Enosis

General

Enosis is the result of a 10-week project done in collaboration with Region Vasterboten and inUse. The project contributes to an over coupling project from region Västerbotten to find mobility solutions for route 363. A road in a rural area in the north of Sweden that goes from the sea land inwards almost to Norway. 
Within this project, we decided to focus on developing rural area’s in this region by stimulation people moving to these areas. We identified the opportunity to reverse the mobility of work and personal life to stimulate this movement. Throughout the project a user-centered design process with a high level of user involvement and active user participation.  Coaching throughout the project was done by senior designers from Microsoft and Rise interactive. 

Details

Vision

- "Stimulate the development of rural areas by attracting people to move through challenging the mobility of work and life." -

Design opportunity

Based on our field research and participatory design workshop we found that we can match the needs and offers from potential inhabitants who live in cities now and rural communities.

System overview

The communities, potential inhabitant and companies who provide remote jobs are connected through an online platform which matches them in a personal way. 

User Journeys

In this project, we focused on two target groups; the community members and potential inhabitants. This because our participatory process was focused on these groups.

Sara - Potential inhabitant
Erik - Community member

Touch points

Based on the user journeys we designed our service. We found four meaningful touch points that forms the basis of the designed service system. 

Platform

A platform to provide potential inhabitants insights in the values and opportunities within the community, and give the community the possibility to showcase themselves. This so a match based on common values takes place. 

360 ° Experience

Potential inhabitants can explore the communities in 360°. They can see what is there and read stories about different places. This so they get insights into the communities and help them in their decision making. 

Personal guidance

To integrate our design value, conviviality, we wanted to create personal contact. Community members can be found and contacted so personal firsthand guidance can be given. 

Community Hub

These are empty spaces in the communities where people can do different remote working jobs while having each others company. Next to this it is the central point of the community where people can come together meet and develop their community. The hub provides a volunteering system to facilitate these needs.

Userfeedback

Enosis is a step in the bigger picture of developing redefining the value and development of rural area’s.

My role in the design process

Field Research

The project kicked off with an intensive field research period during which I lived at two different communities in the houses of locals. This made the user very real which made me truly care about them and the project.

Opportunity Definition

After the field research, we shared our stories and combined all the research. We used thisin a participatory workshop which I hosted where the locals we met on the way and designers from Microsoft and Rise participated at. With this, we validated our found design opportunity.

Concept Exploration

I enjoy making tangible quick and dirty prototypes and simple paper or digital mock-ups. This to get graspable concepts that can be build upon.

Usertesting

To do these testing I made a first version of the VR concept so there was something to show. Next to that I worked on the setup of the interview and took them.

Final prototype

For the final prototype I personally made the VR environment with Unity 3D, the website partly design and implementation with CSS, HTML, javascript and worked on the final interaction flow which led to the system service design. 

My thoughts

This project brought big complexity with it, multiple stakeholders with all a different view on what and how things should be. I enjoyed balancing in the middle and use my design skills to bring these people together. Because we tried to make a feasible proposal we limited ourselves a bit too much in my option which led the project to be a very in the moment realistic proposal. By taking less of our design freedom we still have as students the project lost a bit of its quirkiness which I think is a pity. But overall I am happy with the result we delivered and so were our stallholders :).