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D E S I G N D E V E L O P M E N T
g u n j a n g o e l
g u n j a n g o e l
P a r s o n s T h e N e w S c h o o lD e s i g n a n d M a n a g e m e n t ‘ 1 1
e m a i l : g o e l g u n j a n 1 1 @ g m a i l . c o m
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CONTENTS
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 1
DESIGN RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 23
SENIOR THESIS 32
Eating Alone
Brooklyn Bridge
Boutique Hotel
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DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Eating Alone
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I started this project with three ideas under the theme of Healing and Learning. I created moodboards and conducted some preliminary research for each of the three ideas.
I narrowed down to the idea of finding the relationship between Eating and Socializing. I strongly believe that food and social interaction are deeply entwined in the human psyche, a fact we usually tend to ignore in our daily lives. So I wanted to find out the relationship between the two. It is rightly said that, “Food isn’t about eating.” Eating is only a medium, which people prefer to use to meet.
Like most others, I am ‘always meeting a friend over lunch, chilling with my co-intern at lunch, discussing my internship contract with my boss over coffee, baking with my roommates, reading a book with my best friend over dessert.’
CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT
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I started off with a journal, where I would make a note of all my ideas in the form of drawings or notes. At the same time a weekly report would help me summarize my ideas and help me refine them to make sure they made sense.
I also created a timeline that helped me map each step and make sure I was progressing to meet the deadlines I had decided for myself. I used an online web site called tiki-toki to make my content visually appealing and fun to read.
I then started making note cards of survey questions that I wanted to ask my audience- in questionnaire and video form. But my questions seemed to quantitative and that was further re-enforced during a class critique. This made me take a different approach.
RESEARCH AND DATA COLLECTION
MY
TIM
EL
INE
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How can we make the state of solitude a more positive force by understanding our need for it?
Primary- People who feel awkward to eat alone at restaurants and look at it negatively.People who are comfortable with eating alone.
Secondary- People who look at Solitude as a negative attribute.
Tertiary-The cafes, restaurants, libraries, and bookstores those are ready to keep my journal/book and the general readers who would read it.
USERS/STAKEHOLDERS
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I think my blog really does justice to all the inspirational things I have come across during my process. I constantly posted scans of my journal, inspiring and relevant media files like pictures and videos, my ideas and also secondary literature and journalistic articles that I found interesting. It is a collection of all the items, which I thought were each relevant and inspiring for me during my study.
The blog was a big step for me as prior to this I had never used a blog. I used twitter earlier to post pictures, but having a separate blog only for this project was the best thing that I could have done for it because it truly deserved a personal space of its own. I was really fascinated by it even though it took me a while to figure out my way around using it.
I was able to collect a rich collection of secondary literary and journalistic articles. I also found inspiring videos and poems that were relevant to my topic.
At the same time I created a page just for people to write their stories. I started off with posting my own personal story, to inspire people to be honest with their experiences. After constant nagging, sending face book messages and personal emails, I got a good number of people to write for me. The questions I was primarily asking were what they thought of eating alone and of solitude.
I wanted them to post personal experiences in narrative form because that I believe is the most powerful way of touching anyone’s heart and mind.
PORTFOLIO
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This is the brief that I wrote to the people who I wanted to collect narratives from.
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The umbrella idea is about exploring the dimensions of SOLITUDE and food I think is just one angle to look at it from. I want to be able to collect a rich pool of narra-tives from people- What they think of Eat-ing Alone, Eating together or Solitude in general. I want to compile these strong writings into a book, and further add some inspirational articles, excerpts from second-ary research. This book I think can be placed anywhere-coffee tables of cafes/restaurants, libraries, bookstore-to reach out to people-to make them realize how Solitude is a very powerful asset to have. To make people comfortable with the idea of being alone.
I tried to collaborate with cafes to allow me to place empty journals on their cof-fee tables so that I could have people who come there, write their thoughts on the same. But been having a hard time doing that because it is a long process and hard to reach the main heads who are account-able for these things. So in the meantime I started my blog so that I can have some outside contribution at least. Been also try-ing to email people(friends and family) who I can get meaningful contributions from.
