Brief
To Design an urban birdsong experience
Team-mates
Jumleena Bhagawati, Yanxu Chen, Cristele Saric & Wan Ying Liang Chen
Date
10/11/22 - 17/11/22
Image created using Canva.
Welcome to UX of Birdsong. For this project, we listened to and documented birdsong while sound walking. Then we developed our design by interpreting and building on our understanding of it. and first-hand and deeply, to birdsong. As you only have two weeks, you should
In this blog post, I have presented my documentation of our observation, research, and the prototype-building process that we did as a team of 4 on this project. I have also discussed the feedback received on the prototype and my reflection on the week's work at the end of the post.
- Timeline -
- Seeking out the birdsong -
For this project we carried out our first research method, soundwalking, to listen in and record birdsong.
Our team-mate Yanxu went to the St James park to record birdsong.
When I sound walked on the busy crossing of Elephant and Castle right outside LCC.
- Observation -
From our sound walking we observed noticeable variation in the presence of birdsong in the park versus the busy streets. Natural History Museum has recorded over 300 species of birds have been recorded in London at different times of the year. Some are year-round residents while others migrate from as far away as Siberia or sub-Saharan Africa. With the evidence of so many birds how come we do not hear birdsong? Maybe we do not listen close enough.
Why do Bird sing ? To attract mates and defend territories. Study shows that male birds sang solos at particularly high rates during the breeding season before dawn. Females, however, sang at consistent rates year-round, primarily during the day. In the study, the traditional theory that male song is a sexually selected feature is supported by the observation that males sing more during the breeding season. The majority of male songs are answered by females to form duets all year long, and this shows that female singing may have evolved to fulfil numerous roles other than those directly related to reproduction. [Karan J. Odom et.al,2016]
How do they mate over the noise of the city? We wanted to emulate the urban birdsong into a dating experience by doing so we can raise awareness of the problems of noise pollution and how it can negatively impact the lives of birds living in the city.
Exploring The Research
- Design Process -
Brainstorming & Sketching
Our team first diverged to brainstorm and roughly sketch out a few concepts of how to make birdsong experienceable. We focused our discussion on how we could bring the urban experience inside the four walls of the classroom. It was not long before we started brainstorming that we knew that we wanted to emulate the urban birdsong into a very difficult human dating experience. Thus, we sketched out our concept: a city scape with the key elements of the traffic noises and birdsong mixed together into a disastrous symphony.
Working on the Design
For our concept we used materials which were simple to use and readily available such as cardboard, paper-cups and strings. After gathering the materials we sat down to start building our prototype.
Challenge
While trying to build the prototype we did have a little bit of a drawback while trying to correctly physically interpret the idea of the city scape, and time was shot. Thus we improvised and instead of making human sized buildings and streets like we intended to we realized that using a huge rectangular piece of cardboard could successfully fulfill our needs.
Goal
By doing so we can raise bring people's focus on the issues of noise pollution in a big urban Landscape and how it can negatively impact the lives of birds living in the city.
- Interection Design -
The cardboard representing a wall was made to have six small openings through which long strings were passed. The strings were attached to paper-cups on both the ends for it to behave just like a cup telephone. There will be six users on either side, with one side being the singing side and the other being the listening side.
To each user on the singing side, one out of the six commonly found urban birds (pigeon, sparrow, blue tit, crow, robin, and starling) will be randomly assigned. They will be given a small clip to listen to on their headphone and then while standing on their fixed spot, they will have to replicate the birdsong through the paper cup.
The users on the listening side represent their bird counter-part. Each user on the listening side will also be randomly assigned one of the six urban birds (pigeon, sparrow, blue tit, crow, robin, and starling). They will all be given one chance to listen to the birdsong of the bird they represent. Then using this information they will have to quickly find their singing bird counterpart by going to each cup and listening to it.
To raise the difficulty level of the experience, all together we decided to put a time limit of 50 seconds within which they will have to find their potential bird mates.
People in action: Students in our class tried out our prototype a day before the presentation day.
- Evaluation & Feedback -
Finishing the initial week, our prototype was tested out by our classmates in UAL. The concept for our prototype was very well received. However, the execution was not very smooth which is why so most of the feedback was generally focused on that.
After seeing the demonstration the class came up with the following insights to help us with our concept and design further down the road:
1. The experience was a little chaotic. There were too many things going on the same time.
2. It did not convey our idea well.
3. We were asked to zoom in on a particular topic of interest and analyze it thoroughly to find the links and see what we can discover from that.
- Reflection -
After analyzing the experience and feedback received we realized the following:
1. For a smoother experience the execution must be well thought out and most importantly revised a minimum of two times before the presentation.
2. Not too pile on too many ideas into one concept as it runs a risk of over complicating things.
3. Visually improve the look of the prototype for the up-coming week.
- Reference-
Karan J. Odom1*, Kevin E. Omland1, David R. McCaffrey2, Michelle K., Monroe1, Jennifer L. Christhilf1, Natalie S. Roberts1 and David M. Logue3 (2016) Typical Males and Unconventional Females: Songs and Singing Behaviors of a Tropical, Duetting Oriole in the Breeding and Non-Breeding Season.Front. Ecol. Evol.25 February 2016 Sec. Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology
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