DESIGNING EXPERIENCE


The Dinner Date - Part I

I am attempting to improve the design of a dinner date at the Red Fez restaurant. In order to do so, I had to analyse the pre-existing conditions that facilitated the problems that occured during this dinner date. Retrospective analysis allowed me to find connections between what these problems were, and how the 'design' of the restaurant contributed to these problems.

I realise the design of the eating experience at a restaurant involves

Pre-existing Design of Experience:
1) Waiting
2) Eating
3) Paying

The main problem I identified on this dinner date involved the first of these stages; the fact that my date and I were forced to wait for almost 90 minutes until we were seated, and secondarily (and worse), this wait was extremely stressful and uncomfortable for many reasons. I have tried to pinpoint how the design of the space created much of this tension.

Problems Incurred, and reason for:
1) We were told it would be a forty minute wait, it was ninety minutes [ill communication from staff]
2) Forced to stand next to door where there was no room [design of space]
3) Forced to stand over couple on a date themselves and watch them anxiously until they paid their bill [design of space]
4) Forced to stand over table where ex is having dinner with new girlfriend [design of space]

I noticed most the the problems with this experience derived from the design of the space within the restaurant; this actually created all the extremely awkward social interactions my date and I had to endure. I sketched out the space to pinpoint how this was actually occuring;

















I isolated problem points in the space that were contributing both to our lengthy wait, and the awkwardness of this wait

1) The bar; the fact that the bar was used both for those waiting and those dining, while that did allow people to be served, it meant there was nowhere for people waiting to sit.
2) Passive aggressive slowness on the part of diners on a date themselves. Because my dinner date and I were forced to stand over these people, I suspect they were deliberately slow in eating and paying their bill. Also, this was a booth for six being occupied by two people.
3) This congestion area was an awful place to wait in. Apart from standing over people (see above), we were in the way of the waiters who kept pushing past to carry food upstairs.
4) This area between outside and inside was too small to wait in, and had no seating anyway.

Other factors were contributing to the lengthy wait; a slow kitchen, poor communication on the part of the staff in telling us how long to wait, and the fact that the place was full because it was a holiday the next day. Still, I felt a simple re-design of the downstairs area would at least make this wait less awkward and tense. Here is my new and improved setting for my dinner date:
















The changes addressed the above-mentioned problems in the design of the space;

1) Turn the bar into a waiting area only - allows people to sit and drink while they wait.
2) Passive aggressiveness cannot be remedied, but helped by above design change - waiting customers do not have to stand over those dining. The previous situation was fundamentally flawed; my own experience (date) beginning wsa contingent on the these diners' experience ending - they knew it and we knew it. Separation between diners and waiting customers solves this.
3) Moving this table creates a bigger space to stand in. Also creates a larger passageway for servers to move through to carry food upstairs. Also, creating a stairwell at the back of the restaurant for staff means they don't have to walk past front of restaurant to current stairs.
4) Create some seating in this wasted space.

My design solution involved demarcating space more appropriately. The merging of waiting/dining space diminished both experiences for all parties involved. My date and I were awkward standing in the way and unable to really chat, and diners were being watched over and rushed through their dining experience. Simply defining a waiting area and dining area would be a simple solution.

DESIGNING A NON-DESIGNED EXPERIENCE


How could the experience be redesigned from a different perspective in a way that heightens the experience? This question forces me to consider what I think the value of design is - and what I feel design could/should be used for. My own approach to design is very much about using the designer's palette of tools; organizational skills, lateral thinking, visual processing, visual flair to reveal, to convince, to sway an audience.

I really like the idea of applying design and design principles to unexpected areas. I think its power and potential can be heightened through unexpected application.

1) using organizational power of design; applying it to a very human, somewhat uncontrollable human interaction - a date. Eg. Creating forms/how to manual for a date. Evaluating compatibility, best location for persons involved, climate conditions. Trying to apply listing/logic/instructions to real life. I am unsure to proceed as I suspect this is essentially a non-functional enterprise and I don't believe it could really improve this date.

2) Use the transformative/illusory powers of design to turn a social interaction into a dramatization of itself. This appeals to me more, in that the purpose is not to use design to really improve the function of a thing, but actually to make that thing more interesting.

I don't really believe in graphic design as a thing to reveal some hidden truth, or necessarily a way of making things clearer. It creates a new truth that we read as the 'clearer' view - such as information design of voting ballots or hospital signage. Beyond basic legibility - the truth or clarity of this sort of design is no different for me than a piece of Soviet propaganda or a really compelling ad for x-box. Design can entertain in order to convince; I see it always as a deceptive shroud of some kind. I enjoy design that creates an alternate world - a world that looks like the real world but is actually completely fictitious. A good production designer can create a space that we read as real but is completely engineered to work for the camera, to work with the characters who interact with it, and essentially makes the action more interesting. Effective event planning is no different.

I am interested in turning mundane, non-dramatic events into dramatizations. I do this in a very controlled way and on a controlled scale with my graphic design projects - dramatizing content to make that content more pertinent, more memorable, more entertaining, or more convincing.