THE IDEA MY RESEARCH SO FAR
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So you can pick either one of the topics and what I am really looking for is a per-sonal deep inner reflection on it. It can be a negative one as well- I want it to be honest and coming from a deeper inner re-flection. Because solitude is quite a touchy topic for many and usually looked upon as a negative thing. So this blog is just a starting point for my idea to develop. I would love for you to give me a piece of writing- your personal reflection on it. Like for instance if you had the time to read my narrative it is simply the narration of an episode. But you can write anything. A poem, an es-say, a short paragraph or even two lines.
WHAT I WANT FROM YOU
My idea is to create this book, almost a journal, which can be made available in cafes, restaurants, libraries and book stores alike to have this rich collection of narratives available for people to read to change their views on the idea of eating alone and eventually of solitude- to think of it as a positive and powerful force. These narratives in themselves are so empowering because they are honest anecdotes and thoughts of people on what they think of eating alone and solitude.
I made a rough prototype of the diary/journal that I want to be able to keep in cafes and restaurants for people to read and add to.
And using the web site ISUU, I was able to create and upload a digital version of the book I plan to create after they are full to distribute and sell in bookstores.
PLANS AND PROTOTYPE
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Going back to what my primary source of inspiration was. We had a session where we were asked to write a narrative for our ongoing study. That narrative completely took over my thought process and I found a new path to take with my study, which I thought was more interesting. The narrative was based on me eating alone in a restaurant, during which I felt extremely uncomfortable. This is what brought me to exploring the idea of Eating Alone. From then on, I was further linked on to the idea of Solitude.
After my project was over, I wrote another narrative that acted as a continuation of where I had started from. This story was of the same girl who found it embarrassing to eat alone. It goes on to describe how she came across my book of narratives, that helped her realize through the power of story-telling that Eating alone was not a bad thing at all. On the right are pages from the diary of this girl- a potential stakeholder.
STORY-TELLING SESSION
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Dear Diary,
So you are not going to believe it!Today, my life changed. So you remember how I had told you about my eating alone experience at Patsy’s the other day. I kept thinking about it. And wondering why it was so disturbing for me to be able to sit alone in a restaurant and eat, that too my favorite restaurant! I mean what the hell right!
I wanted to find out why that happened? I love food, so why do I need company to enjoy it?
I thought I should give it another try, may be at a smaller café this time. So I decided to actually go to a restaurant by myself, order food and sit there without having my phone or laptop.
I said very confidently, “Table for one please.” The waitress did not bat an eyelid and the next minute I was sitting ALONE at a table in Le Pain de Quotidient. I started thinking of things I usually do when I am alone, to simply distract myself from the idea that I was sitting alone….that’s right…just me with an empty chair in front of me.
Right then my eye caught a pile of books placed on a side coffee table where the cutlery was kept. There was a note above it saying FREE TO READ. I walked to it and picked up the book that said ‘Are you Eating Alone?’……I was!! I went back to my table and opened it.
It was a book of narratives…you know like short stories…It said tell your story like these people did….hmmm that sounds interesting, i thought…it looked exactly like you dear diary!!I skipped over the author’s preface to the first page.OBVIOUSLY who reads that.
The top read: “Discover your inner peace, your solitude. In this crazy, noisy, messy world, you will need it.” i thought yea yea, that is easier said than done.And following it was 2 paragraphs of a story written by a woman who had sat in this very restaurant ALONE! She had described her experience of living in an ashram where they had zones where people had to maintain silence while eating. She actually enjoyed eating alone and went on to describe how powerful she felt just with the thought that she could absorb universal energy from the food she was eating. My favorite line was: "the act of eating that springs from a space of silence, is deeply different from any mechanical or forced activity, in spite its biological need."I loved this book already. I spent a good 2 hours in the café reading these interesting stories that people had to tell about Eating Alone, about Solitude, about being Comfortable or uncomfortable with the idea. I put in a small comment on one of the stories that was really touching as I did not have time to write my own. I asked the manager if I could buy the book. He said it was actually soon going to be available for sale in different versions in some places.I loved the idea. I walked out of the café triumphant. I had learnt already how eating alone was no big deal. It actually was a fun experience. Haven’t we all read these kind of things before and there have been so many scientific reasons to explain the theory behind it.. But these narratives had a different power of their own. They were not exactly practiced dialogues of the “famous” people who always have something to say. They were really personal, honest and touching stories of people like me. From all over the world! Even Nepal!I could relate with so many of them!!!
