by muhammad.turk -

Design & Research II – System, Impact, and Inclusion

Design & Research 2 | For: Katerina Sedlackova

Following my prototypes, I am now looking at how my project fits into the bigger world. I have broken this down into three parts: the system, the change it creates, and who can actually use it.

1/3: System Map

This diagram illustrates the broader ecosystem surrounding my camera-AI guidance system. I have mapped it from the core outwards to show how the project connects to the world.

The Core: The interaction between the Photographer and the Manual Camera.
Direct User Context: Students, hobbyists, and “Nostalgic Gen Z” looking for a creative rhythm.
External Ecology: The heavy hitters—Nikon/Sony (Hardware), Adobe/Midjourney (AI), and Instagram (Social). I also included E-waste, as the sustainability of our gear is part of the system.

2/3: Change and Impact (Before vs. After)

This comparison highlights the shift from automation-first snapping to learning-aware photography.

The Goal: The goal is to move the user from being a passive passenger of an automated process to an active “Pilot” who understands their tools.

3/3: Inclusion and Accessibility

Accessibility in photography is not just about “talent”; it is a systemic issue. Using the floating barrier map, I identified the physical and cognitive hurdles that stop people from mastering manual photography.

by muhammad.turk -

Design & Research II – Lo-Fi Prototypes 1/6

Design & Research 2 | For: Birgit Bachler

Following my research on “Automation in Photography,” I have spent this week diving deeper into my project by creating three different prototype scenarios. Even though I haven’t tested these with real users yet, the act of making them helped me see points I was missing and gave me a better direction for my Master’s thesis.

Prototype 1: The Mode Toggle

In this one, when the user opens the camera, they have to choose between two options. One is a Raw Mode where the user has all the control, and the other is an AI Automation mode.

The Goal: To see if forcing the user to pick a mode at the start makes them more intentional about how they want to take the photo.

Prototype 2: The AI Assistant

This is a digital assistant that pops up on the screen while you are shooting. It explains what is happening based on the scene. For example, it might say “increase shutter speed because you are shooting action” or “reduce ISO because there is too much light.”

The Goal: To see if giving the user a “why” helps them stay in control instead of the camera just fixing the settings automatically.

Prototype 3: The External Guidance Tool

This is for professional cameras. A separate device (like a phone) is attached to the camera to guide the user. It shows suggestions on which physical dials to turn to get the right settings.

The Goal: To see if the AI can act as a teacher that helps the user learn how to use the manual settings on their professional camera.

Personal Reflection: Why Prototype Now?

Creating these scenarios helped me see which directions I might follow, but it also left me with a big question about the design process. I understand that if you have a clear vision, prototyping early can save a lot of time. But when you are still in the early stages of defining and understanding the problem, I found it extremely difficult.

To be honest, it doesn’t make total sense to me to build a solution when I haven’t even fully decided what the actual problem is yet. While I know it is supposed to be beneficial, I personally didn’t find it that helpful at this stage. It felt a bit like guessing. However, the exercise did at least show me which side of the camera-AI idea has the most potential, even if the final direction is still a bit blurry.

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

PROTOTYPING – Design & Research II (Birgit) – 1/6

Continuing my research on the topic of “Slowness”from last semester, I will be doing further work on this topic as part of the Design & Research II course with Birgit Bachler PhD.

For the final assignment, I will need to record a 2-minute video of the final prototype — in my case, I plan to use prototyping in Figma, which each of you will be able to test. The research will again focus more on contextual analysis, as well as user testing, bibliography, and heuristic evaluation.

In this first blog post, I want to show you three quick lo-fi prototypes for a future app. The task was to create 3 scenarios, and I’ll be presenting each of them today. All of them were put together and thought through quickly, in no more than 20–30 minutes.

*Also, during the second session with Birgit, we did a speed dating exercise, and at the end I’ll go over some notes and discuss the issues my classmates encountered.

Prototype 1: Mood-based navigation 😁

In this scenario, the user first selects their mood or intention (calm, curious, social, fast), and then receives a route that matches that mood.
The route includes different types of spaces — parks, cafes, quiet street, depending on the user’s chosen mood.
The goal is to demonstrate how navigation can adapt to the person, rather than just to the geographical task.

Prototype 2: Fast vs. Slow Route 🏃‍♀️

This scenario compares two approaches to navigation: “fast” and “slow”.
It shows the user that a longer route can be a better experience—it passes through green spaces, quiet streets, and places to stop (such as cafes or shops).
The goal is to shift the focus from efficiency to the experience of the route and a conscious choice.

