On Potential Application of Interaction Design for Placemaking

Abstract

While the notion of place has been discussed exhaustively within the field of interaction design, the idea of Placemaking or creation of places is yet to receive attention. Placemaking is an established approach used by disciplines, such as, Urban Planning, Urban Design, Landscape architecture and Architecture, to create public places that people want to live and work in. So far, various approaches to Placemaking have been largely limited to the above-mentioned fields. Drawing on evaluation of four interaction design projects (carried out by the author and by his students under his tutelage) and on author’s extensive experience of designing novel interactive artefacts for public places, it is pointed out that interactive artefacts, due to their novel nature, may have the potential to contribute to the process of Placemaking. The chapter concludes by arguing for deeper examination of the field of interaction design for its potential to contribute to the process of Placemaking.

It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.

William H. Whyte

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Placemaking

While we are surrounded by a number of man-made and nature entities, such as buildings, trees, street furniture etc., our built environment cannot be seen just as an agglomeration of physical and natural entities. A better way of thinking about our built environment is to think of it in terms of a network of places – both public and private. Places are constituted of two elements, one, a Euclidian space and people’s experience resulting from their interaction with and within this Euclidian space (e.g. Harrison and Dourish 1996; Tuan 1996 etc.). A place therefore is not just constituted of physical structures but also of imagined worlds (Anderson 1983). And it is continuously shaped by a patchwork of actions and everyday practices that, over time, contribute to patterns of familiarity (e.g. De Certeau 1984; Jacobs 1961; Massey 1995; Cresswell 2005 etc.).

Over the years, the character of our built environment, especially our cities, has changed considerably (e.g. Low 2006 etc.). Growth of population (which is exponential in some cases), has imposed impossible demands on our cities infrastructure resulting in many problems such as traffic jams and disappearing greens spaces, within our midst. Most notable amongst such changes is the deterioration of our everyday places – especially public places – that constitute our built environment (Low 2006). In many cases, such places have seen significant change in the land/building use, encroachment and most significantly, deterioration of social activities for people to engage with. The loss of the character of public places that constitute our built environment is a matter of serious concern because of many reasons (Low 2006). For example –

• 1. Deteriorated places discourage social activities. Cities, as Cullen notes, are locations where a number of families come together and this has many advantages (Cullen 1971). They can gather around and have a party, they can go and see a play, they can have a discussion on issues of social and cultural importance and so on. The public places have been the traditional hubs of such social activities and therefore deterioration of such places discourages such social activities.

• 2. The deterioration of public places encourages anti-social activities and this further discourages people from using such places.

• 3. The drop in inflow of people to a public place impacts its economic activities. This, for example, forces the street vendor and people’s activities associated with them, out of such places and thereby making such places lifeless.

• 4. Many such public places provide identity to the cities. For example, the St Mark’s plaza provides identity to the city of Venice. Loss of such places therefore impinges on the identity of the city itself.

• 5. Finally, deterioration of places often leads to their turning into traffic islands and therefore eyesores that the populace of the city tends to avoid.

Over the years, the issue of deterioration of public places has received significant attention within the disciplines dealing with design and use of public places (such as architecture, urban design, urban planning, landscape architecture etc.) and a number of studies to understand the reasons for degradation of public places have been carried out (e.g. Low 2006; Carmona et al. 2003 etc.). Such studies have followed the early and seminal work of William Whyte and Jane Jacobs carried out in the 1960s that argued against the design of cities that catered to cars instead of people. To sustain the people centred nature of public places and to rejuvenate the deteriorating ones, Whyte and Jacobs argued for infusion of social life into such places (Jacobs 1961; Whyte 1980). Many such early ideas proposed by Whyte and Jacobs led to evolution of an approach called Placemaking that deals with planning, design and management of public places.

The Placemaking approach has evolved significantly since then with contributions from several influential researchers. For example, Fred Kent, a disciple of Whyte formed the Project for Public Places to pursue the idea of Placemaking (http://www.pps.org/). Christopher Alexander in the Pattern Language argued in favour of learning from patterns of people space interaction and reject top down approach adopted by Architects and Urban designers at that time (Alexander et al. 1977). Other noted researchers such as philosopher Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre and Nicholson-Smith 1991), Ray Oldenburg (2002), urban sociologist Richard Sennett (Sennett 1992) and more recently Robert Putnam (2001) have also contributed to the development of Placemaking approach.

Today, Placemaking is concerned with how people experience their public spaces and how they develop a sense of place. The aim of Placemaking then is to create positive experience and to create public places that that people want to live, and work in. This approach now also incorporates a number of people centric aspects such as concern for healthy living, economic revitalization, community capacity building etc. (Silberberg 2013).

What Is Involved in Placemaking?

Let’s first examine what is involved in creation of a place. A place is constituted of its following two elements:

• 1. A Euclidian space that acts as a ‘container’ for human activities, and

• 2. A judicious mix of human activities that occupies the ‘container’

The existence of the above two elements is necessary for people to engage, dialogically, with their Euclidian spaces and develop a sense of place. Creation of a Place, therefore, involves following two activities –

• Architectural design of a Euclidian space that acts as a ‘container’ for human activities

Cullen, in Townscape, discusses how architectural design of everyday spaces contributes to people’s experience (Cullen 1971). And a number of strategies concerning physical form of such spaces (e.g., human scale of the space, degree of enclosure of the space, rendering of the surfaces etc.) are employed by architects, urban designers and landscape architects when designing such spaces.