You know what, I am going to start doing this more often. Eating Alone today was such a meaningful and learning activity for me. I cannot fully describe the experience and am still not over the fact that I did.
What I learnt about my research project:
After preliminary research on Solitude, I was extremely captivated by this idea of being secure with yourself, which comes with a great deal of perseverance and determination. Some of the themes that I think my final design research will cover and hope to fulfill are:
•Alterity- the idea of having a way of looking through another person’s eyes, which my stakeholders will do through the means of the narratives themselves. •Creating awareness- by having the journal and book available in as many places as possible for people to read and contribute to.
•Connectivity- connecting people on the idea of ‘solitude’ through their writing and personal thoughts.
•Transparency of thoughts- since the narratives will be honest anecdotes, the learning and healing
REFLECTION
automatically becomes very transparent and thus pure.
•Mindful Eating- it will teach people how to eat in the way that they are most comfortable and teach them how eating alone is not a negative attribute/habit. And once you have captured all this, you move on to become an extremely powerful being. By facing who you are, you can truly empower your inner self. I am confident that I will design this book that I want to and thus will carry on my research for a longer period of time. What I learnt about myself: I think I came along an extremely long way for this project. I started with a different idea of eating and with my research and study, I was led to the opposite idea altogether. From eating socially, I moved on to find out about Eating Alone.
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Even though, I actually did not design a physical object (that I plan to later with this), this project was very special for me as I learnt a lot during the process. From using different research tools, online media and communicating with people to collect first-hand data, it was a lot of hard work that I put in because I was extremely passionate about this topic and the more I read, the more it increased my fascination for it. I still don’t think I have all the information I need to lead to my design idea, but am so happy to see and reconnect with people to share their ideas with me.
I tried to contact people from all realms of life to get a varied and broader perspective. Asking for narratives was so much better than just having a question answer round with people. I did not want to give their thought process boundaries. So with just a basic question, I wanted my data to be more qualitative than quantitative. This idea also culminated during my process. I faced numerous
challenges and even failures at certain points, but that did not hinder my study. I snapped myself out of it as soon as I could and would try to think of plan B.
When I tried to contact the real world for research, I realized how it is not that easy to make your space out there. It will not be possible without hard work, dedication and passion to what you want to do, what change you want to make. Beyond my project, I think I evolved as a person with a different perspective to life. I was exposed to such interesting ideas- my own, and especially those of others in my class and the people I contacted for data collection. It broadened my perspective a lot.
All I can say was that I started with being confused about how “Healing and Learning” could be studied and ended with knowing exactly how it felt.
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“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic, they are ideally set up to understand stories.”
-Roger Schank
CONCLUSION
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DESIGN RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Brooklyn Bridge
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DESIGN RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Brooklyn Bridge
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This was a group project of four people. We picked the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City as our space of study. We decided to focus on three main frameworks, with dimensions to measure each. These we chose through preliminary field research and various social science articles. The Brooklyn Bridge is a public place that consists of many forms of interaction. In this research paper, we address three frameworks: Direct and Indirect Signals, Interaction with the Bridge, and Demographics. Our research methods for each of these frameworks were implemented through various methodologies of field research such as photography, observation and interviews and also social science articles that really gave us a platform and foundation to build off of. The synthesis of all these research tools contributed to our conclusions ranging from graffiti indirectly affecting human interaction to the failure or success of signs on the bridge. The integration of all the information we collected, allowed us to interpret certain patterns and characteristics to analyze the study in a more formal and professional way.
