So I got back from my trip a couple of days ago, having had to cut it short for personal and professional reasons, back in Van’.
However, I managed to pack in a lot of travelling, chatting, relaxing and musing in the short period of time I was over there. The trip -as short and sweet as it was- really helped me refresh my senses and refocus my skills design orientated observations and recognising social design opportunities.
The ferry schedule, usually operating on a fairly predictable frame of ferries to and from any of the small islands in the mid morning and early evening, really forced me to try and push my time as much as possible on an island, trying to see as many sights and talk to as many people as possible within a single day; Using a hostel in Victoria as my base camp every night.
While this method wasn’t the best in terms of becoming fully immersed in the culture of any of the islands, as I had hoped to at least get the slightest taste of, it did mean that I saved A LOT of money as return trips to the main land in the evenings are free and the accommodation on the islands was almost entirely made up B&Bs outside of my budget, still working on the holiday-season tariffs.
Saving money certainly helped me relax more!
As I spent the most time on Galiano and it was the first island I visited, I feel it’s perhaps better to discuss my observations from there in the most detail.
Galiano Services:
The only building with free wi fi is a bar restaurant that runs a lot like an Internet cafe and seems to have flexible hours of service. I felt like an Internet cafe mixed with a community center. I was never made to feel sketchy or leechy by coming in and just using the net, while sipping on a can of Diet Coke for two and a half hours.
The net was, surprisingly, very fast. There were lots of people there doing the same thing: A guy of student age would be there, just having a glass of water while he ripped some new music as an excuse to have a chat to the other locals; While a family who had come for a late lunch, had brought a laptop so that they could book their family holiday for the summer and look at accommodation options while they ate. On another occasion I saw two men in there with laptops, building a business model over whiskey and tea.
It was strange seeing an entity like the net, which would typically mean cutting off real world conversation for a while, in favour of cyber-socialising, being used as a medium to for socialising in a public place.
In the same area, there were a lot of amenities that clearly catered to tourists, coming off the ferries from the mainland for a few hours. A large building with cut up interior architecture acted almost like a small visitor centre with a post office, a few arts and craft galleries and so on.
I noticed a few stores and restaurants that were built into camper vans that sat along the main road. Cute and quaint while avoiding various taxes I suppose.
Other amenities and hot-spots are located in small clusters along the main road that runs the stretch of the island from the South Easterly tip of Studies Bay, all the way to the North West. Going on a big walk for a few miles on a trail that followed the main road, I saw NO other people travelling by foot but lots of cars: No shops for miles and then two general stores across the road from one another. Strange. One seemed indepedent and one was attached to an art gallery and looked more like it catered to visitors. They were both used as signposts and bill boards for news and events, as expected. The whole area seemed like a ‘half-way-hub’ for the northerners and southerners.
The biggest pub along the main road, not far from these convenience stores, uses a converted school bus (which has been branded with the pub identity) to ferry punters back home after a long night. Unsure if it’s also used as a school bus. I thought this was quite fun.
Locals seemed nice. The place is definitely a safe haven for students looking to escape the city though. There were lots who were kicking around and had the New Year week long hangover vibe about them.
More on all this in another post and how more specific findings gave me some tasty insights for potential projects.
Really, it was just nice to relax and get out the city for a hike! The place must be outstanding in the Summer!
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Rain Trees & Rain Buds
Rain Tree
Public art for the city of Glasgow.
The Rain Trees and Rain Buds dual concept aims to inspire ecological awareness through a reminder of our intrinsic link to the natural world; something often forgotten within our sprawling urban environments. This is achieved through the employment of numerous structures which react to the climate in a similar way to organic plant life. As rain falls onto the steel and acrylic sheet structures, they flourish and bloom with light, colour and movement. The concepts employ a design strategy which transforms poor weather from what would be seen as a negative experience into something engaging and fun. The hope is that this would encourage debate regarding the future of our environment and mindset towards the natural world.
The concepts also aim to encourage local pride by reminding those who would otherwise see the city’s abundant rainfall as a nuisance that Glasgow would not exist as we know it to day if it wern’t for the rain’s subsequent fertility bringing wealth and growth to the community in years past.
Rain Bud (Closed in sunny weather
Rain Bud (Blooming in wet weather!)
When it rains, the Rain-Buds ‘bloom’ and the Rain-Trees come to life with pulsing light as if flourishing in the wet weather. The harder the rainfall, the brighter and more dynamic the visual display and as such, people are brought outside during wet weather for the anticipation of a visual event, rather than being forced indoors.
DESIGN PROCESS ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
CONSTRUCTING THE BRIEF ///
The brief for this self-initiated university project arose from one strand of thought:
In Scotland, it rains a lot!
Being a student in one of the most socially active but terribly wet-weathered cities in western Europe has meant that I have had to listen to many exchange students stating their love for everything about the city of Glasgow…except the rain!! I hear people complaining about the rain aaaaaaaaaall the time.
Rainy Glasgow
Only after so long can a Scot listen to people bad-mouthing his home 
And, as such, I decided that something had to be done to flip around this negative mindset towards Glasgow’s wet weather. I wanted to transform rain into something valuable to the community; As something useful, fun or beautiful that the city could find identity within and be proud of. We have a lot of rain so why not make the most of it!
As such my initial brief was simply: Rain as a civic commodity for Glasgow.
INITIAL RESEARCH ///
After a focus group which it was discovered that while people hated being in the rain when it affected their daily business (such as causing hassle during an inner city commute by foot), everyone agreed that rainfall really was something quite beautiful as long as one was inside and able to experience it’s visual and sonic beauty without having to be cold and damp.
Using this design insight, I decided to focus on creating a product -most likely a piece of public art- which could act as a stage for rain to show off it’s natural beauty in a way that didn’t affect the user/audience negatively…
INITIAL IDEA GENERATION ///
Here are some of the ideas which resulted from this. Each tries to explore rain’s beauty in terms of sight and sound:
SKETCH WORK BEING UPLOADED SOON!
SYNTHESIS ///
While these concepts met the brief in some ways, there were two main issues:
1- The shelter-like designs which were being generated felt as if I was protecting people from the rain as opposed to encouraging people to celebrate it.
2- The concepts were not Glasgow specific and thus did not offer the potential for community pride which i sought.
Firslty, I wanted people to celebrate rain for what it was. This meant not stopping the users/audience from getting wet.
I began brainstorming as to whether anyone had tried to achieve something similar to my intentions before…And I realized that they had:
The Scandinavian Ice-Hotels are world famous for offering a unique holiday accommodation experience. Almost every aspect of these fantastic pieces of architecture -whether it be the walls, the beds, the chandeliers or the glasses- are all carved out of ice! Every single year these abodes will melt and have to be rebuilt come the following winter. The reason this is relevant to my project is that the Scandinavians took an element of their climate which was often considered a social nuisance (i.e; the cold) and transformed the way in which it was experienced by the public.
A bedroom in a Swedish Ice-Hotel
Now, those who would demand their money back for having to sleep in a cold room in an ordinary stone and mortar hotel are paying DOUBLE to sleep in a room so cold that they have to go to bed fully dressed. Ice becomes a novelty: It is shown off for it’s beauty but those who experience it become so immersed in said experience that they are not only willing but happy and eager to feel the harsh coldness as a fundamental part of that beauty. As such, people come to appreciate the cold and are reawakened to what it offers: aesthetic wonder and functional construction capabilities.
I wanted to achieve exactly this with rain.
From the focus group research and exploring public opinion behind the ice-hotels, it was clear to me that transforming the way an experience is delivered to a user, changes their feelings towards it dramatically. I illustrated this in the context of water in presentations and workshops which followed this revelation by comparing the two images below:
1) Unhappy: Man soaked by passing car 
2) Happy: Crowd soaked by whale at Sea World 
Both image 1 and image 2 have the same physical affects on those present. However, while image 1 shows a scene in which the person getting wet has just had clothes soaked and his day ruined, image 2 shows a whole crowd of people who have (albeit in part) paid to get wet as it is part of an enjoyable experience.
It was at this point that I decided to rule out any notion of transforming rain or rainfall into something that we could value for functional or economic reasons and instead re-present rain simply as something fun and beautiful, once more. Everyone already knows that water can be recycled and stops us from being thirsty etc etc. I wanted to go deeper than that. I thought that this would create a more holistic and wholesome appreciation of rain rather than a social compromise over annoyance/beauty. People were gonna get wet!!! And they’d love it!
Secondly, in terms of making the project more specific to Glasgow, I decided to research Glasgow’s history to try and find some long-standing focus for community pride which I could perhaps develop into my project…And I came across this:
Glasgow Coat of Arms- "Let Glasgow Flourish"
The old Glasgow coat-of-arms depicts the city as a land of life, growth and fertility. Furthermore, the city’s motto which is somewhat forgotten now is “LET GLASGOW FLOURISH.” It seems that many years ago, Glasgow’s rain was in fact celebrated. Glasgow was praised as one of the most fertile areas in all of the UK and as such, this became the reason for the city’s wealth, growth and expansion into one of Europe’s key cities.
Indeed, if one is to look around at the surviving municipal installations of yesteryear (the lamp posts, fence rails, stone bridges) one will notice decorations which celebrate the land’s fertility and abundance of plant life thanks to the rainfall.
This is suddenly where I found my theme which pulled the entire concept together…
In a modern urban environment, we often This is why Glasgow’s rain should be celebrated: If it wasn’t so rainy and thus so fertile there, Glasgow as the thriving city we know and love, would never have existed in the first place!
SCI-FI INFLUENCE ///
A few days after coming up with my initial ideas, I found myself in London and decided to go on a trip to the Tate Modern Art Gallery. By chance, their main exhibition at the time happened to be an alternate-reality art piece which envisioned a post-apocalyptic London in a time when it never stopped raining. One of the key elements to this exhibit was a collection of sculptures which aimed to depict London’s modern architecture fusing and evolving with a rise in plant life, brought on by the never-ending apocalyptic rain fall:
Rain Apocalypse Exhibit at Tate Modern, London
This train of thought got me thinking more about my project’s possible links to the realm of science fiction…
I decided to toy with the idea of my public art design being a natural mutation of the urban environment: Creating a product which gave the impression of the rain using man-made materials to show-off it’s power of life and fertility.
I have always been interested in near-future science fiction and the questions that more intelligent products of the genre open up regarding the future of mankind’s survival, ethics and culture. In particular, I find the questions arising from cyber-punk works such as Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell franchise (the first motion picture adaption for which served as the core inspiration for the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix Trilogy), focussing on the ethics of organic/machine interfacing and fusion and Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (the novel that Bladerunner was loosely based on) which in part discusses future man’s worship of the natural world after it is all but gone.
Ghost in the Shell
Do Androids Dream...?
So, inspired by the questions provoked at the exhibition at the Tate Modern and influenced by the questions raised by the previously mentioned sources , I decided to flesh out my brief somewhat to inject with a bit more fun. If I wanted my project to encourage eco-awareness, I thought it would be appropriate to employ a science-fiction aesthetic which would help do so in an appropriately provocative manner which would more likely capture public imagination.
These developments of the concepts experience; the concept’s theme of fertility which would encourage local pride and the concept’s aesthetic influence from science-fiction lead to the following conceptualizations…
DEVELOPMENTS ///
SKETCH WORK BEING UPLOADED SOON!
TECHNOLOGIES ///
Now I had to think about how I make these concepts function in real-life; both realistically and from an economically viable standing.
After talks with engineers, it was decided that the most appropriate way to offer the kind of pressure variable lighting I desired was to use piezo-electric pads for the Trees which would transform the varying collective potential energy of the rainfall into a small electric charge which would hook up to light emitters.
The Flowers would simply have a low-voltage circuit which would be completed when the conductive rain fell upon them and “filled the gap”.
(The option of hydrochromatic for additional decoration is being discussed for the prototype)
FINAL PROPOSALS ///
The final concepts were presented as a collection of renders, including those shown at the top of this article. The final proposal fulfilled all aspects of the brief. I proposed that the funding for such public art would hopefully be found during the aesthetic renovation of Glasgow’s inner-city ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games which are taking place there.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ///
Since moving to Vancouver and discovering the abundance of wet weather (as well as both it’s negative mental impact on the community despite it’s historic reasoning for Vancouver’s wealth as a city) I have become convinced that the design narrative for this project and it’s positive effects would work exceptionally well received in this city. I am currently working with Arduino experts from Glasgow University and metal and fiberglass artisans in Vancouver to put together a fully working prototype of the Rain Tree in the hope that I can sell the final piece and have more commissioned by Vancouver Park Board or other similar organisations in BC. The hope is that this prototype will also make up a key part of this project’s pitch to the 2014 Glasgow CommonWealth Games finance department for local renovation.
Images of this prototype will be published on this page sometime in May 2010 so come back and check it out then
COLLABORATIONS AND OUTSIDE INTEREST ///
Kevin Wharton, Head designer of the Vancouver-based architecture and product design firm saw my original concept for the Let Glasgow Flourish project and approached me with the offer of a collaboration in which we would re-develop the initial design for an international architecture competition.
The design re-envisions a cross-roads in Surrey, BC as a hub for local activity, providing a versatile platform for the organisation of outdoor events of a varying scale. All the original concept proposals were carried through but with a greater emphasis on practicality for social events and the technological restrictions that a project of such size would bring about. After collaborating on the social and functional elements to the concept, Designers at Large worked on the structural development of the proposal while I personally worked on aesthetic development and the presentation work.
The proposal, entitled The Rain Hub, can be seen on the Designers At Large website by clicking here.
Rain Hub
Ghost in the Shell
Do Androids Dream...?
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Liquidation
Liquidation- Digital Interface for quick Personal Banking
My money’s flowing out my hands like water!!!
Liquidation is a digital interface which forms part of a larger service design concept (branded towards The Royal Bank of Scotland) to encourage and aid young people or those new to personal finance with managing their money in a simple way. The device uses the metaphor of money as water to help convey complex financial information in an intuitive, visual manner. The simplest example of this being, as you withdraw money the ‘digital water’ on screen will drop.
The product is essentially a ‘quick edit’ feature for the modern bank account, allowing fast, easy, secure and fun updates and management of the user’s current account.
Please watch this video for all the details:
VIDEO COMING SOON!
DESIGN PROCESS ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
CONSTRUCTING THE BRIEF ///
Every year, the graduating class from the Product Design course at Glasgow School of Art has to carry out a project following an abstract theme, chosen by the design lecturers. In 2009, when I was in my final year, the theme was “NO WORDS.”
We students were tasked with exploring the theme as a group and subsequently choosing a path to explore on an individual basis. At this initial stage we brainstormed everything from sign-language to road signs…
One design insight that caught my attention in particular though involved the use of words as an affirmation or safety-net for the world of information. While pictograms are suitable for -say- an iPod manual, words (and a lot of them at that) are necessary for tasks, services or products which we feel are particularly important or risky if we are unable to digest all the relevant information regarding them. The most prolific example of these would be services, products, etc involving health and money:
There are two key areas in our modern culture in which most people are not wanting to take any risks. When we take medicine, there is a whole page telling us EXACTLY how to perform the action; from opening the packaging to swallowing safely to closing the packaging once more. Likewise, we know that cement is not for eating, yet it’s packaging will still say “DO NOT SWALLOW!” People do not want to take any risks with their health, and manufacturers/suppliers/designers do not want to be sued because the information regarding their product was unclear. The are no disposable coffee cups that do not say a variation of “Caution: You are holding a hot beverage.”
Similarly to this, finance is something that people are unwilling to place in the trust of their own common sense or intellect. Everything has to be written down… just to be sure.
While the mentality behind this makes sense and is valid, too much information can make a system or service confusing. Even if all the information is necessary “just in case,” it would be nice if services as complicated as banking had a informative system that was somehow removed of separate from the entire financial package… Sort of like a quick start guide for a new computer which is large bright and a seperate document from the heavy-duty tech-bible sitting at the bottom of the product packaging!
…TO BE CONTINUED…(week beginning 13th April 2010)
FINAL PROPOSAL ///
This video’s a bit rough and amateurish (I had yet to learn the glory of Adobe AfterEffects and Premiere at this stage ) but tells the story of this product in the form of a user scenario:
VIDEO COMING SOON!!
************
P.S…
As a quick final note, you can view another NO WORDS project on wordpress by my classmate and good friend Sarah Drummond by clicking here…
She conceptualized a game for children that would teach them sign language in an engaging manner, branded for and using technological elements from the Nintendo Wii.
Her blog is interesting in that she wrote it day-to-day as the project was carried out, so the explanation of her thought-process is kind of rough but far more organic than my single entry, here. In hind-sight it’s interesting to see how we took the theme in totally different directions.
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Hugs Behind Bars
Hugs Behind Bars is a dual product/service which allows real-time interaction between prisoners and their children without breaking security restrictions. The idea is that through ‘digital hugs’ family bonds can be maintained through the imprisonment of a parent.
Each of the devices represents one of the users- Either the parent or the child. The child, who possesses the soft-toy component, can squeeze it as if to hug the mum or dad. This in turn sends haptic feedback to the parent in the form of a soft vibration. The parent can do the same, squeezing the surface of the black cuff to engage a vibrate and glow within the soft toy which their child can feel. In this way, an element of physical contact is maintained.
‘Hugs’ can only be sent/received every so often to prevent systems such as morse code being out into practice!
The dual devices also act as a platform for communication during the prison family visitation experience, preventing awkwardness and encouraging pro-active art activities which will maintain the parent/child bond through to the next visit.
The concept was designed in conjunction HMP (Her Majesty’s Prisons) as part of an RSA 08/09 competition proposal for re-designing the ‘prison visit experience.’
Here are the original presentation boards that I submitted to RSA… Click to enlarge:
..And here’s a brief user scenario (similar to the one shown in the boards) which I used to get across the rough idea to a focus group of former prison inmates and military personnel (who also have to deal with long distance parental relationships with security restrictions) for feedback, way back in Christmas 2008. Hopefully the service across in a simple/crude but effective/clear manner:
I didn’t win the RSA competition, unfortunately. The winning entry was Georgia Stylianou: Her project is simple but I imagine (and from my own research, I believe-) it would be a very effective solution for the issues and design opportunities that she identified. Although I am still very proud of this project, it helped me learn the valuable lesson of not trying to let an attempt at a “wow-factor” design statement get in the way of a good, effective outcome 
DESIGN PROCESS ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The design process for this project is coming soon (week 13th April 2010)
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Introduction…
My names is James Montgomery and I am a Product and Service Design graduate from Glasgow, Scotland who has recently (as of March 2010) moved to Vancouver, Canada to live and work in the design industry for at least one year
In order to really illustrate a designer’s strengths, it is important to not see merely see the final renderings or prototypes for a product or service: It is essential for designers to show their design process to their audience, particularly if they hope to have greater influence in encouraging change (or simply climb higher in the industry).
While the final design solution and it’s various presentation material show a level of technical skill, it is important to remember that the role of the designer (whether he/she is a ‘professional’ or an every-man wanting to make a change) is as a creative thinker and not merely an aesthetic stylist.
This is particularly important with service design where an understanding of the base research material and social target is neccessary for those outside of the social/design/end-user bubble of the project to make sense of what the designer -or end users/co-designers- have achieved.
In the future, I hope to keep an online diary of my design process. But for now, I would like to give summaries of the processes for some of my key concepts in the past: I will try to have process essays for 5 of my most diverging projects by the end of March 2010, continuing with new material from then on…Hopefully!
The idea is that, in time, those interested can get a better insight into my creative process than a quick look through my flashy yet industry-standard, skim-readable / back-cover-blurb portfolio ever could.
Hopefully it’s all of some interest!
This blog is part of a personal endeavor to submerge myself in social media in order to rapidly network with the Vancouver design community, of which I now find myself part of…
Oh, I like it here
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