• Infusion of human activities within such Euclidian spaces.

Gehl notes that active and popular places, especially public places, have a judicious mix of three different types of human activities, namely, necessary activities, optional activities and social activities (Gehl 1987).

The process of Placemaking, ideally, involves both above-mentioned elements of a place. However, in this age of scarcity – of both the finances and the land – creation of new places is a very difficult, if not impossible, task. The prevalent process of Placemaking, therefore, is often concerned with an existing place/public place with little or no scope of intervening into the architectural design of its ‘container’. Consequently, the focus of Placemaking process remains primarily on the infusion of human activities into the ‘container’ of a given public place with minor and often temporary modifications to the ‘container’ (Silberberg 2013).

It can be noted that when intervening in an existing public place, the process of Placemaking attempts to bring in various types of activities that are optional and social in nature (using Gehl’s terminology). For example, introduction of activities such as weekly public events (such as talks by artists and others), introduction of book boxes, chair bombing, organization of walks have been considered by Placemaking projects (Silberberg 2013). In addition to this, deployment of artistic installations and street furniture have also been part of Placemaking projects (Silberberg 2013). The objective of such interventions is –

• to offer variety of activities within the place and,

• to provide opportunities for triangulation for people using the place (Whyte 1980)

and thus fulfil the two central principles of Placemaking from design perspective (www.pps.org).

Disciplines Involved in Placemaking

Currently, Placemaking approach continues to be practiced, largely by the disciplines of Urban Planning, Environmental Planning, Transportation Planning, Urban design, Landscape Architecture, and Architecture. However, such disciplines do not limit their contribution to the process of Placemaking to their disciplinary boundaries and often take help of other professionals, such as artists, performers etc., when engaged in the process of Placemaking. Given this, could the discipline of interaction design be seen as a potential contributor to the process of Placemaking?

Interaction Design as a Potential Contributor to Placemaking

The discipline of interaction design is concerned with design and deployment of interactive artefacts in a variety of human activity settings. Such artefacts can vary is scale and appearance. Such artefacts can also vary in terms of how they are deployed within human activity settings. That is, such artefacts could be deployed on Desktop computers, on mobile devices, within a space as a stand-alone artefact and could be embedded within the ‘container’ of the space. Furthermore, such artefact could vary in terms how people interact with them, e.g. by using keyboard and mouse, by using a touch screen, by using sensors such as movement sensor etc.. Regardless of their scale, appearance, manner of deployment and modality of interaction, supporting human activities associated with a given setting is at the heart of their design.

Over the years, the design boundaries of the disciplines of Interaction Design vis a vis human activity settings have expanded from the workspaces to private spaces to third spaces and also to quasi public and public spaces. Researchers have argued that for design and deployment of interactive aftetacts, there maybe advantages in thinking about such settings as places, instead of mere physical spaces as containers for human activities (e.g. Harrison and Dourish 1996).

Harrison and Dourish, drawing on architectural way of thinking about spaces and places, considered places as spaces that are invested with meaning. Their notion of place was later expanded by Dourish (2006) by recognising both spaces and places as complex and subjective constructs. Dourish’s notion of place drew on research carried out in cultural geography (e.g. De Certeau 1984 etc.) and distinguished between strategic practices of space (concerned with design) and tactical practices of space (concerned with use of the space). He, thus, pointed out the difference between the formation of space (by design) and the formation of place as a result of people’s interaction with and within the space. Many other perspectives on place from phenomenology (Turner and Turner 2003), architectural theory (Munro et al. 1999), sociology (Crabtree 2000), geography (Brown and Perry 2001) etc. have been discussed within the interaction design research.

The notion of place, thus, has received significant attention within the interaction design research. However, the research within interaction design is yet to examine the process of creation or activation of places (which is the primary objective of the process of Placemaking) and the potential role that the discipline of interaction design could play in the process of Placemaking. That said, the overall objective of the discipline of interaction design and that of Placemaking appears to be similar – that is to contribute to the (positive) human experience associated with variety of human activity setting. Given that public space have emerged as a design setting for interaction design, could the discipline of interaction design contribute to the process of Placemaking?

This question was at the back of author’s mind when working as an interaction designer and a tutor (from 2004 to 2012) he got involved in a number of Interaction Design projects, with public places as their design setting. Such public places varied from farmer’s market, to city streets, to city squares, to public places situated within University campuses and to airports. Such projects were part of two different activities

• 1. A research project titled Shared Worlds carried out from 2003 to 2007 at the University of Limerick, Ireland. The aim of this project was to examine conceptual and methodological issues associated with design, deployment and use of novel interactive artefacts in public spaces.

• 2. An elective course titled ‘Interactive media in public spaces’ offered as a part of postgraduate program in Interactive Media at the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Limitations of the Projects

Such projects were designed to explore public space as a design space from interaction design perspective. The scope of such projects, therefore was limited and none of these interaction design projects were carried out to contribute to the process of Placemaking and activation or rejuvenation of the spaces or settings of their deployment. Nevertheless, evaluation of such projects highlighted aspects that could potentially contribute to the process of Placemaking.

