Through the semester and the development of the project I
had learned a lot about how to observe and identify a problem. Understanding how
to observe people in an ethical way is a skill that this project helped me work
on and want to work on more. Doing a project based on observation as well as an
understanding of how an average day works is challenging and teaming up with
three others, led to many different takes and ideas. Each idea had their own
pros and cons about how and why it would be the right decision to help solve
the housing court issues that we had observed.
The members of the team all had ideas and offered many
different ways to help each other out. We all helped work contributively
together on what the design should work towards, how it should look, and what
the criteria of the design should be. During the initial design decisions
everyone had ideas that we all worked through, while consistently asking what is
the purpose of the intervention? This question kept many of the group members
in tune with the goal that we had set for ourselves. That goal would be to
create a space for the lawyer for a day station and the client that talks to
them, using a modular screen wall that is mobile and very dynamic. That dynamic
partition wall that the team designed and built offered the lawyers and the
clients a space for privacy when talking, a space separated from the busy
hallway.
After observing, building, and observing again what our
intervention did for the users and the space, it left a lasting impression on
me. It was an immediate response to a design that we came up with through the
semester. We were able to witness the intervention we design, be used and get
feedback upon it. To see it be used and how it wasn’t used, it makes you as the
designer think about a lot more variables that weren’t being thought of when
the design was initially being designed. Studying and observing is something
that can help the designer learn about what it is they’re designing for. To
learn more about the issue and what it is that is being designed, needs to have
who’s using the design as a large factor of the finished project.