Relationship to NYC
Design probe
For this project, we designed a probe kit to be sent to six people for four days. We designed the activities to give us important insight into how our participants related to NYC. We asked them to define what the word home meant to them, plot on a map where they felt comfortable, fill in the outline of a body to a point that corresponded with their energy levels, and how long they planned on staying in the city. We also included detailed instructions as well as a dollar bill that they could use to purchase a dollar slice pizza as a form of incentive.
Challenges
The most challenging part of this project was the iteration phase. Our first idea was to send our participants a small handmade journal that would act as a scrapbook for them to fill out over the four days. However, we had to completely change course after we received feedback. We thought carefully about what would encourage people to complete the tasks and brainstormed ways in which we could make the design of the probe kit more topical. We landed on a pizza box, as our feeback indicated that this was what most people associated with the city.
Outcomes
The results we obtained from this kit were extremely useful in informing us on how our participants viewed their relationship with NYC. We found that most people saw it is a temporary home rather than somewhere they would like to settle down. We also found that they only felt comfortable near their apartments or The New School campus. We were also able to infer that living in NYC was draining as people’s average energy levels were below 40%. Finally, the results indicated that people came to the city primarily for educational or work purposes.