The objective of this chapter is to share author’s thoughts with the community on such interaction design projects vis a vis the process of Placemaking. In what follows, readers are invited to a brief journey through the interaction design projects carried out. The next section discusses the interaction design projects carried out as part of the research project Shared Worlds. And the subsequent section discusses some of the projects carried out by the students. The following section reflects on the findings of the evaluation of such interaction design projects and on the usefulness of interaction design projects for the Placemaking process.

Interaction Design in Public Spaces: Shared Worlds Research Project

The Shared Worlds research project was a four year research project (2003–2007), funded by the Science Foundation of Ireland. It was carried out at The Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland under the leadership of Prof. Liam Bannon. The project investigated the development and use of novel interactive artefacts and environments within public shared spaces. To achieve its research objectives the Shared Worlds project focused on public spaces, such as, museums, airports, libraries, shopping malls etc. as a setting for design of interactive artefacts. The reasons for identifying shared public spaces as design settings were two-fold. One, the Shared Worlds research team wanted to build on its existing expertise in the area of interaction design for public spaces such as Museums (Ciolfi and Bannon 2003). Two, the Shared Worlds research team wished to examine the nature of public spaces as a setting for design, as they are complex in nature with heterogeneous mixes of people and activities.

At the outset of the project the research team carried out an extensive survey of several public spaces, in and around the city of Limerick, keeping in mind the research objectives vis a vis the expertise of the Shared Worlds research team and other practical constraints (such as the transient nature of deployment of the interactive artefact etc.). This resulted in the research team identifying two public spaces for more detailed examination – Shannon Airport, situated in County Clare and the Milk Market, situated in the heart of the Limerick city. There public space were distinct in character. i.e. while the Milk Market was an open to sky urban public space, the Shannon airport was an internal semi-public space.

The author was part of the two multidisciplinary design teams of the Shared Worlds project that carried out the design activities at both these public spaces. While the author led the design activities carried out at the Milk Market, he worked as a member of the multidisciplinary team and participated in the design activities carried out at the Shannon Airport. The Shared Worlds design team developed two different interactive artefacts for the two identified public spaces, namely, the Recipe Station (Deshpande 2009) and the Shannon Portal (Ciolfi et al. 2007).

The Recipe Station: The Milk Market Project

The Setting

The Milk Market is a farmer’s market situated at the heart of the city of Limerick, Ireland. It comes into being in large courtyard of a purpose built 150-year-old market building that at the time when the project was carried out was open to sky and therefore to the elements. This open to sky courtyard used to work as a parking space during the weekdays. But on Saturdays, it was occupied by temporary vending stalls set up by vendors from nearby towns from 6 am to 2 pm. Such vending stalls sold a variety of food items, garden plants and other items of interest (such as handicraft etc.). In addition to this, the market building also housed two cafes with small sitting space for patrons to rest and enjoy the market environment. The friendly setting for socialization offered by the Market made it a popular public place and brought in people from various walks of life.

The Recipe Station

The Recipe Station (Fig. 15.1) was an interactive artefact designed to augment social activities of the market by facilitating users to search and exchange everyday and gourmet recipes. It was envisaged that, when deployed in the Milk Market, it would create an activity node (Lynch 1960) that was similar in nature to the other numerous activity nodes (such as vendor stalls) constituting the Milk Market. And for this reason, the Recipe station was designed as a temporary vending stall that was physically anchored to a location within the Market space, similar to the other vending stalls of the Market. The Recipe Station’s temporary vending stall was constituted of three pieces of ‘vending furniture’, the Recipe Station artefact, the display table and the wall mounted display area.

Fig. 15.1

Recipe station in use, Milk Market, Limerick, Ireland

Keeping in mind the temporary nature of the Market and therefore the need to deploy the vending stall on each Market day, the Recipe Station artifact was made out of three wooden boxes/sections that could be assembled in quick time. When assembled, the square wooden structure of the Recipe Station stood approximately 4 ft tall. It incorporated two touch screen displays, two RFID readers, two computers and a thermal printer.

The display table exhibited ‘ingredient’ cards used to initiate interaction with the Recipe Station. The purpose of this display was to allow people to come and examine such cards and use them to interact with the recipe station. The display board inside exhibited a sketch of the recipe station along with a few sample recipes that could be obtained from the recipe station.

All such artefacts were constructed in wood and were rendered with white and red colours and with hand drawn sketches of food items available in the Milk Market. This rendering scheme used for the external surface of the wooden box was in harmony with the visual characteristics of the items and furniture used by Milk Market vendors and this allowed the Recipe Station to blend into the market environment.

A blue foldable marquee (10′ × 10′) made from water resistant fabric sheltered our stall. The marquee had foldable walls on all four sides, which allowed for extra protection from rain. At the same time, such walls could be opened during better weather conditions which allowed us to improve visibility of the stall and the activities taking place inside it.

‘Ingredient’ cards used to initiate interaction with the Recipe Station were, essentially, business cards for the market vendors with their business address on one side and a photograph of the food item(s) sold by them on the other side. Such ‘ingredient’ cards were embedded with RFID chips that stored information about the food item, the photograph of which was printed on them. A user could collect such ‘ingredient’ cards from the Market vendors as well as from the display space at the Recipe Station vending stall and drop one or more such cards inside the Recipe Station to initiate interaction with it. The Recipe Station read the information stored on such cards and the same was displayed on the touch screens located at the top of the Recipe Station structure. The touch screen allowed users to search recipes that could be made by the ‘ingredients’ dropped in by them and then print such recipes to take home.

