THE BRIEF
Design a way for new visitors to access the living archive of the medicinal plant collection in Chelsea Physic Garden.
TEAM: CONSTANCE IP AND YUHAN MAO
We defined ‘access’ as improving the navigation of the medicinal plant collection. We also interpreted the emphasis on ‘new visitors’ as designing something that would also attract new visitors.
CONSTANCE'S REFLECTION
Our research on the medicinal plant collection was limited to the navigation issues we experienced while encountering it. This involved the difficulty in locating specific plants in plots of soil where there was the presence of more than one plant as indicated by signage. Most of our research focused on other elements of the garden, including the garden’s surrounding wall and glasshouses, because we found more interesting opportunities in them.
In order to tie our research findings back to the main brief and begin ideating, we adopted a comparative approach. We reframed the brief in a way that explores how the exterior wall and glasshouses can be utilized to attract new visitors and improve the navigation experience of the medicinal plant collection. We then used the plants we had documentation of within the medicinal plant collection as representative plants for our secondary research. This helped us choose a specific element of the plants to explore as a design opportunity.
YUHAN'S REFLECTION
At the beginning, I was particularly interested in looking for a new way to help visitors to visit the garden. When I went to the garden for research, I had a new understanding of the garden. Through the first step on the brief, I found that there are some different between our observations in the garden and the requirements of the brief, and it hard to found the connection. The problem is that the information we observed was too broad, so in the second step we chose the specific plants which we observed in the garden. We do more research about the plant’s habit and found the main point that can be designed. At third step, we improve our design in the third point of the brief.
For this project, I think the most important thing we want to achieve is that people can better "understand" and "enter" the garden through our design. During the garden observation, I found that the majority in the garden is the elderly, the digital design may not be suitable for this group of people, so we put the main direction of design in the physical design.