It was raining this morning when I made my trek over to IIT for the first day of “Design Camp” (Yes, it is an unfortunate name for a week-long class that cost $5000, but I have high expectations and hope to learn a lot.)We arrived and got the basic rundown of the IIT philosophy on “design thinking,” research, and developing a point of view to begin defining problems toward looking at a project. The project we’ll be working on this week is regarding Millennium Park and looking at ways to improve the user experience of the park. I found this quite humorous since my mom and I walked right by the park on Saturday and didn’t even notice it was there.
Wayfinding for pedestrians around the city is woefully lacking in both content and availability. Once we were able to find the park we were instructed to make general observations about park amenities, who was using the park, what they were doing, what kinds of items they were carrying, etc.
I noted that there are about eight or nine distinctive activity areas within the park: (1) the founders fountain — basically a big monument to all the big money donors who helped fund the creation of the park, (2) a restaurant (seemed mid-high priced), (3) an ice rink in winter (covered with a summer extension of the restaurant), (4) a kids play fountain, (5) summer activities for teens and kids (sponsored by Target), (6) an amphitheater that doubles as a sunbathing spot when there are no shows, (7) a native plant garden, (8) a bridge designed by Frank Gehry, and (9) the “bean” (a very large metal sculpture that is like a big funhouse mirror).
I found each area of the park to be completely distinct from all the other areas of the park. It appeared that there were different user groups targeted by each segment of the park. For instance, the water fountains are totally dominated by kids and families, while the native plant garden was a quiet place where couples can enjoy a romantic moment.
My initial thoughts about how the park experience might be enhanced include: (a) Improving signage around the city to welcome tourists and pedestrians to the park, and (b) Find a way to integrate all these seemingly disconnected little mini-parks to give the visitor a sense of being in the same park throughout the experience, where right now it feels like 8 or 9 completely different parks jammed together within physical proximity. Perhaps both of these could be accomplished through a simple, graphically unified signage system that works both inside and outside the park.
Tomorrow, I think we're going to go out into the park to conduct more purposeful and scientific research on the various user groups and their goals, interactions, and frustrations... So I expect my hypotheses to evolve over the course of the week.