The interaction with the Recipe Station, however, was not limited to the users interacting with its touch screen displays. The shape of the Recipe Station structure allowed people to move and gather around it and engage with it from all sides. Its transparent middle section allowed users to see the ingredient cards dropped by users from a distance as well as when interacting with the Recipe Station. Two touch screen displays allowed more than one user to interact with it at the same time. And one printer, connected to both these touch screen displays, created opportunities for initiating conversation amongst people.

Designing the Recipe Station

Following the Human Centered Design process (Bannon 2005), an in-depth study of the Milk Market was carried out in the first stage of the design process. The objective of the study was to understand aspects (of the Market space) that contribute to people’s experience of the space. For this purpose, a two-pronged study was carried that which involved, one, analysis of the space using Cullen’s notion of Serial Vision (Cullen 1971) and two, semi-structured interviews with the market visitors as well as the market vendors. The study allowed us to gain insight into,

• one, the morphology of the Market space consisting of various types activity nodes and linkages (Lynch 1960),

• two, the manner of engagement of people with the Market space, i.e. active or passive engagement (Carr et al. 1992),

• three, the motivation and outcome of such engagement, i.e. curiosity, discovery, surprise, and

• four, qualities that characterised the Market space, i.e. novelty, variety and richness.

Such insights allowed the design team to get a good grip on not just what people do and how they experience the space, but also on how the organization of the space and people’s interaction with the space supports people’s experience. Based on such insights, in the second stage of the design process, a number of design concepts were developed. Given that the Milk Market was already a space that was deeply rooted in people’s collective consciousness, the overall aim guiding such design concepts was to conserve how people experienced the space.

The design team then developed over 20 design solutions of diverse nature. Each such solution developed was then critiqued for its strength and weakness vis a vis insights illuminated by the study of the Market carried out in the first stage. The critique allowed us to short-list four design solutions, which were then further detailed out using 5Ws and H approach (Apte et al. 2001). This process allowed us to identify the Recipe Station as the best solution (amongst the design solution developed) that addressed majority of the aspects illuminated by the study.

In the third stage of the deign process, the design concept Recipe Station was detailed out and a rough prototype was built to evaluate the user interface. An in-lab evaluation of this prototype was then carried out by users. This allowed the design team to identify some flaws in the user interface. Following this, another prototype of the Recipe Station was built to evaluate the ergonomic aspects of the recipe station. Once again, an in-lab evaluation of the prototype was carried out and feedback from the users was noted. This was followed by another prototype – this time an elaborate one after rectification of the flaws identified by the evaluation of the early two prototypes. This prototype was built for a dry-run in the Milk Market for its evaluation with the Market visitors. This involved setting up the stall and running the Recipe Station during the Market hours. The prototype was used by a number of Market visitors who gave valuable feedback to the design team. Finally, the Recipe Station solution was implemented with detailed out form and aesthetics and deployed in the Milk Market.

In the fourth stage of the design process, an in-situ evaluation of the Recipe Station was carried out. The objective of this evaluation was to ascertain if we were able create an activity node by deploying the installation in the Milk Market which was the objective of the design of the Recipe Station. For this purpose we studied how people interacted with the space of deployment of the installation as well as the installation itself.

Evaluating the Recipe Station in Use

We used a two-pronged approach to study people’s interaction with the space of deployment of the installation as well as with the installation itself. Firstly, we made notes and took photographs and videos to document people’s behaviour in and around the space of installation. Secondly, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the people to gain insight into their experience of interaction with the space of the installation as well as the installation itself.

The evaluation of the Recipe Station was carried out for five market days and during this time it was used by over 1500 users. The analysis of the data collected from our observational studies highlighted the following:

• It was observed that the Recipe Station, immediately after its deployment in the Milk Market, emerged as an activity node (using Lynch’s terminology) within the Market. This was evident from the fact that it was used consistently everyday by over 300 users out of approximately 1000 users who visited the Market. There was interest (and repeated interest in many cases) amongst users in interacting with the artifact, search for recipes and take one or more recipes home.

• A ‘layered’ form of interaction (Brignull and Rogers 2003) with the Recipe Station, designed to use ‘peripheral participation’ as means to ‘entice’ users to move towards hands-on interaction with the artifact worked well. This was the form of user interaction associated with the vendor stalls in the Market that user were familiar with. The replication of the ‘layered’ form of interaction helped in bringing in the element of surprise and curiosity.

• The nature of the Recipe Station and what it offered to the users in the Market (i.e. searching for recipes using a wooden box) was in stark contract with the items sold by vendors in the Milk Market. And this made users curious about the Recipe Station and encouraged them to discover what it does.

• The novel nature of the Recipe Station was highlighted by the use of RFID embedded ‘ingredient’ card used to initiate interaction with it and the magical appearance of the printed recipe.

• Finally, It was observed that the presence of the Recipe Station as well as its use led to interesting conversations amongst users. This was evident by the fact that people often used the Recipe Station in groups of two or three and had interesting discussions about food and recipes amongst them. The presence of two touch screen displays and one printer also triggered many conversations as expected.

