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UX Studio Practices | Week 7 - UX of Soil II

Zhaolu Song

Team: Giada/ Maria Shuttleworth/ Sebastian / Zhaolu Song

Brief: Design an experience that explores planetary soil dependence.

Research Methods: AEIOU & Speed Dating

Time: 04.12.2020-10.12.2020



Future Scenarios


Considering the feedback, our team decided to develop a speculative design about the future without soil. We brainstormed future scenarios and narrowed them to three specific ones: future restaurant, soil bank, and soil museum.


Future scenarios. Sketch by me.


After considering everyone's idea, we drew quick sketches about future scenarios together.


Future soil bank in 2077. Sketch by team.

Future soil bank in 2100. Sketch by team.


Future soil museum in 2320. Sketch by team.



Speed Dating


We interviewed eight people to find out which scenario can raise people’s awareness of soil most.


My interviewing with others. Screenshot by me.


The outcome was that 4 people liked the soil museum, 1 person liked "Future restaurant", 3 people liked "Soil bank". So we decided to design a future soil museum and explain "Soil bank" inside.


Timeline of Soil development


Our team discussed the detail of the soil development timeline based on our previous research and our imagination.


Timeline of Soil. Sketch by Giada and Maria. Design by team.

Timeline of Soil. Sketch by Giada. Text by Maria.


Timeline of Soil. Sketch by Maria. Text by me.



Tutorial


Our tutor liked our idea and suggested us to make the museum experience more detailed, for instance, what specific things are in gift shops, what the homepage of the museum could be like, etc. He also recommended an idea generation tool, crazy 8s, which is getting 8 ideas in 8 mins.



Crazy 8s About the Gift Shops


Our team did crazy 8s about the souvenirs in the gifts shop and got fruitful outcomes. We selected some ideas to test and made models.


Crazy 8s ideas about souvenirs. Sketch by team.


Model Making & Testing. Photos by team.



Final Presentation


We designed a time travel and took everyone to the future. Our team acted as museum staff and guided others to have a visit to the soil museum.


Soil Museum Experience Video. Filmed by Sebastian.


Soil Museum. Photos by team.


Gift shop. Photos by team.


Staff cards. Design by me and Maria.

Monopoly game board. Design by me and Giada.


“I really enjoyed this experience. The background sound made me immerse in the exhibition totally.” – Alex.

“I like the whole brand design, the museum logo, the posters and also the guide boards.” – Max.

“The gift shop is very cute! I like these souvenirs and the little price tags.” – Damul.

The exhibition was very successful, and everyone enjoyed the process. Our tutor said it’s a good project and it could be better if we make the interactive model by ourselves.


What I’ve Learned


Through this project, I did realize the importance of soil that I never thought of before. Besides, speed dating is very useful because the feedback from others could be totally different from what designers thought. And it’s quite important to pay attention to details which will make a big difference.


References

  1. Ardern, J. (2019) A pragmatic experiment practicing hope for a future disrupted by climate change. Available at: https://superflux.in/index.php/work/mitigation-of-shock/ (Accessed: 10 December 2020).

  2. Koch, A. et al. (2013) ‘Soil security: solving the global soil crisis’, Global Policy, 4(4), pp.434-441.

  3. Minami, K. (2009) ‘Soil and humanity: Culture, civilization, livelihood and health’, Soil science and plant nutrition, 55(5), pp.603-615.

  4. Toland, A., Noller, J.S. and Wessolek, G. eds. (2018) Field to Palette: Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene. London: CRC Press.

  5. WWF. (2018) Soil, The Indispensable Dirt. Available at: https://medium.com/wwftogetherpossible/soil-the-indispensable-dirt-c1f2314efc38 (Accessed: 10 December 2020).

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