People’s Pub Partnership (Pt. 4) | Micro UX
April 28 - June 16 (7 Weeks)
Brief: Design a way to materialise the community governance model of pub ownership
Group Members: Ava, Ella (Me), Effy, Fangxue, Jacob, Kristen, Parth, Ranga and Zhe
Week 4 (19th May - 25th May)
Just days before our weekly presentation, we analysed any overlaps in our findings from the interviews and map probes and came to the conclusion that whilst people enjoyed the pub they felt that it was not inclusive for everyone within the community. We also found that members of the public had little knowledge about community pubs and did not have much access to information about community run events. Based on this we came up with the idea to potentially create a movable structure or cart that could be used for community engagement and community contribution towards the Walworth Community Pub project as our final design output.
This was mentioned during the presentation to our peers, in which we displayed our map probes and our interview analysis before detailing our thoughts about engaging the community with the idea of a community run pub in collaboration with the Walworth Community pub group. This was very well received, our outreach to different areas of the community and involvement with current projects in the area displayed our engagement with the brief’s subject matter. We were, however, told that we should start to display our analysis visually rather than just auditory to fully display the extent of our findings. John also mentioned that we should do a lot more observations regarding how people occupy the spaces in pubs and how community can be formed in those spaces if we want to accurately gauge how to materialise a community pub.
Later in the week we had a trip to The Walworth Livingroom to speak with Richard about our new ideas for community engagement and how we would like to get involved. Richard spoke to us about the different communities within Walworth and the decline of the number of pubs and community hubs in the area. He also spoke about the evolution of Walworth as an area which is becoming more densely populated by younger generations and how that might impact the outcome of a community run pub.
We described to him our idea about creating a portable engagement device that would act as a toolkit to encourage community voices and community based decision making. We also made sure to mention that it we would be creating something that would be passed on into the community for them to use to generate awareness about their own Walworth Community Pub project afterwards. Overall, Richard was very pleased with what we had discovered and envisioned, he encouraged us to move forward with our idea and said that he would pass our design vision onto both Matt and Frances.
Not having heard from the Manor of Walworth regarding a final event space and wanting to secure a location as soon as possible, we made sure to coordinate with both the head of the Walworth Community pub group (Matt) and the owner of the Walworth Livingroom (Richard) to see if we would be able to use the Walworth Livingroom for our final event. Fortunately, both of them were quite enthusiastic about our final event and generously allowed us to use the Walworth Livingroom. This meant that we would be able to use a community space and repurpose it for the evening, this would hopefully attract guests to our final event who were already active members of the community and were interested in the possibility of a new community pub.
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Progressing in our understanding of how communities form, we took on board John’s previously mentioned feedback and conducted some more AEIOU observations in pubs both in London and outside of the area. We made sure to document it in a visual way which looked at how people occupied the spaces within pubs and which user behaviours overlapped. To do this we all created and used a research template designed to create fluid cohesive outcomes which could be easily analysed. We also made sure to set guidelines regarding to length of time spent in each pub, types of photophobic evidence captured and observations crucial to the research we were conducting.
Based on our AEIOU findings, we found that the most popular times for people to frequent pubs was in the early to late evening, and the clientele base was mostly young adults and middle aged men. We also found that in non-rainy weather people tended to gravitate to outdoor spaces like beer gardens, terraces and pavements rather than stay inside, but when opting to sit inside people chose to occupy spaces that had easy access to the bar or were well lit next to lamps or windows. People also chose to sit in places that had easily accessible padded or cushioned seating unless outdoors when standing or benches became more preferable. We also determined that Individuals tended to occupy spaces that were more out of the way, sitting in areas that were designed specifically for smaller groups (like on bar stools, raised tables or armchairs), whereas Groups tended to occupy spaces that were tailored for more people (in booths, on benches and with sofas) which were near windows or close to the bar. And more often than not, these individuals and separate groups tended to remain to themselves and only interacted with others if prompted by seeing someone they knew, through inadvertent actions or via a member of staff.
With a better understanding of how people use space and what we were aiming to design with regard to engaging the local Walworth community, we began to create some sketches for our engagement structure/cart. The focus remained on building a structure that would be easily portable as well as contain a range of prompts and probes for users to interact with. We also wanted to make some form of malleable addition to the cart, such as pieces of furniture, that people could be used to turn the structure into a social space regardless of where it ended up being positioned.
Now with an idea of how our brief outcome would be coming together and a fixed location for our event, we started looking at the branding for our project. This would help to keep all of our creations cohesive and also easily promote out event later on. We started by making simple logos and icons that could be used in future poster designs or on the prospective engagement structure itself. We also began to think about how we could promote our event to a wider range of people, and after some deliberation we also made an Instagram account to both promote and engage people online looking for things to do in Walworth.
