Live case study 1: Remarkable Tolworth
We began teaching block 2 by being briefed on the project at hand by Clare. The project was commissioned by the ‘121 Collective’ and ‘Community Brain’ who are two groups that are working towards making the area of Tolworth a lot more engaging for visitors and local residents.
Our role (my team and myself) within the project is to research into the history of Tolworth with the help of BA: Geography (who are also working on the project). We will need to gather as much information as we can in order to make informed design decisions later on in the project. We were given a lot of useful links and articles to read which should also help with creating an outcome that will actually be of some use to the people who will see it every day.
The aims of the project include:
3. defining team roles and responsibilities.
4.ideation and prototyping then evaluating of ideas
5.creating an action plan and outcome
We were put into groups and I was placed with Niall, Tinashe and Aaron E and we were asked to work on the heritage route, which means that we would be designing something for Tolworth that would teach its residents about the heritage.
The walk around Tolworth was very valuable for gathering a better insight into all the hidden treasures of the area. This, in turn, helped us to ask the right questions when we spoke to a few locals in the shops in addition to shopkeepers. The comments that we received had confirmed our own thoughts and feelings about Tolworth. We found that although there were interesting little pockets within the area, they all felt really disconnected and underdeveloped.
Workshop with Annie Yonkers- reflection:
I guess this workshop was helpful in the sense that it was a nice introduction to the people that we will be working with on the project and studying how they use their own knowledge of map-making which was very different to us as creatives. In my opinion, I felt that the workshop was a little too far fetched in terms of content, from what we were going to be doing as part of the creative on the project.
Heritage: the definition:
What a person or place inherits from someone or something.
Consider who your target audience is and why:
what kind of information will you need and why?:
We will need to gather research on what other areas do to showcase the heritage of their area and whether or not the demographics of that said area affect this?
What questions do we have for the presentations?:
Why did you approach the project in this way?
what ideas do you have for the project moving forward?
Reflections on what the geography students and what our role is within the team:
I felt the first presentation was really strong as it was rich in content and the research was well executed. They approached the project in a way that I felt really detailed the scope of the brief for us which made our job much easier to carry out and understand.
This particular slide was important for us as it helped us identify exactly who our audience is which makes the design process more focused. At this point, we began understanding that the heritage of Tolworth lies within the minds of the older generation but perhaps stops there.
We all agreed that it would be important to try to create something that would engage the younger people of Tolworth in order to keep the heritage alive.
The first group highlighted these five heritage sites as the richest in terms of the content that they were able to find. We would later develop this further.
In terms of my initial research and impressions of Tolworth, I found that Tolworth’s leisure centers were very hidden and unknown ( which was backed up by the first civic and community presentation). Therefore, I felt it important to raise this to my group in our next meeting. The Ace of spades roundhouse that existed in the 50′s was the last entertainment spot that brought residents together that they can remember. I did a bit of research into what it exists as today and I found that it is now used a shop and flats which reside about it which leaves Tolworth without the entertainment hub that it once was.
On another note, whilst searching online, I typed in ‘the ace of spades -Tolworth’ and an escape room came up which got me thinking about whether we could use the concept of an escape room based on a narrative of the heritage of Tolworth to engage and teach a younger audience about all the interesting history that lives right on their doorstep??
Designing a place purpose manifesto for Tolworth :
After reading through the presentation that was given to us by Simon Yewdall, I came to find that in order to create a manifesto in this way, we must consider these things:
Places need to be distinguished like brands. And how do we brand a place?
We attach a set of values to it which will give it a purpose or meaning...
This will work towards building or changing the way a person views that place or thing. For this, we must consider why they exist and how they will help people. So in terms of thinking why a place like Tolworth exists, we think about the history and why this is important to the people...
cultural reasons or in order to cherish memories from the past?
We also must consider if, within this, we highlight and conserve heritage or embrace the future? Or perhaps, is there a way of doing a little bit of both??
Are we able to create a social impact within this? By encouraging people to come together to build memories and make history???
