INTRODUCTION
Even though the Bauhaus only existed for 14 years in total, this art and design school in Germany was a pioneer of modernist movement around the world. Gropius as its founder started this school so he could turn art and design into something for everyday life and focus on simplicity without forgetting the function. (Nagle, 2018). Although not everything modern is Bauhaus, its radical way of thinking was revolutionary back in that day. The Bauhaus brought together many different artists with different backgrounds, in one place. The idea itself makes Bauhaus movement important and its influences still continue until now.
HISTORY
Staatliches Bauhaus or The State Bauhaus, commonly known as Bauhaus, was an art school that combined crafts and the fine arts in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus was founded by a German Architect Walter Gropius in 1919 and he became the first director for the school and the concept that he implemented there was regarded as something completely new at that time. (Bauhaus Movement, n.d.).
Bauhaus word is an inversion of German term for building (bau) and house (haus) which means house construction or building house. The aim of this school was to bring any shape of art back into something more affordable way. (Moholy, 2018). Modernism, english arts and crafts, and constructivism were the main influences behind the Bauhaus. When Gropius established this school, he tried to reconciled those disparate movement into one. Where the principle united the form and the function together, rejuvenating design for every day life. (Hoffman, 2012).
EXPERIENCE THEORY
Cambridge dictionary defined experience as a process of getting knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, and feeling things. An experience is an episode of time that went through with sights & sounds, feelings & thoughts, motives & actions. With an experience, a dialogue from humans with their world is emerged through an action. (Hassenzahl, 2009)
On his book Experience Design - Technology for All the Right Reasons, Hassenzahl explains that there are three good reasons to consider experience; it is self defining, makes people happier, and it motivates. Without a clear understanding of experience, interactive products that you design will never be able to properly shaped. The idea of put experience first before its outcome has to be planted in advance. In other words, the actual product has no value beyond the experiences it allowed for became inevitably attached. (Hassenzahl, 2009, p. 2).
PRIMARY RESEARCH
DESIGN THINKING (DOUBLE DIAMOND METHODOLOGY)
Design Thinking is also known as Double Diamond method. It starts with identifying the problems and then diverging to discover facts and issues of the current situation. Then we converge to a focus issue / main problem identification. The next steps are to diverge again for ideation and then converging to possible solutions with the testing and delivery.
SEVEN INNOVATION STEP METHOD
It is called Seven Innovation Step Method from 101 Design Methods (Kumar, V. 2013).
The Design Innovation process starts with the ‘Real’ facts. Collecting the actual factual data gives a better understanding to the problem. Then we try and develop new insights by understanding. We analyse and try to look at the problem with a different perspective. The next step to abstract concepts. Here we develop some abstract concepts for the problems and try and frame tangible solutions. The Make part involves actual realization of the solutions and test it out on the target groups (Kumar, V, 2013).
Any creative process has many oscillations and moving back and forth all the time. Similarly, in this process there always accelerations and reverse movements between Real - Abstract and Understanding - Make. Although the process may look in a linear manner, but actually it is non linear. The process may start from any point and then go back and forth as required. It is also an iterative process. There might be requirement of multiple cycles of the steps continuously for final delivery. It is a disciplined process and the number of loops depends on the budget and necessity (Kumar, V, 2013).
SENSE INTENT
Sense Intent means collecting the best opportunities and creating something new. It's about discovering opportunities by considering the global trends, looking to the bigger picture, studying the culture, changing perspective of problems and knowing the target group. It is just an initial statement and can change through the process of the design (Kumar, V, 2013).
INTENT STATEMENT:
PROBLEM: The values of architecture of Bauhaus is not conveyed to the audience. They are not able to get the importance of the space.
AUDIENCE: There are a wide range of audience. School kids, teenagers, young adults, middle age people and retired people.
FAILURES: The initial attempt to educate people with all the information was not successful. The methods used were not effective and couldn’t collaborate to new trends.
NEW VALUE: A new method to convey the information has to be implemented to get the audience interested and stay focused.
RISK: A contradicting method to the conservative way of display.
KNOW CONTENT
Field trip to Bauhaus Dessau with Dr. Helga was held on 07.05.2018
Dr. Huskamp gave a lot of information for the main building and master houses along with a personalised tour to all the spaces. The information gained summarises that the main issue at the Bauhaus is that visitors don’t get the concepts of Bauhaus. There have been attempts to introduce technology to give away important information, but the observation was that it was not been used. There are guides who can be hired to have a tour of the structures but not all the audience preferred having one. There were some amazing insights of the building which were given to us by Dr. Helga and no writings in the spaces gave away the same. This shows that a self explanatory and interesting kind of exhibition is required to convey the desired information. There were some interesting facts on the journey from Bauhaus and the Master houses, which completely get lost without an expert personally speaking to audience. The Master houses had similar insights. There were more information in the Master Houses present, but the focus time of the audience to read large paragraphs seemed to be lost. In conclusion, a lot of content regarding the Architectural and other concepts of Bauhaus were collected which gave another perspective to look at the issue and abstract concepts and solutions.