We chose the Brooklyn Bridge since it is an integral part of New York due to its historical and symbolic significance. The bridge is important because of its location and the simple fact that it connects the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. And we thought it would be interesting also because of our own team demographic. All of us come from very different backgrounds. We have a New Yorker, a “Brooklyner”, a Korean and an Indian. Due to this special composition, unlike other groups we wanted to take full advantage of this mix of people in our team. We believe that each team member’s unique perspective and cultural background helped to make this research more valuable and meaningful for all of us.
Social interaction essentially seemed to be the overall theme of our research study. With this recurrent theme, we found several articles that helped us get started on with our research in terms of the methodologies we could use and looking at how and why people measure such dimensions
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The three frameworks we came up with were:
1. Signals: Indirect and DirectHow people interact with each other through signals and through direct communication?
2. Interaction with the BridgeWhat is the relevance of the bridge to them at the point of Interaction?Measure their actions, Reasons for being there and Plans afterwards.
3. Demographics: Come up with certain demographics to focus on, provide a hypothesis to prove or disprove. E.g.- Tourists-Daily Commuters, Age, Gender.
We also learnt a lot about human interaction from these articles. What is Interaction? Are there different types taught us how every action of humans has to do with a basic seven step process as you can see on the right.
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It was getting really difficult for us to measure each of our frameworks. The last one even seemed confusing to everyone. By class review and meeting with our professor, we were able to further narrow down our frameworks. We now came up with dimension titles for each that became our next crucial point in deciding how we would measure the interaction level.
In direct context to our frameworks mentioned earlier, we came up with three dimensions. We also managed to come up with sub-dimensions for each to make sure we had alternatives in case one didn’t work. These are:
1.Explicitness of interaction or signage-Does everyone see the signs in the same way?-How does culture change perspectives and
signals of observing vandalism?-How many people fail to follow signs?
2.Bridgeness- consolation of all the things happening on the bridge. For instance what makes it the Brooklyn Bridge?-Why do you come to/visit the Brooklyn Bridge?-What eases your navigation through the bridge?-What are the spots on the bridge where you interact with people the most?
3.Familiarity with the bridge.-Is there a correlation between the familiarity and frequency of visits?-What is the last sign you saw on the bridge?-What signs are more frequently noticed?
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The Brooklyn Bridge not only provides aesthetical pleasure to many people, but proves to be an excellent ground for conducting research about human interaction. Due to this vastly recognizable landmark and cultural icon, the first advantage in doing research here was that it provided various human demographics that made our research study more interesting. Moreover, by putting a limitation on a specific public space, we were able to collect data and conduct our research within self-set guidelines. From our frameworks to our three dimensions, we came up with many conclusions and believe have provided the possibility for extensive future research. Through exploration, analysis, and refined research methodologies influence from social science articles, each of our frameworks and dimensions converged to provide an expansive understanding of human interaction on the bridge.
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Team Reflection
We worked well as a team together. But with a group of four, there is always place for arguments as we are unique individuals from different backgrounds and hence different perspectives. Our first problem was that we had a problem deciding our research topic. Anne and In Young were keen on Starbucks, while Shaini and I wanted to explore
the Brooklyn Bridge. We were able to decide on the bridge eventually. we worked well as a team together. But with a group of four, there is always place for arguments as we are unique individuals from different backgrounds and hence different perspectives. Our first problem was that we had a problem deciding our research topic. Anne and In
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Young were keen on Starbucks, while Shaini and I wanted to explore the Brooklyn Bridge. We were able to decide on the bridge eventually.
We met every week after conducting our research to put all our ideas and observations together to present to the class. We played close attention
to the reviews we would get from the class and professor and would try and solve all the problems for the next week. This I think helped us to refine and cultivate our research study each week. One of our major problems was also coordinating schedules, as we were all busy with classes and internship commitments.
