Class 3 – How Can You Facilitate Finding?

Class 3 – How can you facilitate finding?

This week’s class discussion:

  • Empathy Toolkit Show and Tell
  • Getting familiar with heuristic evaluations: two examples of assigned heuristic
  • Mini lecture on Wayfinding and Space/Place
  • Journey Maps
Image courtesy Rena Guan

This week’s class activity about “How can you facilitate finding?”:

You have each been assigned a team to do this week’s excursion. The exercise is meant to highlight the importance of wayfinding and allow you the opportunity to see some of the systems at work (or not).

Remember to tap into your empathy skills from last week. To help you with this, your team will each draw one location with two “users” and two “tasks.” Your team will then proceed to document and map the user journey that you experience as these users with these tasks. Use the document provided on Canvas or create your own (Creative Commons template also available at Why Service Design Thinking)

Due by the end of class:
  • Your team’s two journey maps

Next week’s assignment:

Based on today’s exercise and your readings, create a set of evaluative criteria/heuristics that help designers evaluate a journey through a space. Some things you might want to consider include:

  • What criteria ensure that a space is useful?
  • What criteria ensure that it is usable?
  • What criteria ensure that it is enjoyable?
  • What makes a space a place?
  • What brings people together? What drives them away?
  • What does the space say about what should happen there and what shouldn’t?
  • What does the space say about who belongs there and who doesn’t?
Readings – excerpts from:

Paul Arthur and Romedi Passini Wayfinding

David Gibson: The Wayfinding Handbook

William Whyte: Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

Susan Hunter of IDeA Center at University of Buffalo: Spatial Orientation, Environmental Perception and Wayfinding

Optional:

Yi-Fu Tuan Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective

CBC’s Where Am I?

Practical Service Design Resources

Cooper Service Blueprints: Laying the Foundation

Lucy Kimbell’s Service Innovation Handbook

Witold Rybczynski: How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit

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