The Task

Our group was tasked with answering the question: How can we unlock and augment joy for people at bus stops on Cornell’s campus through positive emotion regulation?

Goal: Increase and prolong the positive experience of bus riding

Mission: To design a bus stop intervention that regulates the positive emotions of the Cornell community via direct and indirect engagement that maximizes time spent waiting at bus stops across campus.

Research

We began our research process by looking into the TCAT annual report. TCAT is the Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, AKA the bus system running through campus. With data on concentration of ridership and ridership by pass, we were able to further validate and verify our interest in having students as our target group.

Survey

We also administered a survey to both Cornell students and faculty to collect insight’s on user’s bus experiences. Our results showed that:

1. Majority of users take the bus for reasons of practicality in terms of speed, efficiency, and distance from destination.

2. While waiting for the bus, users like to keep busy, while scrolling through their devices, listening to music, or people watching.

3. Many users also described feeling bored while taking the bus.

Users generally had more negative things to say than positive.

Personas

Based on our data, we created four personas to better understand our users. Our key takeaways were:

1. Users like to stay stimulated and observant

2. Users enjoy socializing and being with friends

3. Users dislike wasting or losing time  

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHT

Based on surveys and personas, we realized that there are a lot of problems with the TCAT system that are out of our control. 

But, there was a lot we could do to make the experience better.

Ideation

Based on user insights, we began ideation by noting common themes of:

When continuing with brainstorming and ideation, we decided to set four criteria to help make our intervention and installation concept more successful.

1. Prolonged Engagement (direct and indirect)

2. User Choice

3. Evocation of Joy

4. Leverage Lost Time

Based on these criteria, we centered on the concept of creating a polling device because it:

1. Gives users an outlet to share opinions and understand those of others

2. Provides the opportunity to actively contribute to the community

3. Prompts reflections and conversations (mental time traveling)

User Journey

After deciding our concept, we created a user journey to explore what the interaction with such a device could look like. We wanted to ensure that elements of positive design such as attentional deployment, response modulation, and mental time traveling were integral to the before, during, and after of interacting with our polling device.

Programming

Additionally, thinking about the full circle influence of our intervention was key. After interacting with the poll device, we wanted to make sure there was an element of reflection or satisfactory participation for the user in forms of digital reach or actual community influence.

For this, we put in a heavy amount of time into our question programming. We created two separate programming concepts. The first was quad specific questions (left) where all the bus stops at distinct quads on Cornell Campus would have a different daily question from one of the 5 question categories for our student users (Just For Fun, All About Ithaca, Culture, Entertainment, and Would you Rather). This programming acts as anticipation and excitement for students as we are able to provide them with variety. Our second concept was campus wide questions (right), created to join together the Cornell community, while also gaining university wide insight on Cornell related topics and events.

Secondary Insight

Cornell University is physically mapped out in a way that deters cross-disciplinary interaction. Engineers stay on Eng Quad; Design majors stay on Ag Quad. Both programming concepts were created with the goal of joining together students of varying focuses and interests.

Iterative Design

The final step in ideation was to brainstorm what this polling device looked like. The user journey and program concepting pushed us further to put thoughts into sketches.

We wanted to make sure our final design choices for the prototype were being made with a continued desire for validity and verification from our users. So before deciding our form of input, output, materials, placement, or necessity for a continued digital platform, we conducted a second survey.

The survey results showed that students wanted a tactile input experience that was COVID safe and avoided touch surfaces; a output with a combination of sounds, color, and lights; and would be interested in some kind of social media experience to share poll results and tracking.

In terms of device placement, we observed that many Cornell Cornell bus stops and shelters have physical barriers, like fire hydrants and trash cans. To avoid creating more barriers and crowding, we decided to integrate the installation with one side of the shelter.

Final Prototype

For our final prototype, we decided to do a realistic render and animation due to our group’s mid-semester COVID separation. This included an LED screen photoshop render and GIF.

Before

We wanted to implement a sense of excitement, anticipation, and curiosity for the user, so we intentionally made the decision to reveal current poll results only after casting a vote. The visuals themselves prompt action with arrows and actionable text, i.e.”which do you prefer?” and “press to vote.”

During

When actually casting a vote, we wanted to create a stimulating event for the user with a fun animation, while incorporating light, color, sound, and movement to give the user delight. The animation begins with a circle emerging from the respective push button area, which triggers the rest of the visual, promoting interactivity between the user and the installation. The moving circle demonstrates the user’s direct impact on the results.

After

At the end of the animation, we display the results via a 10x10 grid of colorful circles. We chose to use circles due to their dynamic movement (bouncing, rolling, etc.) and, therefore, engaging nature. The results would be shown in increments of 1%, based on the live poll results.

Final Deck