What’s Around in False Creek?
Winnie Wei
See it On Campus: Level 2
Visitor InfoNear the Boardroom, close to the elevator. Feel free to interact with it!
In realizing the impacts of human activities on biodiversity in False Creek, this multi-sensory interactive installation provides a gameful experience for young adults who visit the seawall.
Through this educational experience, audiences can learn about the cycle of life and symbiosis – how two species live with each other in their ecosystem.
People are encouraged to be more respectful when sharing their habitats with other-than-humans, such as dragonflies and frogs.
What’s Around in False Creek? © 2023 by Winnie Wei is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Sources
Cordoba-Aguilar, Alex, Christopher Beatty, and Jason Bried (eds), Dragonflies and Damselflies: Model Organisms
for Ecological and Evolutionary Research, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford
https://sciencing.com/animals-show-commensalism-rain-forest-6679573.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/frog-deformities-linked-to-flatworm-parasite
Challenger, M. (2022). How to be animal: What it means to be human. Canongate.
What’s Around in False Creek? © 2023 by Winnie Wei is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Design Process
Design is about understanding the needs and expectations of the beings who will use it (human and other-than-human visitors), and their environments. It was a non-linear process, I started with getting to know my stakeholders by talking to them, and observing how they interact with similar designs.
Resilience
Designing for visitors and the environment they interact within needs to consider internal and external factors without compromising the integrity of the whole, that is, to prioritize the well-beings of the local communities. My approach to this project is to minimize extraction of local resources.
A mock-up of how visitors engage with the installation at False Creek Habitat Island.
What’s Around in False Creek? © 2023 by Winnie Wei is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Modularity x Sustainability
Attaching the wooden dragonflies and frogs designs onto the premade wooden discs allows the main body to sustain for future exhibitions of different insect types. Saving material uses to reduce carbon footprint is one of the main objectives of this project.
Immersion
To understand the vernacular of the community that I am designing for, I did some generative user interviews and field works in False Creek. I went down to the seawall, nearby community centers, and Science World to get to know what is around the neighbourhood, and what people do and enjoy.
What’s Around in False Creek? © 2023 by Winnie Wei is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
Chatting about Other-than-humans…
One of the main parts of my project is to learn what people think about sharing their surroundings with other-than-humans in Vancouver. There are many interesting stories people shared.
People that I talked to indicated strong interest in spending more outdoor time outside their busy work or school lives. Moreover, some of their misunderstandings of insects come from their intrinsic fear and lack of knowledge of other-than-humans.
Creating Incentives and Recognizing Constraints
To incentivize people to interact with my installation, I applied my research on my audience’s motivations in the social world. By providing them agency of being able to take action by spinning the discs, interact with the informative poster and other visitors, all of these elements form an opportunity to get visitors be interested in conserving insects.
However, someone needs to step up to initiate the “spin” due to human biases coming from their unique life experiences in relation to cultures. So I incorporated the aesthetics chosen by my storytellers(people I talked to) through drawings and ways of displaying to attract the “lamb” 🙂
Prototyping
What Constructs the Experience?
User Journey Map
In service design, a user journey map helps me as a designer to sort out what are the touchpoints and people’s emotions when interacting with my design from beginning to end, and beyond 🙂
Storyboard
Here is a storyboard of future iteraction of application of bluetooth proximity-based technology of sending corresponding informations of the game results to users’ phone with no user’s identity information required.
Additional Resources
False Creek
https://www.fraserriverkeeper.ca/the_wild_residents_of_false_creek
https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/03/21/Rumours-Death-False-Creek-False/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/false-creek-bio-blitz-1.6572300
Other-than-humans
1. Challenger, M. (2022). How to be animal: What it means to be human. Canongate.
2. The Insane Biology of: The Dragonfly
3. Kolbert, E. (2021, May 3). Where have all the insects gone?. Magazine. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/where-have-all-the-insects-gone-feature
Special thanks to faculty and students of Industrial Design, Communication Design, and Interaction Design;
Design Woodshop, Digital Fabrication Lab, Digital Output Centre, the Writing Centre, and Drawing Room(ECU Drawing Club) of Emily Carr University.