While the Recipe Station project successfully contributed to the objectives of the Shared Worlds project, it also allowed design team to examine design methodologies from architecture (e.g. Cullen’s Serial vision approach etc.). Additionally, it also allowed the design team to understand and address the practical issues associated with design and deployment of interactive artefacts in public places.

The Shannon Portal: The Shannon Airport Project

The Setting

The Shannon airport, situated in County Clare, West of Ireland, is one of Ireland’s three key airports. This airport links Ireland to USA and Canada as well as to the UK and mainland Europe and therefore it remains busy all year. This airport is historically significant. Its origins go back to the 1930s when it started functioning as a terminal for the flying boats that dominated transatlantic air traffic at that time. Since then, it has remained a major air traffic hub linking European continent to the American continent.

Shannon airport is a busy public place. The arrival lounge, the departure lounge and the waiting areas of the Shannon airport remain busy all day. The airport also has restaurants, bars and shops that cater to the airport visitors all day. However, from user’s perspective, this public place is somewhat different than the public places that constitute our built environment. Unlike other public places, its users do not see it as their destination. Users come here to wait – temporarily – before continuing their journey to their destination. And therefore, the lived experience of such places is constructed by its users on the fly as they arrive, wait and leave such places.

The Shannon Portal

The Shannon Portal (Fig. 15.2) was an assemblage of interactive artefacts that was designed to be deployed in the area used by passengers waiting to board their flight. The Shannon Portal assemblage was constituted of three artefacts:

Fig. 15.2

Shannon Portal in use, Shannon Airport, County Clare, Ireland

• 1. Interactive Dolmen

  A Dolmen, also known as cromlech or portal tomb is a type of tomb constructed during the Neolithic period (4000–3000 BC). Although there are many variants, it is usually constructed of two upright stones covered with a flat horizontal capstone. Such tombs were seen as portals – between earth and heaven – and in this sense, a temporary resting place for the departed souls.

  Such Dolmens can be found in large numbers in county Clare, the county where the Shannon airport is situated. Given that airports can be seen as portals – that link one geographical region to another and that are temporary ‘resting’ or waiting spaces for the passengers, a strong link existed between the past culture of this geographical region and the airport in this case. To strengthen this link further, a modern-day technologically enhanced dolmen was proposed to be a part of the Shannon portal. This interactive dolmen allowed travellers/users to upload their photographs, annotate them with personal messages and mail them to their friends and families.

• 2. The image wall

  The Image Wall allowed users to browse images uploaded by users using the Interactive Dolmen. At any given time, the Image Wall displayed a collage of a small number of recently uploaded of images and a virtual magnifying glass floating around the display. Users, by their bodily movements, could control the virtual magnifying glass (to make it go up or down with their hands gestures, and to make it go left and right by moving left or right in front of the Image Wall) and thus browse the entire database of the uploaded images. User’s experience of manipulating the virtual magnifying glass was further enhanced by adding an auditory display dimension, in form of an inharmonic Shepard tone illusion (Shepard 1964), to the Image Wall. This inharmonic series was carefully chosen to fit the general noise spectrum of the waiting area while still being easy to segregate.

• 3. Web Image Wall

  The third artifact constituting the Shannon Portal assemblage was the Web Image Wall. The Web Image Wall was a website that displayed the images uploaded by the users using the Interactive Dolmen. This allowed users to access the uploaded images both at the Shannon airport and from any geographical location in the world.

Designing the Shannon Portal

Once again, the design team followed the Human Centred Design process (Bannon 2005) to design the Shannon Portal.

The first stage of the design process focused on how Shannon Airport as a public place is experienced by people. The design team used a combination of qualitative methods such as observation of people’s activites, video and photo documentation of people’s activities, semi-structured interviews and conversations with passengers, visitors, and staff. The study illuminated, amongst other things, people’s personal stories associated with Shannon airport, their experience of using airports as air travellers and their use of technology within the place. The findings of the study allowed us to gain insight into issues such as:

• Absence of a cultural rootedness for Shannon Airport – Shannon airport is situated in a historically and culturally rich area that brings large number of travellers to Ireland every year. Several interviewees commented on the lack of a strong link between the airport and its larger cultural historical setting.

• Activities carried out by people while they wait in the waiting space, such as reading, playing games on their phones and tablets, etc.

• Lack of engaging activities within the waiting area – the area had a bar and duty free shopping but the need for having something that is more engaging, such as a novel form of entertainment that was not too intrusive, demanding or distracting, was expressed by people.

Based on such insights, in the second stage, the design team developed a number of design concepts. The development of design concepts was spread over several design sessions. Initial design session focused on design concepts based on the themes of flow and people’s trajectory (in and around the airport), baggage (that accompanies everyone coming to and going from the airport), plane watching and postcard (that people often buy when travelling). In the subsequent design session, the design team selected an initial idea based on the post card theme that would let passengers and visitors share their experience of their trip with others. This idea was further detailed out based on discussions with the airport management staff and it evolved into an artefact that would enable users to create e-cards of their own photos and annotate them, thus allowing users to make for individual contributions to the artefact.

