FLOORBOARD (2012)
The community bulletin board of the modern age, where our digital identity meets our physical space.
Collaborators | Jackson Chu, Frank Zhou, & James Zulkie
Role | UX Design, UX Research
OPPORTUNITY
In the age of the internet of things, our identity extends beyond the physical space we inhabit. We have things that make up our identity such as our preferences in music, the news we read, the blogs we follow, photos we share, and etc. However, most of those things exist in the digital space, making it harder to share it in our physical communities. Floorboard is an exploration to bridge the gap between our digital identities and the communities we live in.
We decided that college students were the target user we wanted to design for because of their strong digital presence and the communal environment they live in. How then can we facilitate community bonding and the sharing of our digital identities by leveraging the communal spaces college students live in?
RESEARCH & CONCEPT EXPLORATION
We interviewed dorm students and resident assistants on campus to understand the benefits and problems they experienced living in communal spaces. Using the data we extracted through surveying and interviews, we designed multiple concepts that we used speed dating to refine. The research helped us understand which aspects of our lives that we wanted to share with our community and to focus on 2 concepts:
- Use physical touch points to share digital content in the communal space (concept 5)
- Enable the sharing of dynamic content in communal spaces to strengthen the community identity (concept 6)
FURTHER RESEARCH & FINAL CONCEPT
We continued exploring the concept of personal space vs. communal space by looking at existing tools that facilitate community building and interactions. The final concept, Floorboard, is a digital communal bulletin that serves as a communication and sharing hub for dorm residents. Floorboard can be accessed on multiple digital channels such as the web, or the student's mobile phone to enable a shared connected experience. Ultimately, we envisioned Floorboard to facilitate not just the sharing of digital content and interactions, but for other communal related tasks like taking polls, surveys, scheduling, etc. that will strengthen the community.