At this point, I began to think about how we could record and document the social change there was to be one as an effect of the execution of our proposal.
Perhaps there is an opportunity here to suggest that the proposal could include a social media campaign which ties everything together...
(At this point in the project, we all decided to create a group project in basecamp to allow us to all share our research findings. We all did this separately )
So I gathered that in order to begin to understand the heritage of Tolworth, we will also need to begin to understand the people of Tolworth and what they want and need from their community area. Therefore, we wanted to look into the opportunities for designing for the civic route as well as the information that was accessible for the heritage route.
Economic growth and development strategy
the strategy developed in 2017 has the aim of increasing residency with the renovation of Tolworth tower. However, this plan is riding on the idea of reducing 02 emissions from the A3 which is an ongoing problem for Tolworth.
the strategy also outlines that the Tolworth tower provides a historical legacy.
the area is very disconnected from its thriving neighbors: the red lion and Chessington which disallows the flow of culture from each area into the next. Perhaps this is something to think about for the proposal??
Tolworth’s function within the greater town on Kingston Upon Thames
Tolworth only really caters to serving the local population when it comes to food culture which may be seen as a problem as this will not attract new younger visitors and residents.
Possible plans for Tolworth
well defined public landscapes
change surface of the road crossings
accumulation of low plants to create a greener area
Tolworth roundabout to have cyclist routes, seating, and trees
redesign of the station car park
electric charging points for cars
provide a bus station which may encourage people to use Tolwoth as the main station instead of Surbiton.
Talwoth is listed in the Doomsday book.
David Bowie launched Ziggy Stardust in a local Tolworth pub.
home to Manor house that was owned by the queen.
the railway came in early development and the residential areas came later as a side effect of the new easy access to the suburbs.
remains of the medieval moated manor at Tolworth court
Tolworth court farm fields.
the richness of good apples. (Tolworth apple store)
Shedx is working to enrich Tolworths lands once again by promoting growing your own food in newly developed farms.
The most popular heritage sites in Tolworth:
the history of the apple stall
Mary Quant cosmetics Gala factory
We decided to narrow down our ideas and focus on four or five of our most developed ones. At this point, we all had our preferences on what we wanted to focus on so we decided to come up with some visuals and further research for our desired concept choice. As me and Aaron both liked the idea of developing an escape room we both came to the conclusion that we should collect some first-hand research by booking one to see if this could be a potential route for our project. We found that there were loads in central London but there is also one in Surbiton that was cheaper and would maybe be a little more enlightening in terms of seeing what kind of puzzles they use in the escape room for a Surbiton audience.
Aaron and I signed up and attended the escape room to understand how it really works. Due to the fact that we were not allowed to film or take any pictures we recorded the information below from memory:
- it has to follow a narrative of some sort
- the game relies on time.
- there are riddles, puzzles, and codes available to work with which will help you find clues.
- the escape room provided you with a pen and paper to write down information that would help you throughout.
- lock boxes opened other lockboxes with lead to the release of keys.
In conclusion, we found the whole experience really engaging and really quite clever. The only thing that we found a little outdated was the fact that we had to write down things so that we would not forget it which lead to us losing more time on the clock. From this, we decided that we could make our escape room have a digital element to it to avoid this.
Defining team roles and responsibilities
At this point in the project, I was still pretty much set on the idea of designing an escape room and a supporting app as my main concept to focus on. Aaron also, therefore we decided to begin refining this concept whilst Niall worked on an event for Tolworth which is the concept that he wanted to develop.
I began by generating more research on the heritage sites in order to understand how much content would be available for each site to use for the design of the escape room. Here, I realized that i was able to find a lot more personal accounts for the Toby Jug pub than for any other site. So, I focused on this particular site to see if the concept would even be feasible.
I visited www.closedpubs.co.uk/surrey/tolworth_tobyjug.html, where I found some interesting information from people who used to visit the pub from when it was first built to the time that it was closed down.
In order to build on the knowledge in a visual sense, I spoke to my parents and my nan about their own memories of visiting pubs in the 70′s onwards as i couldn't find any images from inside the Toby jug.