In the subsequent design session, the design team developed the following set of design criteria to detail out the artefact:

• Developing an artifact that is anchored to a location in the waiting space, instead of a pervasive or mobile artifact to keep it avoid intruding into people’s activities

• Freedom to engage with the artifact at different levels – from onlooking to active participation

• Ensuring anonymity of passengers and respecting airport security policies

• Introduction of an element of entertainment in waiting space of the airport

• Creating a link between the airport and its cultural historical context

The initial form of the artifact followed an old-fashioned post office counter, the post office being a traditional meeting and connection point in Irish society. The idea of establishing a strong link between the airport and its cultural historical setting pushed the design team to come up with a novel design concept based with strong cultural, historical, and geographical connections. Dolmen, the portal tombs that the region is associated with, became the inspiration for the artifact and it was developed into a modern-day, technologically enhanced dolmen.

Following this, the design concept Shannon Portal (interactive dolmen) was further detailed out. It was developed along the lines of ‘make your own print’ machines that allow users to upload their photos and print them. However, instead of printing photos, the Dolmen was designed to allow users to, one, draw and annotate their photos with an electronic stylus and two, e-mail their photos to their friends. Keeping this in mind, a touch screen tablet was introduced to the inclined top panel of the Dolmen and it was raised to the height of 1.2 m. Additionally, the interactive Dolmen was finished with stone like rendering to make it look similar to the Dolmens found in the region surrounding the airport.

The functionality of the Interactive Dolmen was extended further by addition of two more artefacts – a physical one, the image wall and a virtual one, the portal web site. The Image Wall was developed to display images uploaded by the users and allow them to browse such images. The Web site was developed to mimic the Image wall on an online platform and to allow users to browse uploaded photos at the airport as well as at other geographical locations.

In order to facilitate photo browsing by users, the Image Wall was envisaged as a stand-alone object, detached from the Interactive Dolmen. Furthermore, it was envisaged that the users would browse photos displayed by physically moving in front of the Image Wall. Given this, the height of the Image Wall was fixed at 3 m with a projection screen that display photos. The link between the Interactive Dolmen and the Image Wall was articulated by an animated image that smoothly leave the dolmen’s screen interface to reappear on the Image Wall, sliding into place.

In the third stage, all three elements constituting the Shannon Portal were then iterated upon and evaluated in the lab. This allowed design team to iron out flaws associated with the user interface of the Interactive Dolmen. It also allowed the design team to fine-tune the graphical display of the Image Wall.

Following this, the fourth stage involved deployment and evaluation of the Shannon Portal at the Shannon Airport. For this purpose, a location within the airport waiting area was identified and a layout for deployment of the Shannon Portal was prepared. The deployment of the Shannon Portal began with the preparation of the floor and artificial grass was used for this purpose. Following this, both the Interactive Dolmen as well as the Image was assembled in-situ. Once complete the Shannon Portal was then opened for public use. The Shannon Portal remained open to the public for 3 weeks. During that time, approximately 1,500 people interacted with it in some form: Specifically, 432 photographs were uploaded to the image wall and a total of 535 e-mails were sent.

During its deployment, the Shannon Portal was evaluated extensively in-situ. This involved conversations and informal interviews with passengers and airport staff as well as observations supported by audio and video documentation of people’s interaction with the Shannon Portal. The evaluation highlighted the following:

• 1. The Shannon Portal emerged as an activity node (following Lynch’s terminology) after its deployment in the waiting lounge of the airport. The Portal observed constant presence of visitors in small groups of three to four and sometimes larger groups of eight to ten people. It supported collaborative annotation and drawing, joint exploration of the image wall, and exploration of the piece by two or more users who gave directions to each other.

• 2. A ‘layered’ form of interaction was clearly visible. The Portal supported multiple levels of engagement, facilitating a variety of behaviours ranging from on-looking to active participation and interaction with the Interactive Dolmen and/or the Image Wall.

• 3. The novel nature of Image Wall attracted many users of all ages. The audio dimension associated with it also invoked a lot of interest.

• 4. Finally, it was observed the presence of the Shannon Portal within the waiting area led to conversations between people – both while they interacted with it and while they watched others interact with it. The two physical components of the Portal, the Interactive Dolmen and the Image Wall, attracted attention of users and it was a common sight to see users in groups of two/three interacting with these components.

The Shannon Portal thus contributed to the overall objectives of the Shared Worlds project and allowed design team to get better grip on design and deployment of interactive artefacts in public spaces that are liminal in nature.

Interaction Design in Public Spaces: Student Projects

The postgraduate program in Interactive Media, offered by the University of Limerick, Ireland is one of the oldest interaction design programs in the country. In past, this program offered an elective course titled ‘Interactive Media in Public Spaces’, the objective of which was to explore public spaces as a design space for design and use of interactive media. The author was involved in running this elective course from 2005 to 2010 and his responsibilities included planning and tutoring this course.

This 14-week duration course was kicked off by formulation of an open-ended design brief, which focused on design of novel interactive artefacts to be deployed in public spaces. The open-ended nature of the design brief was crucial for the success of the course as it gave students the creative freedom and did not constrain them in any way. This was followed by identification of a number of public spaces as required by the design brief. Such public spaces ranged from internal public spaces (such as railway station, museums, university plazas etc.) as well as external public spaces such as farmer’s market, commercial streets of the city as well as various courtyards situation within the University campus. Students attending this course were then divided into groups (of three to four students each) and each group was then assigned one public space for its exploration as a design space.

