, resulting in a revival and flourishing of community living.
Second hand case studies as well as my own visits to the various actors involved in previous such design collaborations also inspired new design ideas and innovative solution.
Identifying User Groups and plotting pain points and making user journey maps
Key Findings
2. Define
Mapping out findings from Step 1, the ideation process began and soon four major points of intervention surfaced.
Addressing each of the user groups and their needs and wants, six major programs started emerging around which the design could revolve.
Key Takeaways
3. Ideate
Based on the points of intervention that surfaced through ideation, I decided to take up Recreational Spaces as my focal point, and started mapping out reasons for my decision, as well as possible ways to intervene and to propose creative solutions.
Based on site studies, targeted user group focused interviews and on site observations, the design then began to expand the aspects of recreation, based on what the users interpreted the act as.
This resulted in further clarity around the design program.
4. Testing out ideas
This phase included coming up with design ideas and testing them out on site. This involved user involvement and feedback in various ways.
Analyzing, surveying, focused group discussions with targeted user groups and primary and secondary research on their inputs helped shaped the design and determined steps to proceed further.
5. Design
Taking learnings and new developments from the previous phase, this stage highly focused on creating empathizing, familiar and relatable experiences.
Making physical models of the entire street, resembling each and every detail of every single building block, shop and house, the design process had collaborative design at its heart. With a constant testing of design ideas on these physical models, the design iterations walked the users through the experience using poetry, storytelling and narratives, making it as immersive and personal as possible.
