Fall Design Projects 2024
PENROSE LIBRARY
The group of HCD 101b seniors had been tasked with creating a design for the Penrose library. We were selected to work on the space in the library known as Cafe 41, though this is only one of its many monikers, which is one of the problems we needed to address. The Cafe space also known as the “Games Lounge”, or “Room and room 133”, is a space that is underused by the Whitman community, a lot of this is because it is unclear what the use of the space is for.
Luckily we had the chance to meet with our stakeholders, the library staff, Emily Pearson and Bridget Scoles, who explained the situation at hand. After meeting with Emily and Bridget, the team was clear on 3 main problems to address. It is unclear to students what the space is for. The library staff want it to be a casual study space, but the setup is not inviting to the type of vibe they are looking for. They want it to be food friendly but that was and is hard to maintain. The fact that it’s in the basement doesn’t help either, it is out of the way making sure that it is not a destination space.
As a group that doesn’t have regular class meetings, we wanted to make sure that we were meeting as regularly as possible, so we set up weekly meetings, which we held in the Cafe space.
By meeting semi regularly in the cafe space we were able to experience what the space felt like to work in. This helped us detect the flaws of the space, as well as its positive attributes. We also had some illuminating moments. There was one meeting where Malcolm and I were in the space waiting for the other members to arrive. As we were waiting, we overheard a conversation of another group who was using the space. They were commenting that they were late to the meeting, because they “had no idea where the cafe space was.” By spending time in the space we were able to gain important insights that would later inform our design.
After one of our early cafe meetings, we developed a series of interview questions. We wanted to know what our peers thought about the perceptions of the cafe space. After conducting interviews it was clear that not many people we knew utilized the space. At this stage it was also unclear what would get them to use the space more.
After a pivotal meeting with the group we decided it was time to decide what our design was going to be. We had been on the fence about whether to go with the ambitious design of a 24 access space or creating iterated furniture arrangements. We decided that it was more viable for our group to develop furniture arrangements. Since Malcolm and I are both senior art majors we had to leave for the New York trip, which is during the week before Thanksgiving break. Due to this fact, we needed to split the labor, before we left. Malcolm and I would develop the plans, then we would leave and the other two, Kate Moe and Mwamba Muntanga would test the designs.
After establishing our plan, Malcolm and I got together to develop three prototype designs. We spent some time brainstorming on how to make the room feel more casual. We thought back to a real cafe, which usually has more individualized seating that is spread throughout the space. We started moving the furniture around to fit this vision. Once we had a distinctive arrangement that we were satisfied with, I took pictures and Malcolm and sketched out a floor plan. We then repeated this for two more designs. There was a satisfaction to moving things around and changing the space. Once we had all our designs finalized, we created a plan for the other half of the group to use when arranging and testing. This consisted of Malcolm’s floor plan, my pictures, and a write up describing each design. We planned out a schedule for how this would be executed.
When we arrived back in Walla Walla, Malcolm and I were totally in the dark regarding the progress of the project. We planned to meet and discuss what had happened when we were gone, but the meeting wasn’t able to happen. We wanted this to happen before our class meeting on Friday.
We got to Friday afternoon still unsure of what happened while we were gone. What we came to find out was that only one of our designs had been tested. Mwamba had been able to test the first iteration of our design, with juniors and seniors. The feedback was helpful as we embarked on the final stretch of our project. We decided that we would work with what we had and move forward to finalize our design based on the feedback.
Mwamba synthesized the information we had gathered as well as the steps of our design process. I brought the floorplan that Malcolm had designed into Procreate to clean up the linework. This gave Malcolm and I a chance to revisit our floor plan and add some alterations. We used the feedback that had been gathered and some of our own observations as guidance for this process.
We sifted through the months of designing, preparing to craft the story of our process. After designing the aesthetic presentation of the slides, we were ready to plan the aural element. We organized the order of presenters. I was going to share my experience with interviewing our stakeholders and peers. I was also going to shed light on the prototyping process. During the pitch it proved to be a challenge to stay within our allotted time.