In some of the comments from the website shown above, there were some indications as to what was made available for customers such as pinball and cigarette machines and a pool hall which I could use when building a map for the escape room.
In order to create this, I asked Tinashe if he could help to find any images of the tub in public records. He supplied me with some images that he found in the Kingston library and also online.
In terms of pushing my ideas further, i intend to create a digital mockup of in the interior and exterior of the escape room to give the client an idea of what kind of content is needed to make the idea work. Tinashe also came up with the idea that the escape room content could change annually to keep the engagement meaning that every year the escape room would become and teach about a different heritage site.
The exterior design of the escape room
We started to explore the idea of using a shipping container to house the escape room which would be situated on the green area near the farm of futures or inside an abandoned shop on the broadway. Depending on how far the budget can stretch for the project, we would use more than one shipping container attached together to amplify the space and content that is available for the room.
I created a mood board for the inspiration for the exterior design of the escape room. I also created the designs below with the idea that we could use a similar design to that of the heritage arches as they are originally set to be placed at each heritage site so perhaps customers of the escape room can benefit from the information being displayed in a similar way around the shipping container to read just before they go in.
This was the final design for the exterior of the escape room. After i shared my scamps on basecamp for the rest of the group to see, we decided that the most effective way to do it would bt to use the exterior design as a tool for learning the history of tolworth. This would also be beneficial as the people who are entering the escape room can learn the information for each site before they go in. We also decided to keep the colours the same for continuity.
In the feedback that we recieved from the panel, it was mentioned that we could have used a similar style to that which was used in the logo which i felt would have pushed it further and given it a less corporate feel to it.
The campaign - Ties to Tolworth
We all decided that we should use social media to tie in all the work that we had done for the project which would help to make it feel more cohesive. We brainstormed possible campaign names and began scamping ideas for logos.
At this point, our individual roles within the project came quite naturally to us as a group as we all had different strengths and this became clear after we had a meeting to show each other what concepts and visuals that we had been working on.
Tinashe highlighted that he felt most comfortable gathering further research and imagery for the project. (This would come in handy for the heritage arches that Niall was designing and for visuals for the pub interior )
Niall said that he felt comfortable developing visuals for the heritage arches and using the information that Tinashe was gathering to work on typography for that also.
Aaron decided that he would like to help develop the escape room visual and app concept with me as we were the ones who developed the brief and brand guidelines for the project.
In addition to this Aaron was handling the colours and font choice for all aspects of the project which would help make our concepts feel like part of the same project.
In terms of the presentation and report, we all have gathered a lot of information about our proposal both separately and as a team, therefore, we decided that these elements would be a group effort and that we would follow the same brand guidelines when designing the layout of the presentation.
Aaron created the logo above which we would use throughout the project.
Aaron and I worked on the concept for the app together deciding what the functionality should include and I did a lot of research about what the difference is between UX design and Ui design is. I found that I had already been following a lot of UX designers on Instagram so I was already inspired to push my work from last year with all the little tips and tricks that I had learned.
We knew that the app had to have two options at the beginning that would guide the user to either the escape room content or the content about Tolworth's heritage which needed to be clear in its design. I created some mood boards to identify what I liked and what I felt worked well in terms of functionality. I and Aaron discussed that although the app was designed to display heritage information and should have a formal tone, it should also be fun and engaging for everyone using it . As we felt that this was something that was risky in terms of creating an app that would not feel too outdated in its design.
In terms of my contribution to the report, i created the layout for the pages in indesign and the infograph which illustrates the demographic information of Tolworth as part of the research section.
At this point, my work ethic is a little slow as im feeling super anxious about corona virus and what life will be like in the next couple of weeks/months...
im currently not allowed to leave the house to visit any family so im alone everyday as my flatmate has moved out which has put quite alot of stress on my mental health. I also cannot move back in with my mum as shes worried i will pass the virus onto her as her immune system is very weak at the moment. Im really sorry about the lack of effort for this particular part of the submission, i just hope that ive done enough to get me onto the next year :)
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