Overview
Grand Park is a public park and vibrant outdoor gathering place located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. It is a 12-acre open space that stretches from The Music Center on the west to City Hall. Post Covid, Grand Park seeks to increase repeat visitors and engage advocates for Grand Park as The Park for Everyone.
MY ROLE
As the lead Design Researcher for this project I established the research plan and methods to determine our target audience, motivations, frustrations and conceptualizing the solution. I worked closely with UX Designer, Emily Hicks who helped execute the final design.
PROBLEM
Currently Grand Park’s key audience, art fans have limited art activations at the park that are interactive.
INSIGHT
Art enthusiasts who have gone to Grand Park, enjoy viewing art and exchanging experiences of what they like from art with other people.
SOLUTION
Create an art activation that invites park goers to share their most memorable experiences at Grand Park.
Research
A target audience was established and their needs understood by conducting exploratory and foundational research. I combined both quantitative and qualitative methods that included stakeholder meetings, competitive analysis, secondary research, netnography, survey, in depth interviews and observations.
STAKEHOLDER MEETING
“We don't know much about our audience...”
— Julia Diamond, Director of Grand Park
— Julia Diamond, Director of Grand Park
Meeting with stakeholders shed light on constraints and insights such as little qualitative data that is collected from their key audiences, temporary/seasonal programming which is preferred and a strong connection to Grand Park’s values are priority.
Empathize
Very little is known about Grand Park’s key audiences, which provides great opportunities to
connect and learn about visitors behaviors and needs post pandemic.
Very little is known about Grand Park’s key audiences, which provides great opportunities to
connect and learn about visitors behaviors and needs post pandemic.
Non-permanent
Temporary activations at the park are preferred since Grand Park also offers itself to third party rentals.
Temporary activations at the park are preferred since Grand Park also offers itself to third party rentals.
Values
Grand Park’s values should be embodied in our concept and that is anybody can participate
regardless of immigrant status, income or identities.
Grand Park’s values should be embodied in our concept and that is anybody can participate
regardless of immigrant status, income or identities.
Key Audiences
Grand Park wants to focus on storytellers & active explorers who fall under 3 categories, nature enthusiasts, creatives as well as art and culture fans.
Grand Park wants to focus on storytellers & active explorers who fall under 3 categories, nature enthusiasts, creatives as well as art and culture fans.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Indirect and direct competitors have a strong social media presence and partnership with brands.
The competitive analysis was a mix of direct and indirect competitors such as Disneyland, Headspace, Santa Monica Pier, Pokemon Go, Discovery Green and Latino Outdoors. They were chosen based on the fact that they have a tie to open green space, as well as digital and in person experiences. Seeing the multiple avenues of competition allowed Emily and I to settle on art enthusiast.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Storytelling marketing and immersive interactive art present themselves as feasible ideas that can suffice the project brief.
Airbnb and Snapchat
Airbnb and Snapchat used a storytelling market campaign to refresh their brand’s narrative (Real Friends and Made Possible by Hosts). This type of marketing can generate authentic storytelling from Grand Park’s visitors.
LACMA + Snapchat
Snapchat partnered with LACMA earlier this year to make site specific augmented reality pieces of art that ties to Los Angeles history.
Mood.Cloud
“Building Mood, Building Community: Usage Patterns of an Interactive Art Installation .” is a published article on mood.cloud an interactive art installation, which creates self reflection and awareness of others through personal interaction within a public space.
NETNOGRAPHY
Considerations for an art activation that is participatory and has both an emotional theme and audio component spring up from our netnography.
“Your Mommas Voice In The Back Of Your Head” Participatory + Multi-sensory Art Exhibit
The work “Your Mommas Voice In The Back Of Your Head ” is a multi-sensory and participatory piece of art taking different audio of different mothers.
“The Last Word”
“The Last Word”, a project by the public art collaborative Illegal Art that was on view at Wonderspaces. It allows people to write words they wish they had said.
SURVEY
Disseminating a survey to over 65 participants prior to interviewing allowed me to adjust in depth interview questions based on survey data. Additionally, I had established several hypotheses such as some participants may be concerned about sanitary conditions since COVID is still around. Another hypothesis centered around whether or not park goers would want to share or read about experiences at Grand Park.
IN DEPTH INTERVIEWS
Building connections with other while viewing art was important to our participants along with with using Grand Park as a space for getting in tune with nature.
“...You can just be all alone standing and appreciating art then there is someone who comes by and also shares the same interest as you and wow that makes the experience for me.”
—Marvin, 27 (art enthusiast + Grand Park visitor)
“Grand Park is just like home to me because this is a particular place where you appreciate nature”
—James 35 (art enthusiast + Grand Park visitor)
OBSERVATIONS
On two separate occasions I visited Grand Park while they had an event and small art activation, Easy Mornings and Encoding Futures: Speculative Monuments For LA.
Insight #1
People tend to crowd more under shade as well as areas with furniture or seating
Insight #2
There is more movement/activity near the City Hall (Spring St.) portion of the park and also the upper portion (Grand Ave.)
Insight #3
People visiting the AR art activation Encoding Futures: Speculative Monuments For LA. were eager to engage with each other over the art.
TARGET AUDIENCE PROFILE
PROTOTYPE
How might we engage art enthusiasts to share their experiences with others about Grand Park?
Emily and I employed several methods to rapidly build upon our concept. Since she was out of the country and I was in Los Angeles, we took to quickly building digital prototypes that we could share with our target audience that had participated in our survey. The concepts ranged from collecting visitors' stories ahead of time and in real time and then projecting them on to building adjacent to Grand Park. Our final prototype, Stories On The Wall was tested at Grand Park with park visitors.
To better understand how our target audience profile, Melvin would engage with Stories On The Wall, I mapped the touch points and before, during and after the event.
Reflection
Grand Park stakeholders were provided an Executive Summary and a one year roadmap on how Stories on the Wall could be launched during their 10 year anniversary. The concept was received well, however there was a lot of encouragement in turning the concept into a more digital solution, with little up keep.
In retrospective, I would have research more on the efforts of creating an open source project with various digital artists.
In retrospective, I would have research more on the efforts of creating an open source project with various digital artists.
