Drawing and User Experience in the Design of Public Space

Abstract

This article reflects on research into how drawing can be used to incorporate the user experience of urban space into drawing-based planning professions, such as design and architecture. User participation in the configuration of public space is interpreted here as a catalyst for social change. The research places particular emphasis on how drawing can be used to include user experience.

This investigation is conducted within the context of an empirical and speculative interpretation of a fact-based reality. Let us imagine that taxpayers support the budget for the continuous city-cleaning process aimed at erasing signs of use, graffiti, or objects out of place (considered waste). It should be noted that these operations are parallel, rather than central, to conventional waste collection and disposal services.

Let us further imagine that part of this budget is allocated to “mediation processes,” namely with some of the individuals who claim to intervene illegally in the city. Programmes such as “art trucks,” “city canvas,” or other “legalisation” initiatives may be well intentioned and seemingly headed in the right direction, yet at the same time they can be misleading, creating the illusion (or, in some cases, the reality) of an art market around signs of human need that should be addressed elsewhere—through better jobs, education, housing, and healthcare.

Imagine, moreover, that for those who control this budget, “art in the city” only exists when it is sanctioned, without awareness of the oxymoron involved: what is illegal cannot be sanctioned, and if it is sanctioned, it is no longer illegal.

Now imagine that ready-made art is a reality, that art is everything, that life itself is art, that the city can function as a playground, and that our architects and designers are capable of including everyone in the process of designing and maintaining public spaces.

Within this specific context, by asking how drawing can be used to include user experience, we encounter a kaleidoscopic journey—chronological and geographical—through tools designed to involve users in the design and maintenance of public spaces. In particular, the maturity and widespread adoption of digital user experience practices, combined with systemic design approaches, are creating conditions for better inclusion of user needs as best practices.

It is hoped that this article will contribute to more effective use of budgets allocated to “mediation processes” and to improved ways of engaging users in the sustainable design and maintenance of public spaces.