UX Designer
Parker Nussbaum
Anurati Sodani
Arts Management Program, Heinz College
The main objective of the project is to find a way to measure public art’s impact on livability of Pittsburgh as a city to justify the cost of the art installation. However, by exploring the problem space, we found local people had minimal interaction with the art around them. To achieve the main objective, we proposed to provide an accessible channel to encourage engagement and collect user generated data for further analysis. The plan was broken down to two main stages:
1. Provide a channel for local Pittsburgher to engage with public art (Our Scope)
2. Implement the solution and start collecting engagement data (Future Plan)
Our project focused on step one. Despite the richness of public art in Pittsburgh, the level of resident’s awareness failed to match the stakeholders’ anticipation. (the lack of resident's awareness of public art hinders client's ability to measure engagement). Although there have been several attempts to increase the engagement between the local residents and the art, no solution was able to last.
The biggest obstacle in this project was the access to local people's interaction with the art. The location dilemma we were facing was downtown versus suburb. Downtown has higher traffic of people, but a larger chance of meeting tourists. Suburb would have a much lower chance to meet tourists, but the foot traffic was significantly lower. Due to the time constraint and cost efficiency, we prioritized our study to public art in downtown. Overall, our sample size was small ranging between 3 to 10 people, varied by studies.
By leveraging the current technology, we proposed to incorporate an AR extension to an existing social media such as Instagram. The reason not to develop a stand-alone app was to minimize the effort people need to take to interact with the art, which could potentially increase engagement. This embedded new feature simulated the use of graffiti for self-expression without vandalizing the real art.
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Emoji Demo:
Users are able to interact with the public art and the community members through the use of texts and imageries.
Our client has conducted two previous prototypes. Both of the prototypes leveraged digital platforms to collect real-time quantitative data.
The two previous prototypes:
1. Instagram public art filters
2. A chatbot that can answer questions people asked
The two prototypes were launched in different periods of time, so there was no consistent user base. Both of the prototypes focused on downtown public art engagement: Agnes Eyes, Magnolias, Liberty Ave Musician, Yesterday Tomorrow and Streaming Space.
Questions Explored:
1. What is the basic demographic of the visitors? (demographics)
2. What time of the day people visited the art mostly? (time)
3. Which instagram filter of the artwork people used/viewed most frequently? (popularity)
4. What are the most frequent questions visitors like to ask? (curiosity)
How Might We...
- Attract younger generation to engage with the public art?
- Differentiate between local engagement versus tourist engagement based on the time pattern?
- Extract out the essential needs Magnolias fulfilled and apply the working techniques to other art work?
- Minimize the effort to interact with the art work and alleviate the worry about data securities?
"You couldn't help but [to] ask questions and interact. They [public art] had lots of ways to interact... The whole thing made the city feel alive and very vibrant".
We conducted Observe and Intercept around the art in downtown Pittsburgh to understand and identify:
1. the motivation behind why people come to visit the art piece
2. how public art affects locals in their day to day lives, if at all
3. the factors that influence the engagement with an art piece
After compiling all the observational and interview data, through the process of Affinity Diagram, we were able to gain key insights about our targeted population, local residents of Pittsburgh.
Research Insights:
- Identity expression can create motivation for engagement in local public art
- Dynamic art allowed people to provide personal input and drew them in to build a more personal connection
- Locals commuting to work made the art blend to the background
- Children's curiosity led the families to interact with the art piec
In this phase, we started from doing Crazy 8's to identify potential user needs and performed Speed Date to target and validate the key need, which later used as a guideline for our solution.
Augmenting the experience of interaction with public art using digital assets such as AR was validated through the positive responses in speed dating sessions.
Our experience prototype utilized the body-storming method supplemented by low-fi physical prototypes to understand:
1. The interaction between users versus art pieces, and users versus users
2. The intent behind user's comments/postings
Findings:
1. People started dialogues with others by posting comments next to previous comments as a response.
2. Other people's comments elicited an emotional response towards the public art.
3. People enjoyed interacting with other people's post asynchronously.
"People are being negative about this art. I feel sad for it.... so I gave it a little crown".
To minimize the effort to start the engagement and ease on the interaction, two design decisions have been made:
Design decision 1:
No need for app downloading
The feature utilized mobile phone's build-in camera to scan the QR code printed on the art's plaque. By scanning the QR code, the automated notification would take the user to the interactive AR platform.
Design decision 2:
Easy switch between modes
Users can interact with public art by posting comments, adding emojis and viewing other community members' posts. By moving around the art piece in different angles, they could place their choice of expression anywhere.
Consider the cost of developing Pittsburgh's own public art app, we propose:
- Partnership with other city governments to reach a broader audience and distribute the developing cost
- Partnership with social media platforms for advertising and leveraging their existing technology
Engagement Data collection plan:
- Measure the number of active users and posts
- Analyze qualitative user-generated data to understand community interactivity and public sentiment towards individual arts
- Quantify the success of individual art piece by collecting when, what, # of visits, why and etc.
