Macro Ux: Takram & Initial ideas

Designers: Ava Shepherd, Parth Loliyania, Willow Yan, Ziyuan Dou

This week is our first week working on Macro UX! For this brief MA UX will be collaborating on a 6 week project with external partners. For the duration of this project I will be working with the design agency 'Takram' along with several other students.

The project started with a presentation from Michael Pecirno and Jonathan Skjøtt, two of Takram's head designers in London. They gave us background about the company, what they do, and key projects that they are interested in. Finally they presented us with our brief to 'Design a way to help Non-humans to navigate the city'

Brainstorming

When we first received this brief we were all very excited but also at a complete loss for ideas. Personally, this brief was very different to anything I had ever done before. This was both really motivating and very daunting as I did not know where to start. We decided that our best approach would be to use this first week to do initial research and think about what approach we wanted to take.

We all split off to do research about non humans that would interest us so that when we regrouped on Monday we jump right into prototyping.

Compiling our ideas

After regrouping and sharing all of our ideas, we were all really interested in the concept of using rats as our non human. Ziyuan learnt that there is an estimated 18,851,244 rats in London alone (Rats in London). We were all really shocked at this number and thought this could be a really unique path for us to follow. What if we could help break some stigma around rats and give them safe passages to explore London? Why do we class certain animals as pests and not allow them to roam free? Is there a way we can improve their quality of life?

Research

Once we had decided to focus on rats we thought that the best way forward would be to do some research. Considering we are in the beginning stages of our project and do not know what direction we would like to go in, we decided to explore a variety of research methods to see where they lead us.

We decided to read Hanington and Martin book on Universal methods of design to decide which methods would work for us right now. From this we decided to focus on three, Gureilla Research, AEIOU and Cognitive Feedback Loops. In order to do this we decided that we would start by looking at rats that live in the London tube stations.

Method 1: Questions for Gureilla Research

Method 2: AEIOU of tube station

Method 3: Cognitive Maps / Feedback Loops

Tube Rats

Following our research we decided that we would stick with exploring the London underground rats as it seemed to be topic that people have a lot of conflicting opinions about. Additionally upon further research we discovered that there is an estimated 500,000 rats living in tube stations across London (Peracha, 2022).

We also e discovered that London tube rats have a significantly worse quality of life that other species of rats and rodents in general. This is due to the tube cutting off their tails and causing them to go deaf from the loud noise.

Due to this we thought that these rats in-particular could be our main focus. What if there was a way that we could help them live / move around the tubes without getting injured. Could we improve their life at all?

Inspiration and Initial Ideas

While at this stage we did not have a clear idea of what we want to design, we knew that we wanted it to be for rats and potentially a way to increase their quality of life / get above ground easier.

Inspiration for non human navigation

Feedback

After pitching our concept to the class we received mixed feedback about working with rats. Some love the idea and some were grossed out and do not understand why. It was really interesting to see the range of reactions people gave and motivated us to carry on as it seemed like it is an issue that should be discussed more.

Our main feedback however was that we need to get making. Now we know our idea, we have to start prototyping potential avenues. Additionally we need to consider this stigma around rats and how we plan to tackle it.

Next Post: Tunnel Systems and Prototyping

References

Hanington, B. and Martin, B., 2019. Universal methods of design expanded and revised: 125 Ways to research complex problems, develop innovative ideas, and design effective solutions. Rockport publishers.

Integrum Services. (2022.) Rats in London - Top 10 most infested Boroughs - Integrum. [online] Available at: <https://integrumservices.co.uk/pest-control-blog/rats-in-london/#:~:text=The%20ease%20of%20access%20to,living%20in%20London%20to%2018%2C851%2C244.> [Accessed 21 April 2022].

Peracha, Q. (2022). Mice living on the Tube network are likely to have no tails. [online] MyLondon. Available at: <https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/mice-london-underground-tube-facts-18097665> [Accessed 21 April 2022].