Team-
Anuraj Bhatnagar
Colin Stricklin- Portfolio
Christina Bui- Portfolio
Instructor: Dr Nassim (JafariNaimi) Parvin
This is a group project created for the Discovery and Invention class at Georgia Tech. This project’s focus was on design methods, first quantitative, and then qualitative. We had to chose a transition space for our process, and the space we chose was the crosswalk, out of a wide variety of brainstormed topics , such as sidewalks, airports, hotels, restaurants, etc. This project was conducted in two parts- the first part under Quantitative Methods, and the second under Qualitative Methods.
Our initial chosen quantitative methods were AEIOU, Behavioral Mapping, and Participation Observation. We went in with the question- “How do personal vehicles (skateboards, bicycles, scooters, and mopeds) decide whether they behave like pedestrians or automobiles?”
The first phase started with us visiting the crosswalk at Tech-Square, and observing it from Barnes & Noble from a distance. Then we decided to participate in it ourselves. We stood at the crosswalk, crossed it in every direction possible, and observed how the pedestrians and vehicles behaved. On that basis, we filled the AEIOU worksheet with our observations.
Then, the next phase of the project began. We had to switch to qualitative methods for the same project. We chose 3 methods- Role-playing, Directed Storytelling, and Graffiti Wall, with the viewpoint that our findings from each would help us in the next.
We started with Roleplaying- we came up with 5 different scenarios, and had our participants play through them. More information on the scenarios and the data we gained from them is available in the design journal
We then moved on to our second chosen method – Directed Storytelling. A central part of this method involves interviewing those whom we aim to study. We were unsure on what to use as an interview space, as interviewing people in the midst of travel near crosswalks might not lead to very accurate results, given that most people would be in a hurry. Therefore, we decided to choose the bike racks near TSRB as our interview space. We framed our interview questions on the basis of our roleplaying scenarios. Those questions and the data we gathered from interviewing is available in the design journal.
At this stage in our project, we realized that in both of our methods, we had, without realizing it, directed our participants to think in a certain way. We wondered- what would our participants have said or done, had we left them with nothing but a vague direction? So, for our third and final method, the Graffiti Board, we went in with nothing but a series of images and a tagline- “That one time at a crosswalk…..”. And the results were completely unexpected.
