Completed in 4 weeks as an service design exercise during Industrial Design Intensive at Umeå Institute of Design. 

project Toolbox

Service Design, Mobile Ethnography, Service Blueprint, Co-Creation, Cinematography, Stop-motion Animation, Interface.

Role on Team

During the research phase I led the mobile ethnography in an effort to understand the needs and desires of the two communities we we engaging with. I also aided in the video storytelling and concept ideation. 

reflection

This project served as an introduction to service design for me. I became quickly aware that there are far more stakeholders in a given urban community than one first realizes. It is very easy to fall down the rabbit hole. By creating a clear service blueprint and highlighting the target stakeholders I was able to gain a much better idea of what our project goal and outcome would be. This project also further reinforced the importance of workshops and co-creation.

Inviting natural experiences

How can Umeå University City become a more vibrant and sustainable district? This was the challenge posed to our group for a four week service design focused project at Umeå Institute of Design in the spring of 2016. After conducting interviews and guerrilla ethnography we distilled our research down to our own problem statement of:

"How do you invite awareness of/interaction with the exiting natural ecosystem in a growing urban environment?"

UmeÅ's Green community

Through conducting interviews throughout the city and university campus we began to notice a fairly strong correlation between how both communities viewed the space they inhabited. The inhabitants of the Umeå area very concerned with the local environment. The only problem is not having the resources to explore the outdoors or lacking the knowledge of exactly how this could be done. 

Facilitating exploring nature

In Sweden the seasons change dramatically and the weather differs a lot throughout the day. However, there are many activities that people can do in nature but they are not aware of them. Through Nature Fox a platform is created that facilitates people's interaction with nature. By placing sensors in the surrounding environment, live information about the weather and seasonal conditions is provided to those on campus. Taking this information into account the best activities in the surrounding area are suggested. Nature Fox helps facilitate these activities. Users can then share their location, invite friends, or tell about their experience.

Highlighting Nature on Campus 

The output of the system mainly consists of interactive maps that are placed around the Umeå University campus. The interface then guides the user to help them find activities or spots that are interesting at that precise moment. Spots and activities are indicated by location pins on the map. Through an experience tab on the map a short description of the activity, the approximate time it requires, and what the user can expect. They can also see their activity history, comments and media shares from previous users.