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SENIOR THESIS
The Boutique Hotel
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SENIOR THESIS
The Boutique Hotel
An opportunity that I had developed a recent interest for is the idea of A Boutique Hotel. I simply love the idea behind this “lodging” model. I have been extremely intrigued by the design and concept of this relatively recent development of what they call a “healthy hotel baby.” According to me it truly shows how as a community, mankind has moved to the next innovative level. I want to explore this very avant-garde phenomenon in the hospitality industry that has caught on so much fervor. Every hotelier is trying to add the “boutique” tag to his or her hotel. I too hope to be able to design my own Boutique Hotel at some point in my city, back home in India. But I do not think any hotel can become a “boutique hotel” by adding some additional personalized services. To find out what “meaning” and “value” a boutique hotel should really deliver, I want to be able to go
into an in-depth analysis of this lodging model, to find out what it is that a Boutique Hotel should really offer its customer to fulfill the “right” unmet value/need. This I hope will be a useful guide for me when I open my own or even to some other new businesses who plan to venture in the same market.
On the right are images of a business model that I designed for a potential boutique Hotel I could open in my city Pune in India.
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BUSINESSPLAN
What it means?
Where I plan to open it?
Location research?
Business Model?
I think that it is really important to defining the “meaning” a Boutique Hotel is supposed to deliver- whether is its Political Meaning, Cultural Meaning, Economic Meaning, or Historical Meaning? I personally believe that this design model still holds great potential for the future client and so hope to go into further detailed analysis and probably re-define and distinctly state the definition of a boutique hotel, which I will use to design my own Boutique Hotel.
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SOPHISTICATED
INTIMATE
LUXURY
QUIRKY DESIGN CREATIVE
NICHE PRODUCT
PERSONALIZED
UNIQUE
MINIMALISTIC
CUTTING EDGE DESIGN
CHIC WOW FACTOR
MODERN
STYLISH
LESS THAN 100 ROOMS
FASHIONABLE
LIFESTYLE
I was not being very successful in creating the business outlook that I wanted to. So I took a different approach and instead indulged in a critical analysis of what I think the value a boutique hotel is supposed to deliver. I had a research question: Is it justified to categorize the recent hotels, under the boutique hotel model, with the ‘boutique’ tag?
Unfortunately, this exciting design concept is already on its way to losing its ‘real’ meaning which is delivering an intimate and personalized to its customer. Most hoteliers get so heavily caught up in the profitability and sensation “making-it-commercially-viable” aspect of the business market, that they no more longer focus on the key elements of personalization and hospitality that come to define a boutique hotel.
Kirsten comes to the conclusion that a boutique hotel may after all just be one of those dated labels, a fad really, and sees it going out of “fashion” soon. But then just as Cecil Beaton says ‘Fashions change but fashion, like the poor, is always with us.’ In essence, hoteliers realize that they cannot take a cosmetic approach to the
boutique hotel just to be able to make enough profit and therefore they need to either abide by the value that a boutique is meant to deliver or create a new tag to the hotel category that encompasses all the service value they deliver.
There is an obsession among them to tag their hotels as ‘boutique’ only because it is what is currently selling in the market. They need to abide by the definition of ‘boutique’ and provide that degree of personalized service and intimate environment a boutique is meant to give. Making it more accessible by affordable prices, is not the right way to go about it because a ‘boutique’ is meant to be exclusive. Instead, those hotels need to be categorized under a different label since they do not provide only the “boutique” experience. Lea says that currently, “this sector represents a distinct shift away from norms, sameness, uniformity, the mainstream. The man who coined the best term for this market has now, kindly, stopped using it as the name of his company.” She proposes by looking at Robin Hutson’s “Alternative Hotel company ‘that the sector previously known as the ‘boutique hotel market’ be re-named ‘the alternative hotel
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market’ and keep its doors open to individual hotels with attitude.”
The Boutique Hotel concept hence, needs to be kept from the media magnet as an individual idea, that keeps in terms with its original meaning and offers the value a ‘boutique’ is meant to. As opposed to getting mixed in the greed of market monopoly which strips away the real value of personalization and intimacy that a “boutique” is meant to offer. All other values and services can be provided in the hospitality industry under a different, and perhaps a new category.
I also decided to create a book for this analysis,the cover of which you can see on the next page.
