Challenge Question
“How Can we redesign a park so that it’s usable and accessible for both homeless people and park goers?”
A common issue at Reutter Park was the issue with homeless people
littering and making park goers uncomfortable with their presence. Finding
a way to make the park both usable and safe for both parties was very
important to me.
Design Thinking
My Process
As a designer, I needed to follow a set of steps that would allow me to create positive
solutions. The design thinking process does a good job of outlining how I went about
creating and discovering the fixes to present issues.
I began with my challenge question, identifying the roots of the current troubles Reutter
Park was facing. Moving forward I began the ideation process, where I ran both interviews and started coming up with ideas for the prototype stage that satisfied
concepts that arose from the interviews.
Process
Interviews
I began the interview process by planning out a series of open questions. These were both qualitative and quantitative and I ensured that they covered all of my bases. My interviewees were 3 students that I didn’t know at the time. All 3 had experience with city parks and seeing homelessness and the issues it presented to park-goers.
By gathering information from these interviews, I was able to gauge the feelings and emotions associated with each interviewee. Each also provided unique recommendations that would later be incorporated into prototypes.
DEFINE
EMPATHY
IDEATE
SOLUTION
Results
Since my challenge question focused on satisfying all users and making the park optimal for multiple groups, this can often bring about difficulties finding solutions. There will always be complaints, but I feel like my solution was the most ideal for the issues I was presented with.
The storyboard I created above demonstrates my proposed solution.