Prototype 3: Explore unknown areas 🤷‍♀️

Here, the navigation system encourages users to explore unfamiliar parts of the city.
The map is divided into “known” and “unknown” zones, and users can choose a route that takes them through new places.
The goal is to encourage exploration, step outside of familiar routes, and foster a personal connection with the city.

🗨️ Speed Dating notes:

During testing, additional scenarios emerged that are not covered by the current logic:

  1. First, a safe route is important, especially at night — taking into account street lighting, the presence of people, and the overall sense of safety.
  2. Second, the issue of data collection arose: to implement such routes, we need to understand where to source information, for example, regarding lighting, traffic, locations, and user behavior.
  3. There was also a request for budget-friendly routes, paths that take cost into account (like avoiding expensive locations or suggesting affordable spots), which adds another layer of personalization.

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

5# Product & Business Idea – Design & Research II (Katerina)

✍️ What problem are you solving?

Most navigation systems are designed solely for speed and efficiency. They guide people from point A to point B as quickly as possible, but ignore their mood, context, and the quality of the journey. This creates a sense of passivity, stress, and detachment from the city itself, especially when it comes to large cities or complex journeys.

✍️ Why should we care about it?

Because the way we move around cities affects our attention, stress levels, and attitude toward urban spaces. When navigation focuses solely on speed, people miss out on the city’s opportunities and the chance to explore it. In large cities, this often means we stick to our usual routines and never get to know the city beyond what is strictly necessary.

✍️ What is the solution you are offering? How does it work?

The solution is an adaptive map navigation system that suggests routes based not only on the destination but also on the user’s mood, time of day, and preferences—in other words, on the right kind of onboarding. Instead of always suggesting the fastest route, it can offer alternatives such as peaceful, curious, social, or exploratory paths—for example, through parks, cafes, quiet streets, or unfamiliar neighborhoods. Safety and lighting can also be taken into account.

✍️ Who is the target audience? Who is the customer?

The target audience includes city residents, travelers, immigrants!, researchers, and people seeking more meaningful ways to navigate urban spaces. This is particularly relevant for users who are tired of navigation focused solely on efficiency (such as myself). Clients may include individual users as well as city tourism organizations, municipalities, or mobility-related services interested in promoting a more measured and people-centered urban experience.

✍️ What is going to happen? (Change & Impact)

My product prioritizes mindful navigation over mere ease of use. Instead of simply speeding up movement, users get more information, more choices, and a deeper connection to the city. This can reduce stress, encourage exploration, and help people discover new neighborhoods, rhythms, and everyday experiences in places they already know—or think they know.

Thanks! 🙏

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

4# Customer Profile & Value Proposition Map – Design & Research II (Katerina)

💼 Persona I – Busy Commuter

This is a time-conscious person who needs to move efficiently between locations, often under stressful conditions. They rely on navigation to save time, but in doing so experience stress, overload, and reduced alertness. They need routes that remain efficient, reduce mental strain, and allow for brief moments of calm.

🗺️ Persona II – Curious Explorer

A user who explores the city with an open mind and curiosity, rather than in a hurry. They are interested in discovering new places, atmospheres, and experiences. They need a navigation system that supports exploration, suggests meaningful routes, and helps them engage more deeply with the city.

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

NIME Article Review – Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Interface

I’d been looking for a topic that interested me for a while—and the title itself caught my eye because I was searching by keywords. Of course, I’m not usually interested in much of the technical information related to “music.” But this really caught my attention.

Sonic City is a powerful and innovative project precisely because it presents the city not as some kind of “backdrop” for interaction, but as the interface itself. This certainly resonates with me as someone with a background in architecture. There, we always thought of the city in terms of movement, rhythm, route, atmosphere, and—not least—the physical perception of space. In Sonic City, all these qualities are not just characteristics of the environment, but also part of the interaction. The authors of the article literally propose “playing the city,” transforming everyday movement into a form of musical and spatial experience. This idea is explicitly stated in the project’s main text: the city is viewed as an interface, and mobility as an interaction model.

From an interaction design perspective, I find it particularly significant that the project moves away from the conventional screen-based UX. There is no traditional screen, buttons, or graphical interface here. Instead, everything is built around body movements and environmental data—rotations, movement, light, even pollution levels and the presence of metal—as well as pauses and combinations of context and behavior. The authors describe a two-level mapping system, where some parameters influence short musical events and timbre, while others affect the more structural composition of the sound. This makes the interaction less abstract and more situational; the music arises precisely from the connection between a person and a specific place and moment.

