With the brief of Project 6 in mind, I started this week by considering what an early intervention for my project might look like.
Below you can see my initial spider diagram outlining what an intervention involves and ideas for possible interventions I may look to action in my project. The most notable ideas being to establish a form to represent my idea in a simple way. Also, looking at creating focus groups with hospitality businesses or biophilic experts to allow ideas to be explored in a group session as to what the most effective approaches for biophilic design application in hospitality spaces may look like. And finally, looking at a form of process in an online feedback group, possibly on Facebook, where users could post their favourite uses of biophilic forms or rate hospitality spaces they have visited according to their biophilic properties.
I noted that one of the biggest obstacle I need to overcome is around how to engage people in my idea and have them easily understand it. At present, when I have been engaging with my stakeholders I feel I have fallen into the, often unrecoverable, trap of losing my audience in the first minute or so of conversation. Upon reflection I think this is has been to do with crowding my stakeholders with unfamiliar terms and complex multifaceted ideas, rather than breaking the ideas down into their simplified component parts. Consequently, I began exploring how I could develop a simplistic, visual way to express my idea and engage my audience.
As you can see below, I then went into a brainstorming session where I dug deep into visual ways in which I could express my key concepts/ ideas. The main way I thought about doing this was through utilising a metaphor, which everyone already understands, to showcase my ideas of nature intertwining with spaces and also how adding biophilia to a space can increase customers attraction to that space and improve wellbeing.
Evolution of Ideas Resultant From Brainstorming
I initially though of roots intertwining as they grow to form a new bigger root, to represent biophilia being added in hospitality spaces and consequently creating a greater space. However, I worried that this idea was slightly misleading and it is still a bit blurry in its message. I realised from this idea that I definitely wanted to steer clear of utilising nature in this metaphorical representation, as I felt it made lines between my message too blurry, keeping the concepts very different helped to provide clarity.
Then I moved my thinking on to being around puzzles. How a puzzle can be seemingly incomplete and then the extra pieces are added into it and so a new object is formed; thus, representing adding in biophilia to create a new functioning space. However, with this representation I feared it implied that existing hospitality spaces are incomplete and functioning poorly, which isn’t an assumption I wanted to present my stakeholders with, especially not one I wanted to showcase to hospitality business owners, as this could more than likely cause offence to them.
Consequently, my ideas moved back towards the idea of nature being woven into spaces and looked at different materials which are woven. I then came across ideas which showcase newspaper being twisted and woven together to form a bag. I thought of this concept showing how the material of nature could be worked and interwoven together to form a new object/ space. However, the use of only one material here I felt lacked the moulding together of the space with nature that I wanted to try and encapsulate.
Subsequently, I moved into thinking of things that are moulded together. For instance, play dough or even in welding two materials together. Again these concepts would show the benefits of a seamless union of nature and hospitality spaces to create something new and highly beneficial. But again, I struggled to find these ideas truly captivating and encompassing of my idea as a whole.
So, I moved my thinking slightly and considered items or concepts that are fully functioning as they are, as their own entity, but that when an extra element is added it can produce dramatically heightened benefits. From this line of enquiry I first though of cakes (I must admit I was hungry) and how a cake without flour is still a tasty desert. But, when you add flour it becomes fluffy and irresistible. However, here I feared the message was that something had in fact been taken out of a standard cake (being flourless) rather than something added to a standard cake. And then came my eureka moment. Candles.
A standard unscented candle is what most people would consider as a ‘normal’ candle. This is a fully functioning candle that attracts customers as they are purchased in their millions globally (around 3 billion USD of candles sold 2018). However, scented candles are preferred by most consumers to unscented candles (Ideal Home 2019); thus, they attract even greater custom and they improve wellbeing due to their differing scents having a variety of benefits including reducing stress, helping with sleep and even concentration. Therefore, adding scent which is intrinsically woven into a candle, increases profits and improves wellbeing. Just as, intrinsically incorporating biophilic design into hospitality spaces aims to improve wellbeing and attract greater customers to the spaces, increasing profits of the hospitality businesses.
Grand View Research (2019) “Candle Market Size, Share and Trends Analysis” Grand View Research {Online} https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/candles-market Accessed 23/04/21
Ideal Home (2019) “You won’t believe how much Brits are spending on candles each year! How much money are you burning?” Ideal home [Online] https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/brits-annual-spending-candles-222764Accessed 23/04/21
Formulating a video to showcase this idea of unscented vs scented candles demonstrating the concept of intrinsically adding biophilic design into hospitality spaces to create benefits to wellbeing and the businesses themselves, will be my tasks for the upcoming week.
Remaining Uncertainties in my Project
I am aware that current uncertainties still remain in my project, which include: what type of hospitality I will focus upon making my change in, as well as how I will measure social interactions, improved wellbeing and increased customers/ profits. I am still working on reducing the uncertainties in these areas.
In regard to what type of hospitality I will focus upon, I have been exploring secondary data around defining hospitality and which sectors may benefit more from the application of Biophilia. I also look to talk with more hospitality business as stakeholders to help further narrow in on the exact area of hospitality to focus upon.
However, regarding defining my measurements, I have had discussions with stakeholders that are experts in biophilic design applications and creating improvements to wellbeing through this application, as to how best measure social interactions and wellbeing. I will be developing a blog post on this further in the coming days. However, I need delve further into how to measure customers brought to the spaces as a result of the biophilic design application and/ or increased profits due to Biophilia.