The Brief…
In groups of three, we were to research and create a signage intervention in DJCAD. We had to make and install physical signage and/or objects that will effect the behaviour of people in a chosen space. It must be installed in DJCAD and be on display for 1-2 hours while we descreetly take observations.
Initial Ideas
We wanted to come up with something original and didn’t want to go for a signage that merely instructed or prompted a corresponding action – e.g. “look up”, as there would be minimal significant experience to be gained from that, for either us, or the participant.
Our first idea consisted of how we could create a sign that would change a persons path by phychologically pushing them towards a less practical decision. For example in DJCAD, along the walkway, eveyone we observed walks mainly through the double doors as it is closer and larger than the single door adjacent and to the right. Both of them lead into the same room and are only two metres apart. If however there was a sign stating that both were open, it may make the individual stop and question why the signs were there. While the signs would provide no additional information, it may draw the participant in to read it incase, it is to state one of the doors is closed for example.
Typically, above signage text there is an icon/graphic that reinforces the message in the text. If we change this to try to subtly influence behaviour, will it work as intended. For example, if there were two identical arrows pointing towards both of the doors it would correspond with the text as expected, yet if one arrow was larger than the other, the information is still true but would a larger arrow to the right descreetly make people walk through the smaller, more inconvenient door?
That was our first psychological idea, but we wanted to make something that would be significantly more interactive for people. As we sat in the green seating area, we joked that it would make a good ball pit. From that, we developed it into question as to whether different signage could influence if people woul play in the ball pit or not. For example, would individuals be more likely to interact if the sign dared them to do so, or would a simple sign saying: have fun – enjoy the ball pit, as a statement work better?
Development
We went with the ball pit idea and headed off to argos after doing some poor research of how many balls we could actually obtain, so for £12 we bought ourself 300 balls which we soon discover was no where near enough and that my calculation of about 2000 was actually needed to completely fill the lower square, not even the top! We tried to raise £72 to purchase another 1800 balls and create this amazing idea, it fell short of support surprisingly…
Instead we decided to use the balls as an individual vote in a poll system so we would use signs to ask the question then they could take balls out of the bag and vote. They could pick three so it would force them to have a prefered one instead of one in each but the pits would fill up quicker and having it look like there were more responses would make more people participate.
The two different polls we put up were one which was personal opinion and no right answer (cough cough Queen), so there was Queen against The Beetles. The second poll was what they believed was correct. The sign asked which had a larger surface area between Russian and Pluto.
The activity got a lot of people involved and talking, plus just having a bit more colour in the area made it nicer to sit around and occasionally throw a ball at a friend too.
The white taped lines in the seat and the divide would be alligned with the sign so that it was simple to understand. We made the signs large so that they would gain attention and the big bag of balls also made people stop and figuire out what it was part of. In the second set of seats it wasn’t a black wall unfortunately so it had to block a poster.
Results
The way we recorded the results is instead of counting all the balls, we just did which one each person prefered to go for and counted it as one vote, for example, whether a person went for two in one or all three in one option, it would just count as one for that answer.
Queen scored 16 in comparisson to The Beatles score of 9 (unlucky Jason and Andrew), however the release of Bohemian Rhapsody in the cinema has brought a new craze about Queen so we should have probably changed the two bands to make it fairer.
Russia was believed to have a larger surface area as it got 13 votes compared to Pluto’s 6. The correct answer is Russia and is a good pub quiz question to keep in your head!
The main thing is a wide range of people got involved from every year of students, to lecturers including Andrew and Jason (thank you), as well as builders and some other people. People identified we were scoring the answers after they had interacted with the sign and had talks with us about Queen or The Beatles and which surface area was actually larger so the day was good fun.