6) DESIGN IDEAS + DESIGN THEMATIC ANALYSIS

After creating the mood board, we then decided it was a good time to come up with some potential design ideas. Individually, each group member took some time to generate ideas that we had for what we might produce as our design idea. My original ideas were slightly simplistic in the way that I wasn’t quite sure what type of technology or interaction would be present to make these ideas come to life. I was more focused on the basic concepts that I wanted to introduce to the gardens.

Some ideas that I presented to my group include:

• A time machine showing the past, present and future.
• An X-ray-like machine where you could see and interact with different layers in the garden.
• A story telling interaction where the sensors have something representative of data and what the data means being shown. I even thought about maybe having these stories being based off of some sort of past myth and/ or folklore.
• An interactive quiz where visitors get to guess multiple choice questions about the data. The correct answer will be shown after and explained.
• Turning the garden into some sort of interactive game. Visitors will be able to plant things, watch them grow, and maybe interact with the animals in the garden. The interface will also show some information about the garden as they interact with it.

When we shared our ideas amongst each other and had both different and similar ideas. After discussing for some time we weren’t exactly sure which direction to head in. As a result, we completed another thematic analysis but with our design ideas. We ended up sorting our ideas into different categories such as: handheld devices, climate change, gamification, and story telling. This allowed us to see common themes our design ideas shared to lead us in a future direction.

After further discussion we decided we wanted to introduce some sort of handheld device into the garden. We had varying ideas of what the handheld might look like and what the handheld might do or show. One thing we were clear on from the outset is that we wanted to develop something physical visitors could interact with. We wanted to create something that anyone could use.