InnoBeweegLab - Public Space Observation tool

Project description

InnoBeweegLab is a company that conducts research on physical activity behavior in public spaces by observing outdoor gyms, playgrounds, and similar environments. Their observations were previously recorded manually on paper, which led to error-prone data, duplicate entries, and inefficiency during analysis. This slowed down the research process and reduced the quality of insights that could support the creation of more active and healthy living environments.

Our main research question was: How might we create a tool that improves the efficiency and accuracy of current data-collection processes, as well as the data analysis and summarization processes, used by InnoBeweegLab employees at customer locations?

Context

This project is situated in the domain of public health and human-centered design. InnoBeweegLab studies how people use public spaces such as playgrounds and outdoor gyms. The insights gained from this research help municipalities and organizations decide which amenities or facilities would be most useful in specific areas.

By creating a more efficient digital data-collection tool, the quality and reliability of the collected data can be improved, leading to better-informed decisions about designing active and healthy living environments.

Results

We made several prototypes and tested them with the observers from InnoBeweegLab. After each test, we improved the designs based on their feedback. We also explored other ideas, such as using speech input for observations.

At one point, we realized that only making a simple “input app” was not enough of a challenge for us. It was convenient, but it did not really improve the quality of the research. Because of this, we went back in the design process and came up with a new question: How can we collect more and better feedback from people in public spaces without always needing staff to observe them?

At the same time, the company still really wanted to have a working app. So we built one in Flutter. With this app, users can: create projects, assign observers, export data to Excel and easily fill in observation data.

The app is not in the App Store yet, but it is already ready for the company to use.

We are also still looking at other ways to let community members give feedback themselves, without observers always needing to be present. Overall, the process taught us that the journey is not always linear. It is worth exploring different ideas and sometimes changing direction. By doing this, we were able to really get to the core of the project and discover opportunities that made the project not only more interesting for us as students, but also more valuable for the company.

About the project group

We are a group of ICT Human-Centered Design students who are very keen on working creatively while challenging ourselves with code. This project lasted approximately 10 weeks, during which we used Design Thinking methods and explored different aspects of the project as we progressed through its various stages. We valued each other’s input and worked on most tasks together, occasionally splitting up and assigning responsibilities based on each person’s strengths.