Articoli taggati con ‘User Needs’
Users or Audience?
It’s sure. No doubt about it: this is the user’s era. This is what we daily learn when we try to understand how We’re trying to build our future. This is true when we talk about soft-industries, such as software industry or audiovisual industries (just think at the House of Cards’ case history), but it’s also true when we look at object-centered industries. This number of Tafter Journal presents two specific declination of the complex relationship between user and provider in two different sectors. On one side this number presents the research proposed by Sağlar, Garip & Garip that shows the results of a wider research project about Flexible User Centered Design Model for Social Housing Units, illustrating the development methodology through which the interior design could create customized housing units. This model could represent a valid solution to a wide social need, inasmuch, as affirmed by authors, “although there is a great variety in social pattern in big cities […] the response of architecture is extremely standard”. On the other side the article written by Gobbi and D’Ambrosi analyzes the Web communication strategies used by corporate museums, proposing a 5-scale evaluation for seven of the most important design corporate museums in Italy, such as Alessi, Bitossi, Kartell, Molteni, Mumac (Cimbali), Poltrona Frau and Rancilio. The results of the analysis are not so positive: authors show how design corporate museums are not as active as they should be, or at least, as active as we should expect they are. Going beyond the single researches, the proposed results underline an important issue for Cultural and Creative Industries: in fact, this two articles allow us to glimpse the differences in the value chains when the beneficiary of the production process is represented by a user or, on the contrary, is represented by the so-called “audience”. Even though the two articles analyze the same manufacturing sector (interior design), in one case we have users of the objects that this sector produces, while in the other we have an audience that experience a cultural product.
A Flexible User Centered Design Model for Social Housing Units
Dwelling is the most important spatial need for everyone and the basic determinant of dwelling is its users. This paper aims to underline the importance of human needs in determining the basic living environment by discussing the design methodology developed for standard social housing units in Istanbul, TOKI Başıbüyük Housing Settlement. The design model is characterized by a flexible expert system that leads to different spatial variations by multi parametric layout generation based on parameters determined by user needs. The spatial variations embrace different interior modules answering to different activity sets concerning the basic activities that take place in living environments. The study also includes the prototyping process of basic modules and the design of an interface that contains the proposed alternatives with their material and cost estimations. The proposal of such a modular system that can be mass customized and mass-produced has the potential to be implied to different existing housing settlements in different geographical contexts. It also gives the possibility to reuse abandoned spaces by donating them with interior solutions that can answer to the needs of different users such as refugees and people who are in emergent need of dwelling. The modules can also be reconfigured and reused according to changing needs and changing users, which can also be economically very sustainable. Insights offered by this work aims to create a value that overcome the specific case as it tries to develop a flexible model that create a variety of interior solutions based on user needs.