KNOW PEOPLE
This map helps to plot all the people involved in the project topic. This map begins with consideration of all categories of people we want to study. A simple 2 x 2 matrix allows plotting of variety of people, which help us make decisions about where the focus of the research efforts should go.
The map plots our user target group in two dimensions - Age groups
versus the modes of communication preference (Analog / Digital). The plotting is based on the information given by the Experts during the interview and through observation during the Field Trip (Kumar, V, 2013).
We observe that the young generation prefer the trends of ‘Digitization’, but there are a wide range of audience in the Analog style of communication. Hence, our solution should involve both the type of concepts of communication.
FRAME INSIGHTS
This is a 'ERAF' system diagram. ‘ERAF’ stands for Entities, Relations, Attributes and Flows. This is high level system method to explore the context of the topic. This method gives us the best opportunity to identify and study the relations and interactions of all the elements of a system with one another. It starts with identifying the Entities - nouns of a system. Then by putting down the Attributes - Adjectives of the Entities, and exploring the relations and flows of the system. The more strong a relation or flow between Entities, the thicker the connection is. This diagram helps to draw insights of the present situation, and also help us to divert our goal to strengthen some missing relations and flows (Kumar, V, 2013).
EXPLORE CONCEPTS
This method starts with identifying the User and the Goal. These two entities are placed at the initial period and then a map is plotted, showing how user will reach the Goal. This method helps to understand the issues from the user’s perspective and which steps will be required to reach the goal. This method is User centred, hence, has a better practical approach. This drafts a clear path which will be required to achieve the Goal formulated from the Insights drawn and the Content collected in the previous steps (Jake Knapp, 2016).
We did a workshop which started with 15 min brainstorming the Problems and then 30 Min brainstorming on mapping our ideas to reach the Goal.
Visitors can choose between Digital and Analog. In Analog direction there can be interactive games to keep the focus of the Audience into the space. For more motivation, there can be possible rewards at the end. Similarly, for Digital direction, starting with the Megatrend; audience can have a virtual reality experience. Following the trend information can be send to the Audience to their smart phone and tablets including the Augmented Reality information and games. These two directions can indirectly lead the Audience to the Goal - Concepts and Architecture of Bauhaus conveyed.
FRAME SOLUTIONS
This research is a development for current condition and the execution of the project acts as a stepping stone to better visitor experiences. The purpose of this study is to use a small example for each analog and digital ideations in order to reach the goal itself.
ANALOG:
According to information from Experience Methodology review, keeping up with the trends is a crucial step in order to provide logical and efficient ways to create interactive activity. By applying gamification on our solutions, we want visitors of the Bauhaus to feel more engaged with the architecture. We design simple tasks for visitors, and instead of make them read all historical information about the architecture (passive way), we “force” them to get the information in order to finished the task (riddle). We established incentives (as a part of gamification process) to motivate visitors to finished all of the tasks we offered, and the indirect effect of this process is forcing and pushing people to receive information about the Bauhaus architecture themselves.
DIGITAL:
Similar to the Analog Ideation, keeping the target group in mind we developed a concept to reach our target in a Digital way. Keeping the Megatrends in mind, we tried to make the Digital Solution more interactive using the Virtual and Augmented Reality. Our concept was to make people more focused on the content by making it a part of a Game, which makes people look for information instead of information looking for people to read. In a digital way, people get the information through App or Website; hence, making it sustainable and saving paper. It can be updated and the user data collected can be used later to improve the system. For example, based on the time spend in a particular space and time utilized by user at a particular information, helps to know exactly what part of the information has to be updated to make it more interesting. This is not possible in the traditional way of display. Ofter due to the poor response in the traditional way of display, due to lack of this information of time spend by the user, some important most time spend spaces are changed. Digital way is more precise and efficient. Being a UNESCO Heritage Structure, there are restrictions for the creative Analog display.
REALIZE OFFERINGS
CONCLUSION
The project started with understanding the current issues at Bauhaus. The field trip and the Interview with the experts gave us a complete image of the present scenario. The main issue pointed out was that the exhibition at Bauhaus has to be self explanatory and not be dependent on the Guides present to hire. This is because not all hire a guide and the result is that the concepts are not conveyed as the exhibition is the Architecture of the Building and not the exhibits.
Our Analog and Digital Solutions plans to target all the user groups and plans to satisfy maximum audiences to convey the Concepts of Architecture. Users will end up with tangible and intangible memories when they leave Bauhaus. It also allows users to still be connected and get a chance to interact with Bauhaus even after the visit. The interactive competitions, games and events keep the users engaged and motivated through out the tour.
Hence, we conclude by presenting our Analog Booklets and Digital App and Website to convey concepts and connect to Audience with different perspectives all around the world. This solutions is believed to solve the current issue and expand the reach of Bauhaus to far extremes.
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