The challenge was to make a journey through the city, experiencing the route from his perspective and to design an intervention to enrich his experience, considering the needs of universal design and the everyday user of the city. Our design partner had known and fixed routes he used to navigate the city, with his greatest fear being - getting lost. As we walked the route, we began to understand his challenges of getting around, the obstructions and uncertainties. Early on the journey he noted how the bollards, littered through out the city, had caused nerve damage in his leg, from bumping into them.

In our post journey analysis following interviews and a deep dive analysis, we saw the physical obstruction of the bollards as an opportunity and thought the fear of being lost could be overcome by creating journeys that were exploratory and revealing. We made a proposal to design a navigation system to be fitted on the bollards, that would direct you to the main icons in the city. The user could journey between these icons, experiencing different routes of the city. Using the existing infrastructure of of seemingly redundant bollards, the navigation device would be placed in prominent crossroad locations, with the bollards leading up, coated luminous green. This design would unable users to experience the city from completely different perspectives, navigating from icon to icon, overcoming the fear of being lost.