Junkyard

Hopefully you can’t see this page, but if you can then this is some of my work that didn’t make it onto my portfolio but you get a sneak peak of it!

As college students, we recognized that courtyards hold a lot of value on college campuses, serving as much more than just open outdoor spaces. They offer a collaborative environment for students to study or unwind, away from the distractions of everyday life. In addition, we knew that our university had many different courtyards across the campus, so we felt that this was the perfect opportunity to explore these areas in depth.

Once we decided to focus on courtyards, we created a corn patch to provide ideas on how we could enhance the courtyard experience. This was used as an opportunity to provide inspiration that could later be implemented once we began prototyping.

So, Why Courtyards?

Corn Patch

  • By creating three distinct tiers to enhance the instant ramen experience, we were able to target multiple demographics

    • Our plan was to build RamenGo, RamenPod, and RamenWorks under one brand, technically creating just one solution -> RamenX

  • While we had some minor setbacks throughout the process, this was one of the few projects I have worked on where we slowly built on our initial idea as opposed to creating multiple different ideas

    • This was largely due to the fact that our user research supported our initial idea and helped us improve it in areas where we saw weaknesses

    • In addition, our group bounced off of each others ideas extremely well, creating a great environment for collaboration

Takeaways + Conclusion

  • Even though our final idea wasn’t a “new” product, it was a way to improve an existing space

    • This showed us that human-centered design does not have to be elaborate, it just needs to be effective

  • Our end product redesigned the main arches in the UT Law School courtyard by adding sustainable greenery that would be maintained by students on campus

    • This allowed for the area itself to be more visually appealing while also providing an opportunity for students on campus to engage with the space.

  • Although this project was theoretical and we unfortunately won’t be implementing this, we created this so that it could actually be feasible to implement

    • This included finding organizations on campus that the university could partner with to help upkeep the wall such as UT Green Events, UT Farm Stand, and the Campus Environmental Center

  • Our initial prototypes all had distinct product names, but since our project evolved into a concept for enhancing a pre-existing space, we ultimately named it “UT Austin Greenspaces”

Takeaways + Conclusion

Initial Research Planning

Our first step for this project was better understanding our target audience. While we knew we were aiming to help students in the Center for Integrated Design (CID) at UT Austin, we wanted to dig deeper and discover how we could address the root of the issue.

We compiled some of our initial questions and created subgroups within the CID that we wanted to further explore during our primary research. We also began to explore how we were going to approach this project including the format and content. Lastly, our group identified some pain points that we had come across throughout our own projects.

Pain Points