'JOINING THE DATA'
research phase
The first 2 weeks of this project we spent focused on research. Our initial briefing took place at the monitoring station located at the Dublin City Council offices on Winetavern Street, Dublin 8. Here our class were greeted by Dublin City Council, Intel and EPA representatives. For most in our class this was a first introduction into ambient air quality monitoring. We were given the opportunity to see the unit and apparatus used to collect the data. From collection of data, it was explained how results are obtained through lab testing and data is compiled.
As a class we then unpacked the fresh information, identifying 6 main areas of research. There were 3 major areas: Public understanding of air quality, the physical collection methods used by the EPA and the data itself, how it currently exists. There were 3 minor areas to also be explored: how other countries engage with the ambient air quality monitoring network, the stakeholders surrounding air quality monitoring and future technologies associated with the topic.
Dividing the class into 3 groups we each took a major and minor area to research. The group I was part of focused on public understanding of air quality and how other countries engage with air quality data.
User Research
interviews: understanding the publics perception of Air Quality
The Urban Perspective
The Rural Perspective
Personas
five personas, developed from 96 inteviews
Based on the 96 interviews that were conducted by our class, we developed 5 personas. We unpacked the data collected from the interviews, insights and quotes. We tried to distil this abundence of information into something that was manageable but still maintained the richness of the hundred man hours spent interviewing both rural and urban members of the public, to give us an idea of the perception of air quality and pollution across such a wide demographic.
The persona would play a pivotal role in the design phase. We constantly returned to these users as they based on such quality research, they informed our outcomes and helped to ground our concepts.
Industry Research
interviews: conducted with the EPA and Dublin City Council
Site visit, EPA portable monitoring station
A video documenting our trip to Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, Ireland. We conducted a site visit to the EPA's monitoring station, and public interviews.
Sense Making
workshops & post-iting out
Sense making of all the research that had taken place was a very difficult task as pushed towards the design phase. We looked for similar strands that had shown up in our interviews and research of other initatives in other countries. We tried to guide our thoughts through constant re-iterations of hunt statement for which to design.
Throughout the entire process a blog was kept and undated daily to track out progress and this provide a very useful tool to refer to at stages when we felt stuck.
A link to the blog is below: