Design Study #2 Food Court

For my Design Study #2, I wanted to elaborate on my previous idea I used for my weekend assignment where I gave certain rules to a given place. Although I changed the location, I wanted the general idea to remain the same. The location I picked is the food court located in The Gallery mall on Market Street.

Project Overview: The basis of this project, and someone willingly participating, is the attempt to randomize a food selection when many options are available without bias towards previous experience, personal taste, and food advertisements. The objective is for someone to order a meal through the use of trigger points and improvisation that they normally would not order, in hopes to try something new and open up new doors for personal taste.

1. This is the published map of the food court area. My trigger points (that will be explained in the narrative) are given as red stars. (take note that the trigger points are randomly located, and may change every time a participant takes part in the design study.)

A listing of the Food & Restaurant locations:

2. My communications method is a non-technical form; the use of verbal speech. Participants will confront a venue employee that is out front sampling food and ask them for two random numbers between one and ten. (this will be explained in the narrative)

Example of a venue sampler:

3. A participants interaction with the space is quite simple. Before entering the space, a participant will be prompted that the trigger points may be random and not have a set location. The trigger points throughout the food court are the venue employees that are out front sampling food. The only rule is for the participant to confront one of these employees and ask for two random numbers between one and ten. With the first number given, this is the number of venues farther down the line of restaurants that they will travel. The second number they were given is the number of the meal they must order from the menu of the new restaurant that they are now located.

4. The narrative aspect to this project is the random selection of a meal that could vary every time someone takes part in the design study. In a hypothetical situation, a computer would be located in the food court where participants could log their individual experiences. They could state whether they enjoyed the randomly selected meal, if they would try to design study again (given that it could change each time), and if any new doors were opened within their personal taste. The key aspect to this study is how the outcome is left up to chance, and improvisation that is outside of the user's hands. The obvious downside would be if they disliked the assigned meal, but the factor of randomness is what this project thrives off of.

5. This project makes use of the narrative location of the food court because it is a collaboration of many restaurants within a small, congested area - each with a different style/ethnicity/genre of food. The elements that become significant within the project are where the trigger points (venue samplers) are located. The fact that this is random and can change is what makes the outcome interesting. Because of this randomness, each participant's experience has the potential to be different. In class we discussed the importance of semiotics and how signs influence our lives day to day. Food advertisements certainly fall under this category and are completely disregarded as to the outcome of this design study, which adds character to the project. Also, this can be related to psychogeography. This random practice of city walking thrives from a set of implemented rules on which direction you walk. These rules affect people's experience differently and the same can be said for the rules of this design study.