The student groups then followed the Human Centred Design process (Bannon 2005) to design interactive artefacts, as required by the design brief, to be deployed in the given public spaces. In the first stage, the student groups carried out in-depth study of the assigned public spaces to initiate the design process. Following this, they developed a number of design concepts that were expressed by sketches and storyboards. The student design team(s) were then asked to present their design concepts to the entire class and sometimes, also the actual users of the identified design spaces. In addition to this, student groups also evaluated their design concepts with other student groups as well as university staff who were actual users of the design spaces. Such presentations as well as one-on-one evaluation allowed students to get feedback on their design process as well as the design concepts developed.

Such presentations and evaluations were carried out on a periodic basis, which allowed students to iterate their design solutions. Towards the end of the course, students presented their design concepts, in form of mid fi or high fi prototypes. In addition to this, students were also asked to write a report to discuss their design process and to reflect on the activity of design carried out.

Here are two examples of the design projects carried out by students attending the course –

Design project – Interactive Portholes (by Deirdre Coleman, Manuela Feist, Jimmy Fitzgerald, Shelagh Honan and Sharon Le Gear, iMedia, University of Limerick, Ireland, 2008–2009).

The design concept Interactive Portholes (Fig. 15.3) was proposed for a courtyard – called ‘Stables’ – situated within the campus of the University of Limerick. The Stables courtyard is a prominent public space of the University. The courtyard is surrounded by a small number of shops and is frequented by students and staff all days of the week. However, the courtyard remains underused because of a number of reasons, such as, limited number of activity nodes, amongst others.

Fig. 15.3

Interactive portholes designed for the Stables Courtyard, University of Limerick, Ireland

The aim of the design concept Interactive Portholes was to invite users to use this courtyard more frequently. It involved a number of portholes – resembling ice holes created in snow – constructed in the floor of the courtyard. Such portholes were rimmed with a metal ring and covered with glass. Inside the porthole was a video screen that could be seen through the glass covering the portholes. Sensing the user around the porthole, the screen displayed a virtual fish, swimming around in the pothole, as if it is trapped within it.

Interaction with a porthole was initiated with a user tapped on the rim of a porthole. This caused the virtual fish to react and users then could see the virtual fish swimming away from the porthole to another one. This made the user wonder about the virtual fish, in terms of where it went, and made him/her look into other portholes in order to find it. Once the user found the virtual fish, the routine was then repeated again. The design concept, thus, supported interaction at multiple levels with the user was not just interacting with one porthole, but with many of them in a random manner. User’s movements when interacting with the portholes attracted attention of the onlookers and involved them in the activity by making them curious. Additionally, participation of more than one user at a time opened up possibilities of collaboration between them (to find the fish) and made the interaction engaging for both the users as well as the onlookers.

The student group made a video prototype of the solution, which captured the interaction discussed above. This prototype was then used to evaluate the design concept with regular users of the Stables courtyard. The evaluation clearly showed that the following:

• that the design concept would help in encouraging conversations between the users of the courtyard since it made them wonder about the location of the fish

• that the design concept would enhance the space because of it novel nature since it allowed users to interact with a virtual fish and follow its movement

In addition to this, the design team was encouraged by the user of the courtyard to continue working on the design concept and develop it further.

Design project – Illumasol (by Fiona Kiely, Chris Hackett Li Hao Sun, Fernando Gomez Marin, iMedia, University of Limerick, Ireland, 2006–2007).

Illumasol (Illuminated Parasol) was a design solution proposed for the Bedford Row, a commercial street situated in the heart of the Limerick city (Fig. 15.4). Bedford Row is one of the pedestrianized streets of the city and is used by shoppers throughout the year. There are a number of shops along this street, which, at the time of the project, were under construction. In past, the street served a well-known theatre of the Limerick city, which at that time, functioned as one of the major activity nodes.

Fig. 15.4

Illumasol: Interactive canopy designed for the Bedford Row, Limerick City Centre, Limerick, Ireland

The aim of the Illumasol concept was to provide identity to the Bedford Row. The design concept proposed installation of three freestanding parasols as part of the street furniture of the Bedford Row. As the Bedford Row is open to sky and it rains frequently in Limerick, the parasols were meant for people to take shelter as and when required. At the same time, people could interact with such parasols with their bodily movements to create music and video projections.

The group made a physical model of the proposal and a qualitative evaluation of the proposal was carried out. The evaluation showed that

• The parasols provided opportunities for people to come together – because of practical reasons as well as because of the inclusion of interactive elements – which made it possible for such parasols to emerge as temporary activity nodes

• The novel nature of the parasols added to the character of the space

The feedback from the evaluation was encouraging for the group. Based on the feedback, the design concept was evolved further and presented during the Siena Design Project, 2007 at Siena, Italy.

Interaction Design in Public Places: Potential for Placemaking

As discussed earlier, the above mentioned interaction design projects were not designed and deployed to contribute to the process of Placemaking. The objective such project was limited to explore public space as a design space for interaction design. Nevertheless, the evaluation of such projects highlight following aspects considered central to the process of Placemaking. For example

• 1. Interactive artefacts can successfully create activity nodes (using Lynch’s terminology) in public spaces

  This was clearly observed in case of the Recipe Station as well as the Shannon Portal as when deployed in public spaces, both artefacts attracted people’s attention and emerged as activity nodes. While the student projects, the Interactive Portholes and the Illumasol, were not physically deployed in their respective public spaces, the evaluation showed that they offered strong potential to support formation of activity nodes.

