Southwark 2030

Duration: 5 weeks

My role: User Research, Prototyping, Physical Computing

Group Members: Anushka Kurien, Kimberly Rodrigues, Munira Kazi and Akriti Goel

In collaboration with: Southwark Borough council and University of the Arts London

Design Question

“Can residents design the future of their city collectively? How may they imagine and share such futures?”

The Outcome

Interactive installation

The outcome of this project was an interactive installation that allowed passersby to engage with the narrative of Southwark 2030 through a audio-based medium. At the end of the interaction, participants are offered to take a badge of their choice from the blue box as a token of appreciation.

The project brief was to design a way for residents to imagine Southwark in 2030.

The Process

Understanding the day to day life of the residents

Workshop at the TATE

The project was a part of an existing campaign ‘Southwark 2030’ initiated by the Southwark Borough Council. To understand the existing framework and activities of the campaign we attended a workshop conducted by the council at Tate Modern.

Comparing two prototypes

The project was developing along the concept of talking to your future self and the first set of prototypes developed by us were:

  • Diary Entry: Participants could write about everyday topics ranging from their morning routine to their day at work in 2030.
  • Spin-the-wheel: This prototype allowed participants to be prompted by the wheel to write a letter and post it to their future selves.
Diary Entry
Spin-the-wheel
More people engaged with the diary entry while spin-the-wheel got more people stopping to take a look.

Attract-interact-participate

This slowly became the motto for this project

User testing the prompts

Our project started shaping around the concept of ‘A call from the future’. We tried a number of prompts and having a constant feedback loop with multiple iterations of them helped us craft prompts that helped inspire imagination about the future.

Passerby on the street
A student living in the area
Recently moved to the area
Impromptu testing of the prompts with the target audience

This is one of the final prompts that were part of the installation.

Prototype testing

We conducted low-fidelity prototype testing with the residents of Southwark. This allowed us to take forward what was working and discard what wasn’t.

The cardboard with the written heading was added later along with some stickers because we realised halfway into this that people needed more context and incentive to stop by.

Anonymous resident trying our draft prompts for a sticker

Physical computing and coding

This sketch explains the physical computing and coding that works at the backend of the interactive installation. The main platforms used to achieve this were Arduino and p5.js.

The installation was made with space to hold a mac mini inside the blue box to enable it to work.

The lessons I’ve learnt from this project

  • Technology does not always work the way you want it to and it is important to be flexible and creative with alternative routes.
  • A mock test is very different compared to testing in the real world and it is preferable to always choose the latter when and where the project allows.

For a more detailed process, please visit the project blog here.