The first text “In Duet with Everyday Urban Settings: A User Study of Sonic City“ [1] struck me as a stronger conceptual and design-oriented exploration of the questions ”Why can the city be an interface?“ or ”How does this project differ from a musical performance?”. It was also very interesting to see how they included not only engineers and designers in their team, but also architects and sociologists. The project isn’t just about technology; it’s also about the body, the city, behavior, everyday life, and its aesthetics.

The second text “Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Interface” [2] is a bit more important to me, since it tests whether the idea works in real-world user experiences. The study was smaller and more qualitative than quantitative. It included people of different ages and lifestyles, and, by the way, none of them considered themselves musicians. This is an important point, since the project was tested on ordinary people. The authors, by the way, asked the right UX question: “Do people perceive Sonic City as a research tool or as a musical one?”

Overall, I consider Sonic City a very important example of how to think at the intersection of architecture, urban experience, and interaction design. For me, the project’s value lies precisely in the fact that it translates spatial perception into an interactive experience, and interactivity back into urban and bodily reality. The papers showcase not just interesting technology, but a different way of thinking about UX: not merely as interaction with a screen, but as interaction with space, the body, the route, and the atmosphere of the city. And that is precisely why this project still seems relevant to me today.

Sources 🛈

[1] In Duet with Everyday Urban Settings: A User Study of Sonic City. Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2004). Authors: Lalya Gaye, Lars Erik Holmquist. Available at: https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2004/nime2004_161.pdf

[2] Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Interface. Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2003). Authors: Lars Erik Holmquist, Lalya Gaye. Available at: https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2003/nime2003_109.pdf

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

3# Inclusion & Accessibility – Design & Research II (Katerina)

These factors highlight that access to slow navigation is not the same for everyone. The experience depends on physical abilities, emotional awareness, and cognitive skills—such as the ability to walk, recognize one’s mood, and make decisions about the route. It also requires a certain level of spatial awareness, which is not always equally developed or maintained.

At the same time, accessibility is shaped by external conditions: pedestrian infrastructure, GPS accuracy, access to mobile devices, safety, and cultural habits of movement. This shows that slow navigation is not just a matter of design, but a systemic issue influenced by the environment, technology, and the social context in which the user finds themselves.

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

#2 Change & Impact – Design & Research II (Katerina)

This comparison highlights the shift from efficiency-oriented navigation to experience-oriented movement. Most existing navigation systems prioritize speed, offering the fastest route by default and guiding users through the city with minimal user involvement.

As a result, users typically follow directions passively, often losing their sense of the surrounding environment and missing opportunities to interact with it. Travel becomes functional rather than experience-driven.

In contrast, this project explores navigation as something more adaptive and human-centered—where routes respond to mood and context, encourage exploration, and foster a more meaningful relationship with the city.

by julia🐨razumovskaia -

#1 System Map – Design & Research II (Katerina)

This diagram illustrates the broader ecosystem surrounding my slow map navigation system. At the center are the direct users—people who move around the city with different needs, rhythms, and intentions. Surrounding them are groups that use maps in their daily lives, from residents to travelers, each of whom perceives the city in their own way.

The outer layer shows indirect users—entities that do not use the product itself but shape the conditions in which it exists. Urban planners, local businesses, infrastructure, and data systems—all of these influence how we move, which routes are available, and how the city is perceived.

Together, this underscores that navigation is not just a tool, but part of a larger system. How we move through the city is shaped not only by personal choice, but also by design decisions, the environment, and the social structures around us.

by julia.trummer -

★2 Design Research – From Project to Product

Discovered Change and Impact

Next, I started thinking about what my method or tool would actually improve. I believe that many family members get frustrated because they are always the first point of support when it comes to technology, constantly having to explain or fix things for older relatives.

With my method or tool, elderly users would be encouraged to first try and find a solution on their own instead of immediately relying on someone else. This could really improve family dynamics, as it allows people to spend more quality time together instead of using that time to troubleshoot devices.

I also thought about how many older adults lack the means to independently access and explore information. This can lead to an incomplete or sometimes biased understanding of current events.

With my tool or method, elderly users would be able to access information more confidently and see a bigger picture, helping them form their own opinions and make more informed decisions about current topics.

Another point is that many older adults have limited ways to stay connected with family or peers beyond phone calls. They often struggle to access or use tools like group chats, which makes it harder to stay involved in everyday communication.

With my tool or method, older adults would be able to understand and use digital tools more easily, allowing them to stay connected, take part in conversations and feel more included in their social circles.