Data on crowdedness in Hilversum
This project was conducted with my team members Beatrice, Carmel, and Lennart. Our clients were Robot Kittens and the municipality of Hilversum.
The issue
It’s Saturday afternoon, you just arrived at the city center and noticed that it's too crowded. The market square is really busy, terraces are full and the general shopping streets seem to be hard to maneuver. You predicted that it might be as busy as this but you never know for sure, so you decided to check it out because you needed something.
But what if you had a service that shows you how busy it is in the city center? Well, I got some good news. Smart City Hilversum developed this service, called the Druktemeter. Originally developed to help the municipality monitor crowds in the center during this pandemic. However, they envisioned it to be useful for the citizens of Hilversum as well. To check out how busy it is, before going to the center.
The design challenge: Make it visible
Our design challenge led to the direction of exploring ways to make the Druktemeter more visible for citizens, trying to make it part of citizens journey to the center, and visualizing the data of the service in an easily accessible, inclusive and understandable way.
The process: Explained
Citizens of Hilversum are not really used to checking the Druktemeter before going to the city center. Neither is looking at data and numbers to see how crowded it is. And that is totally understandable. That’s why our team explored the idea of using something lovable and intriguing as origami (within an installation) that shows you how crowded certain areas are. Our team organized co-creation sessions, had expert meetings, and built a data-driven origami that expands and shrinks to show crowd density. It’s simple, a fully expanding origami means busy, and fully shrunk means calm.
Citizens would find this installation at locations just before you enter the city centre. But this doesn’t solve anything for the citizens. They might re-route or avoid certain areas but they were just about to enter the city to buy something. The installation functions as a tool for a first encounter with the service of the Druktemeter. It’s a physical product to familiarize people with the service and inform the citizens. This is on it’s own not enough.
That’s why we converted the data-driven origami into a circle shape with the same states. To implement it in a Web App. For citizens to check this service at home, instead of just going to it. We added a campaign for public screens and social media, plus included a QR-code on the installation to download the Web App.
An ecosystem of products
Our whole concept became an ecosystem of products within the customer journey of citizens. An installation for first encounters, the Web App for daily use, and campaigns to familiarize them with the products. To create unity within all the products we developed a design language, based on our research, prototypes, and the Web App. Including explanatory text on how to create a consistent quality within all products. Our team envisions future scenarios where the Web App might also be useful for tourists, events in the city center, or for the police to use during club hours. Making the Druktemeter service even more valuable in the future.
