The Wire Transfer
Bank of England Museum • Micro UX • Week 2
Brief: Design a postdigital “banknote” for inclusive and diverse use
Research Methods: Artefact Analysis • Affinity Mapping • Behaviour Mapping • AEIOU
Team: Diya • Chaitanya • Uday • Rui • Lancy
Artefact Analysis
We started the week off by conducting an artefact analysis on UK banknotes, specifically the 10 and 20 pound ones. We wanted to understand the materiality of tangible money.
The National Archives workshop helped me delve much deeper into the analysis, by considering the sensorial aspects of the artefact, and considering the context I was viewing it in (as an Indian with a day-to-day relationship with Indian banknotes).
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I started with the ‘descriptive’ elements of the 10 pound note ; what are the things we definitely know about the banknote? It may be of note that I started the analysis from the prominent personality side of the note, in this case, Jane Austen; in retrospect this may have been because I have never before been bothered to know about the visual aesthetics of a note; it has always been simply a mode of transaction. So now that I needed to understand the nuances of the building blocks of a banknote, I was quite intrigued by the visuals of what I didn’t know. The monarch side was relatively familiar; the Jane Austen side was entirely new.
What is it that can be deduced from these factual elements? Answering the how, where, when, who helped formulate these.
Up to this point we were working on figjam, Chaitanya suggested we do the next step in person and physically on paper so we were able to have a bird’s eye view to speculate.
From here, we grouped interesting insights and speculations into perception of value of materials in specific contexts.
Behaviour Mapping: Studying Digital and Cash Transactions
Our transaction-focus subgroup branched into 2 for this exercise.
Our initial aim was to conduct individual-centred mapping at the market; however I ran into language barriers while trying to gain permission to observe individuals. I decided to then study behaviours at a specific stall, the shop-owner of Adam’s Fresh Fruit stall generously allowed me to do this. I spent about an hour here, noticing interactions between customers, shop-keepers and the items on sale. It felt intrusive to photograph individuals while they made transactions so I decided to sketch all of my observations. This constraint ended up being quite useful; I was much more present in the moment and keenly noticing aspects which I may have otherwise missed while relatively absent-mindedly capturing images (with the security blanket that I could decode them later).
AEIOU
The team then pooled individual insights, which we documented using the AEIOU method. After two sets of grouping exercises, interesting commonalities emerged.
Converging Research
The transaction-focused and people-focused groups decided to re-converge after the presentation to tutors, as the feedback to us was to think about specific contexts, which they had, and for them was to think about materiality, which we had. Both groups went through their research in detail and had the other group thematically organise their insights. This exercise was helpful in teasing out new perspectives, which concluded the week and set the basis for the upcoming week of brainstorming and ideation.
