Focus groups/Ideation workshop — Final Major Project
Designers: Alex Newson, Sebastian Ervi
Stage of the project: Project definition/Generative ideation
Now that our research has given us leads for the rest of the project, we felt confident enough to start generating design ideas. We both wanted to organise a co-design workshop since the start, and were excited to get going!
Before the workshop
At this stage, we defined two potential directions to follow with the project:
- Designing an experience that facilitates a deeper connection between artists and fans at live concerts. We would want the experience to be inclusive by its nature and further benefit smaller artists and venues by making this connection feel stronger in intimate venues. This would probably be dedicated to (new) bands and their audience.
- Designing an experience that emphasizes the uniqueness of each independent venue. This would help independent venues differentiate themselves from bigger corporate venues, increase their attractiveness and enhance the venue experiences. We would imagine this taking the form of a toolkit for venue owners.
This was an interesting stage.
Alex and I were both more convinced about the first one, because of the flexibility, potential scalability and freedom it seemed to allow us in terms of outputs — while still being interested in the second direction as well.
To help us have a better idea of both directions, we decided to generate ideas with the Crazy 8 method, consisting of generating 1 idea every minute, during 8 minutes.
But this didn’t led to any strong emerging idea from one side or the other. We discussed about both directions with every tutor we had access to, and everyone agreed with us on the first direction. But our course leader John Fass, the last tutor we asked about this, disagreed: his point of view was that the second direction has a greater level of criticality and depth. After discussion, we attempted to combine the positives of the first one with the criticality of the second one and defined the following direction for the workshop:
Using characteristics of small, local, independent venue spaces — designing an experience that facilitates deeper connection between artists and audiences.
Day of the workshop
For the co-design workshop, we planned to invite different stakeholders of a concert experience: artists, music fans, and potentially staff members. We agreed on first facilitating thinking and discussion about ways artists and audiences could connect, through lived past experiences, speculations on future experiences and an exercise to think about metaphors of this connection. Then, to engage these stakeholders into producing design artefacts.
But a bit before the workshop, John got us worried about the ethics and the real purpose of what we were about to do: asking people to design something for us. He also really advised us to be more specific. Some workshop ideas didn’t seem to have foundation anymore, such as the speculation part.
With little time left, we attempted to change the structure by focusing more specifically on lived experiences, to compare concerts with a strong connection, to concerts with a weak connection. We agreed on inviting participants to produce models of their experiences, representing the venue space and the elements they memorised.
The new structure was ready at the last minute and we were ready — but neither of the two artists we invited showed up to the workshop. Luckily, we had three music fans and one venue photographer to get creative with. Although more problems emerged during the workshop. We implicitly agreed on myself documenting the workshop and Alex running it — which was not compatible with some of the last modifications we made, and didn’t have time to prepare correctly. This led into both of us having different structures in mind for the workshop and create confusion during the process — which ultimately led us not to get the results we had hoped for, from our initial goal of generating and defining ideas. In fact, the workshop became more of a focus group with physical model-making. It was not even specific to small venues anymore — a central instruction that got lost during the workshop. We still ended up finishing the workshop with an improvised Crazy 8 exercise with our participants.
After the workshop
While not achieving our goals with the workshop, we still gained knowledge about social connections in concerts:
- According to participants’ experience, strong artist-audience connections result from an active crowd participation, a shared identity in the crowd and artists being close to fans.
- Weak artist-audience connections are due to a lack of visibility on the performance and lack of active engagement. Or simply a bad performance from the artists.
- Some suggested improvements we got: visibility on stage (elevation changes for audience), more sensory inputs (immersive sound, vibration), aesthetical improvement (outside), wayfinding (marking areas), improvement on facilities (more toilets), freedom of movement (circular area for artist)
Because we did not get to explore metaphors during the workshop, Alex and I also tried another angle by “framing the problem” with the use of metaphors (Pee et al., 2015) by relating a concert venue to other spaces that are naturally facilitating social connections: a coffee shop, a playground, a house.
My favourite one was the coffee shop comparison. In fact, coffee shops are often small, local and independent, with opportunities to interact with other locals. It was interesting to notice how coffee shops can be considered as places of leisure, having for example sofas — which is not typically the case for concert venues. Coffee shops also have the characteristic smell of coffee, which brings warmth and comfort to the experience as soon as one opens the door. — while concert venues don’t often have a comparable smell in my experience. This made me think about how concert venue spaces could be re-arranged.
Combining findings of the workshop with the metaphor exercise, I came up with the idea of a furniture kit that artists and audience members could utilise before a show, in order to collaboratively arrange and co-create the space for the experience. The idea could be used to personalise the space, and to provide elevation changes to have a better visibility on stage. While researching for inspiration for something similar, I got inspired by the Leva Home modular kit — building blocks of furniture for home-use with hammocks, climbing walls etc.
Following John’s advice, the time left would not have allowed us to explore furniture design — the idea was thus abandoned. It was only a few weeks later, with only two weeks left on the project, that I realised how this idea would have worked out in the end: by creating simple, illuminated building blocks for collaborative space customisation and improved lighting in small venues. These cubes could be used in many ways: to sit or to stand on them, to put drinks on top, or simply for decorative purposes. I also thought about these cubes being interactive, with a tap changing the colour of the light, or emitting a musical sound.
What I learnt
- The workshop seems to confirm the important role of active crowd participation in creating social connections at concerts, as observed with the analysis of interviews conducted during our field research.
- But the workshop revealed how often a lack of visibility can negatively affect the experience of a concert.
- Always use a visual support during workshops, despite feeling it is not necessary.
- Only make minor modifications prior to a workshop, especially with external people.
- Different point-of-views are important to challenge my work, learn and grow.
Reference
Pee, S.H., Dorst, K. and van der Bijl-Brouwer, M., 2015, November. Understanding problem framing through research into metaphors. In IASDR 2015 Conference.
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