Remodeling Wabash District
Wabash Avenue is located in between State Street and Michigan Avenue, the two most busy streets in downtown Chicago. However, Wabash Avenue doesn’t have as much traffic as the other two streets. The goal of this project is to leverage the experience that Wabash Avenue can provide to the public.
Treasure Hunt and Coffee experience on Wabash Ave
We provide this special game experience for tourists. The game route connects Wabash Ave, Michigan Ave, and State St. By doing this we will guide people find out so many hidden surprises on Wabash. We carefully followed tourists' energy level during design, so they won't get too tired. Follow our direction there will be an amazing Cafe for even more fun!
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Oscar is a 40 years old guy works in IT industry.
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He and his wife and 10-year-old daughter live in Milwaukee WI. They came to Chicago this weekend for a short trip.
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They started this day of fun from Millennium Park, which is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Chicago.
Design Scenario
They started the game at Millennium Park.
They saw the first hint in front of the
Cloud Gate. It encouraged them to discover the name of the buildings around them.
Then they followed the hint walk to the next game spot on Wabash.
At the CTA train station on Wabash, they found another hint.
The hint there told them that they can take a picture of the Art Institute Museum from this special view, which most of the tourists don't know about it.
By the time they felt tired, they followed the hint walked to this great Cafe on Wabash. It provides them a good place to relax, to review the photos they took during the trip, and also a great view of Chicago's over 100 years L train.
Beach-head Strategy
Firstly, we found out our primary users group after research. "Social media influencers" such as Instagram users with more than 500 followers will be the first group of users of our design.
3 phases of business development
The framework for process
This framework worked as our guidance during the research and design process. We started from "0"--sense intent, which is what did out client (Chicago Loop Alliance) think the problem was.
People we spoke to
Amanda
Chicago Detours
Jason
Choose Chicago
Anna
HI Chicago Hostel
Chicago
Locals
CLA Council
Meeting Members
Business
Owners
Pedestrians
on Wabash
4 Design principles from research
1.Wabash is central to many tourist attractions
Wabash is located in downtown Chicago, in between the two big streets -- Michigan Ave. and State St. There are places such as Millennium Park, Art Institute of Chicago just a few minutes walking distance.
2.Wabash is full of hidden surprise
From the interviews, we learned that there are many hidden stories on Wabash. Even so many local Chicago people have no idea about them. People got so excited once they found out about these stories.
3.People love hidden stories about places and they need guidance
There was no guidance about the hidden surprises so that people didn't know where to know more about them.
4.Wabash is intimate
Because there is the L train tracks on Wabash Ave, it creates this special intimate feeling for people when they walk underneath it.
"How might we"
Business vs. User
One of the biggest things I’ve learned from this project is ‘it’s not all about user-centered’. Not like some of the other service design projects I’ve done before, we had focused more on the business side, instead of the user's side.
We started from understanding our client’s needs, helped them to reframe their problem and came up with our concepts.
Reframing the problems is the essential step to this project, and I’ve learned so much during the process. Without this step, the insights could be stuck at the very surface level, which can be harmful to the designing.
Here I’m not trying to say we don’t need user-centered design. It’s another way of thinking who’s the user at this moment. I treated our client as the ‘user’ here at the beginning and then approached to real users later.