  Activity nodes (or hubs or human activity) are essential constituent elements of a place. The fact that the design and deployment of interactive artefacts could generate an activity node indicates that such projects could potentially contribute to the process of Placemaking.

• 2. Interactive artefacts supporting social as well as optional activities help in forming activity nodes

  The above discussed interaction design solutions were designed to support optional and social activities of the given public spaces. And the evaluation showed that the nature of such activities, especially social activities, helped in formation of activity nodes. For example, while both the Recipe Station as well as the Shannon Portal supported optional activities of searching recipes and sending annotated photos, it was the social dimension offered by such artefacts that offered the ‘glue’ to bring people together.

An examination of interaction design projects carried out in recent years also shows that the central design objective of such projects has been to support optional and social activities of the public setting (Deshpande 2009). Such projects have refrained from replacing one or more existing activities of that space. Instead, the objective of design has been to add to the existing set of activities offered by the space to its users. Several design objectives have been pursued to achieve this fundamental design objective. For example

• To introduce activities to address issues associated with use of public spaces as identified by research in the fields associated with design (such as architecture and urban design etc.) as well as human behaviour in public spaces (e.g. O’Hara et al. 2004; Memarovic et al. 2012; Ludvigsen 2005).

• To introduce activities to probe issues, such as, proxemics, location, form, modality of interaction etc., related with deployment and the use of an interactive artefact in a public space (e.g. Mazé and Jacobs 2003; Jacobs and Gaye 2003).

• To introduce a novel interactive object to create ambience or simply to add an aesthetic element in a public space to enhance the overall user experience associated with activities of a public space (e.g. Duality, ART+COM 2007).

It thus appears that interaction design artefacts in public places have mainly contributed to the introduction of optional activities and social (Gehl 1987) in a public space. Given that the Placemaking approach employs a variety of activity generators that lead to the generation of activities of optional in nature, such interactive artefacts, could potentially contribute to the Placemaking process.

• 3. Interactive artefacts could support triangulation and support sociality

  Whyte argued that the process of triangulation could help in the process of placemaking. He defined triangulation as a phenomenon in which an external stimulus provides a social bond between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other (Whyte 1980). Such stimulus could be present in form of a physical object or sight such as fountain, sculpture etc.

  The evaluation of the interaction design projects showed that their use by people indeed worked as a stimulus and encouraged people to talk to each other – both amongst people they knew as well as strangers. The novelty of the artefacts deployed in public spaces could be seen as one of contributing attributes that made such artefacts stimulate discussions amongst people and therefore triangulation.

• 4. Interactive artefacts, due to their novel nature, could contribute to the identity of place

  In case of Recipe Station and Shannon Portal, it was also observed that an interactive artefact, due to its novel nature could encourage inflow of people into the public space. At the same time, it was apparent that if designed appropriately (in terms of its scale and functionality), an interactive artefact could also provide identity to a public place and thus contribute to the activity of Placemaking.

• 5. Interactive artefacts could engage users/people at various levels

  People come to public spaces for various reasons and interact with it at different levels – some remain onlookers and some prefer active participation in what the space has to offer (Carr et al. 1992). The artefacts discussed earlier shows that such artefacts could be designed to support people’s interaction at various levels and thus contribute to the formation of activity nodes and therefore could potentially contribute to the process of Placemaking.

  Based on such insights gained from evaluations of interaction design projects designed to be deployed in public spaces it can be said that novel interactive artefacts could positively influence the qualitative characters of public spaces and thus contribute to the process of Placemaking. As discussed earlier, the objective of the interaction design projects discussed in the chapter was not to contribute to the process of Placemaking. However, it can be seen that the design and deployment of such artefacts brought in variety of above-mentioned attributes that are considered crucial from the perspective of Placemaking. Such attributed could be further amplified when such design projects are carried out with the sole objective of Placemaking. And in such cases, such artefacts could vary in size and their functionality. Additionally, the material used to build such artefacts could also add to their quality and improve their impact on the Placemaking process.

Concluding Remarks

Various studies carried out on our urban environment have noted that it could benefit from existence of places that people enjoy living and working in. And given this, the importance of the process of Placemaking cannot be underestimated. The process of Placemaking, at the moment, is limited to a handful of disciplines, such as Urban Design, Architecture etc. that primarily deal with design of spaces for human habitation. It can be noted however, that such disciplines draw from other disciplines such as, arts and crafts when engaged with the Placemaking process. Given that the discipline of interaction design aims to design for human experience associated with everyday human activity settings, including public places, the chapter questions if the discipline of interaction design could contribute to the process of Placemaking. Based on the discussions of four interaction design projects, the chapter points out that novel interactive artefacts with their activity and interaction attributes may indeed have potential to positively contribute to the process of Placemaking. It is therefore suggested that it might be worthwhile to examine the application of interaction design for Placemaking by designing and deploying specifically designed interactive artefacts in public spaces followed by evaluation of their impact on the process of Placemaking.