She enlisted the public to help her test her prototypes. It’s particularly interesting that Nikki conducted this experiment working in the open. Ultimately, she revised her design five times: Nikki’s approach was to conduct just enough research to prototype.
During concept development, it can sometimes be overwhelming to scope stakeholder research and figure out the most effective (and efficient) way to integrate the varied base of user feedback. Subsequent prototypes incorporated the suggestions provided in these comment boxes. Someone on their staff would hear about it from a family member or something and they would pass it around in the office.” The project was covered by all the major publications and that’s how cities started to get wind of it. It was from that landing page shared on Facebook and Twitter that I got this inquiry from Business Insider. I put up a landing page to reflect what a few people had written on the signs to crowdsource more feedback and from different cities. They wrote a piece, followed by the Atlantic and other major outlets such as Wired and Fast Company. This landing page caught the attention of Business Insider. When the original wave of positive comments started coming in (“ The Mayor should hire you.”), she put up a simple online landing page, and the surge was on. Initially, she picked locations she could observe from her home to try to validate the idea.
Naive optimism trial#
Photo courtesy of To Park or Not to Park and Nikki Syliantengįollowing that, she sourced community feedback by posting trial signs as experiments under existing parking signage inviting feedback with comment boxes and attached Sharpie markers. My artifacts were designs, but they reflected what I was visualizing in my head. “A lot of people could look at this as a design project, but the way I was approaching it was as research. Nikki credited her approach as heavily driven by a research mentality, optimized for learning and information mining. Nikki laminated that initial graphic and - voila! - she had a low-cost prototype. She synthesized the unstructured data from her exploration by designing a grid visualization with a clear “red-means-no,” and “green-means-yes” heuristic. Next, she set about collecting data by studying the information display on the existing signs to develop an initial prototype. (1) Can I, the driver, park here? And (2) for how long? She noticed a similar problem when she moved to New York City.Īs she set out to articulate her problem, she framed her goals so as to answer two questions, assuming the mindset of the driver:
Parking restriction “totem pole” in Culver City, CA, sourced from Twitterįor starters, Nikki was proactive enough to recognize the potential for a solution sourced from the experience of her own day-to-day life: she was repeatedly frustrated by (and ticketed for) misunderstanding confusing parking signage in Los Angeles. Data visualization and design thinking as a vehicle for community improvement - bravo! So let’s deconstruct this effort. By the end of 2020, six years after the project took root, Los Angeles says it will complete installation of parking signs inspired by Nikki’s visualization. What began as simple frustration over a $95 parking ticket (who among us has not experienced this?) in Los Angeles has expanded to 10 cities globally. Her “Guerilla Parking Sign Redesign Project” is well documented and has garnered significant media attention. I was introduced to Nikki in 2015 while watching a webinar of her Gel conference talk. Nikki Sylianteng’s To Park or Not To Park project is a classic that exemplifies best practice of both design thinking and data visualization in real life. To that end, I am always on the lookout for instructive examples in the real world, of ordinary folks applying their ingenuity to pervasive societal frustrations. “Just as one infectious agent can spread throughout the network from a single point, so too can one solution.” - Gaia Vince, Nautilus It’s critical to remember that lesson, perhaps now more so than ever before in our lifetimes. The intersection of curiosity and passion for innovation is one that leads to positive change. However, the ability to recognize opportunities and apply your talents- or, more generally from a different perspective, identify problems and devise solutions - is an invaluable life skill. Design thinking was not a capital-T Thing when I was growing up. I hope that I am raising my three children to be inquisitive, innovative thinkers (and also good humans!).
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