I am intrigued by the idea of transforming a social interaction (which has an inherent dramatic quality to it) into a true dramatization. My thesis is focusing on the generation of suspense through narrative structures, and the effect of suspense on narrative structures. I am looking at the temporal implications of suspense on action; how things can be slowed down or sped up in relation to each other to render action more suspenseful. This is really centred around the notion that suspense as stalling action, somehow withholding facts, concealing how facts are communicated to an audience.

DESIGNING THE DATE


Upon reflection, I noticed that the adaptations I have been working on and considering thus far have fallen into a similar pattern – adapting written content into a visual narrative. This is fascinating to me because it involves considering all components of that original narrative (both structural make-up AND tonal qualities) and creating visual equivalents.

This project is a chance to skew that starting point – rather than take a written story, take an experience. So it becomes re-experiencing an experience – using the palette of tools I feel graphic design offers me. This involves the deconstructive and generative sides to the adaptation process I have been working with in all my other projects. Breaking down the original involves seeing the inherent design in all experience. It is particularly interesting to do this in an unwieldy and unpredictable human experience. The ‘date’ aspect adds another layer of intrigue, being that it involves an interaction – a new dynamic or friction.

The generative aspect will involve me drawing from pre-existing conventions of narrative structures- drawing from genres like film, comic books, and television sit-com. These offer a great set of conventions and rules that can be applied to this real-life situation. What is fascinating is that often I notice when a person in an experience seems to strike what seem like a set of ‘designed’ conditions that work either to their detriment or to their benefit. It is like looking over at someone at a party who is telling a joke or anecdote and their performance ‘works’ – the light works perfectly with the tone of the story, the position of the listeners to the person works to heighten the drama of the story, and the tone of the story is a perfect match for the scene as a whole. These conditions are obviously not planned, but just happen to come together at this place and time. In this project, I can control these conditions for maximum potential.

I have laid out aspects of the experience that could be tempered/designed, and sketched out roughly how this might work:

Production design; considering how the layout of the experience can make action more interesting












Lighting; considering interior lighting for the date could create tonal quality















Dialogue, Sound and Music; think about how dialogue could be scripted/prompted. Consider the use of voice-over, music as aural cue for action, music to complement action:

DATA PROJECT


This project tackled the idea of representing a data set using unconventional materials. I felt this was a great opportunity to explore some thesis-related interests. First and most inherent to my thesis thinking; working with an unexpected visual style for a piece of content. Second, I wanted to play with an unfamiliar visual language that incorporated movement. Kinetic typography has been a long-held area of fascination, but I now liked the idea of using light as a means of tempo - a way of creating and controlling rhythm/pace in a visual sequence.

I also wanted my data set imbued with a sense of contrast. I logged when I received phone calls from Australia. I began to think about the complete lack of personality or resonance in this data set alone – times and names listed on a page. Beneath this log was a deep and real emotional context - a sense of homesickness, yearning, loss, absence, remembering and forgetting. I began to really like the idea of a cold and sterile set of times working as a sort of presentable face to a far more human and uncontrollable emotional currency. Could I use a language of light to communicate this friction between the two aspects to this story?

These are my original studies of light. I was mainly concerned with exploring the visual qualities of light – particularly the difference between using a still camera to capture a moving light, as opposed to a moving camera capturing a still light. Gradually I built up a vocabulary with its own nuances and tonal variations that might be usable in a larger narrative.

SELF-SABOTAGE


For a 72-hour project involving changing one's interface to and behaviour within the world - I opted for calculated and exaggerated acts of self-sabotage. I selected this as I suspected it was an innate personal tendency anyway - and was curious to see what would happen when I more methodically pursued this instinct. It forced me to first think about how my own interface could be altered to render every situation/experience to become as stressful, unproductive, and futile as possible. I realised it would be my own words, actions and choices that would fuel this sabotage. Once it began, I also noticed strategies that were more effective than others. The more pro-active I behaved, the better. Rather than seeking out people who were having an argument to get involved in, I would initiate that argument and see how much negativity could spiral from that first act of self-sabotage. It was also useful to classify different methods I was unconsciously employing in the service of self-sabotage. I realised I was devising a real system through which to generate self-sabotage in my own life.





























REFLECTIONS


After presenting and receiving feedback from the class - I began to think about what self-sabotage can mean to a graphic designer, and what it can mean to my own working methodologies. As a graphic designer, I usually move through steps of the design process impelled by intuition, what I have researched, what I see before me, and the client's needs. It is the area of intuition that I have begun to pick apart while at grad school - and consider how much of this falls within one's own personal comfort zone.

This project forced me to artificially work against better instinct. But in doing so, I observed my instinct is often tinged by a hint self-sabotage anyway - part of me enjoys picking the choice that seems most absurd, forcing myself to work within ridiculously narrow constraints, or with seemingly inappropriate visual metaphors. What visual outcomes result from working in this way? Often such self-sabotage can stop you dead in your own tracks, paralysed by the difficulties one has actually created for oneself. Personally though, I think there can be a resulting tension/friction from making things a little difficult that actually can lead to unforeseen outcomes. I personally like work that seems to be fighting somewhat within itself, to make sense of itself, to make an audience make sense of itself. This makes me consider; are there any physical remnants of this process in the visual outcomes? Can self-sabotage as a working method leave a mark on work that is visible or at least palpable to the audience? Can this tendency be harnessed and used to push myself out of my own comfort zone?