Synopsis
‘Commute/Well-being’ is an interactive documentary that allows the user to reflect on their daily commutes and how they spend that time. The focus of this project is to show people how they could use their commute time more efficiently providing solutions and insight into the issues of commute that are affecting our well-being.
The interactive documentary will cover the issues that arise within our daily commute using research to illustrate how it is changing us and guide the user to see alternatives to how they travel. Within the broader scope of this project, I hope to integrate social media as a way to build up an array of different perspectives through sharing personal stories and commutes that can be seen on an interactive map. Over time this will build up to show a nuanced picture of how we all travel, how we utilise that time and help the user see a different perspective of transit life, inspiring the user to make the most of their commute.
Outline of research
Every day we commute further distances than ever before for work. I live on the central coast and commute daily down to Sydney for both university and work. Living on the central coast, the commute is around an hour and twenty minutes each way, with the two options for your commute being catching the train or driving. I have noticed a stigma around the travel time with most people viewing this as “dead time” or time out of your day.
Recent studies on commute times and the effect it has on our mental health and well-being have allowed me to reflect on the different ways I have utilised this time over the years that have affected my well-being, either by utilising the time for work, leisure or meditation. This sparked the idea for the concept of commute/well-being as a way to get people thinking about their own commutes and sharing ideas.
David Bissell, Associate professor and author of “Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities” states that the daily commute for many is so “deeply routinised” that we do not stop to think about it (Bissell, 2018). Bissell argues that while this liminal time might seem passive our travel time and what we experience and do along the way shapes our well-being and “actively changes us”.
Research by the Office for National Statistics in 2014 backs this up as it shows the apparent ties between commute and our well-being, revealing “Commuters have lower life satisfaction, a lower sense that their daily activities are worthwhile, lower levels of happiness and higher anxiety on average than noncommuters” (Commuting and Personal Well-being, 2014 – ONS, 2014). This research shows a need to address how we commute and the importance of finding ways to utilise this time.
The concept of Commute/Well-being is not to be a source of detailed information, but rather a simple and accessible way to get the conversation going and spark ideas. To achieve this, I will need to source further data through survey’s, statistics and vox-populi interviews to build a nuanced foundation for the content.
Intended audience
This interactive documentary is primarily targeted at those who are working full time and have to travel to their workplace. The website will be built in a way that accommodates all as it will allow you to explore different commutes and show you suggested options for what to do with your “dead time”. Further, this will allow you to explore and compare commutes from different areas giving insight to what the commute is like for others, informing the user of the different journey’s while breaking down the stigma of the idea that distance in commute necessarily means a worse commute.
Concepts for interface design
Commute/Well-being will be created in the program Hype and optimised for a desktop computer experience. The desktop platform allows the documentary greater immersion and interactivity as this format includes a larger display, a mouse, QWERTY keyboard and speakers. The site will be a non-linear sandbox style experience that allows the user to explore the content at their own pace.
The design for Commute/well-being will be heavily inspired by the user interface of the interactive documentary ‘Hey Stranger What’s On Your Phone’ by the ABC. The landing page will be similar to “Hey Stranger What’s On Your Phone” (HSWOYP) as it is an effective way of getting to the point and letting the user know exactly what the documentary is about. This is achieved through its use of a single large image that defines the setting and clear text that supplies the context.
For my project, I believe it is imperative the visuals tell the story in a similar way to HSWOYP as it will aid in immersing the user in the content. To do this, I plan to use large-scale photos for the main pages of different train stations, bus stops and traffic.
To allow for ease of use and immersion, I plan to adhere to a minimalist UI design. Each main page layout will feature a large background image and small excerpts of information that when clicked transition through to more information told through data visualisation, audio clips and imagery. This will require multiple new scenes; buttons and pages in Hype that transition into each other in order to keep the information always direct and the user experience consistently interactive.
To enhance the text against the background images a flat design style for typography and icons will be needed to help simplify the interface and bring focus to the text. For the project, I plan to use two to three variations of Sens Serif fonts to keep the content cohesive and clear. These fonts will be uninformed to the layout with one variation being for headings, another for body text and the last for navigation.
Sound
To further the immersion of the user experience, I will implement sound design for all actions and transitions within the documentary. Sound effects will help guide the user through the experience and highlight what is clickable and interactive. The sound design for each scene will be in place to support the visual content by being representative of the background image. For example, I will use recordings of a train pulling into a station to play on each new scene that references commuting via trains. There will be no music in the documentary, as I believe it would be too distracting and could take away from the experience as well as the impact of the sound effects.
Wireframe
The wireframe structure below shows how the scenes of the interactive documentary will be structured as well as the available paths. At any point, the user may return back to the main page or previous scene however the structure requires that you first go through the process of analysing and reflecting on your own commute before moving into the personal stories and interactive map. The structure makes sure the user has thought about their own commute and is well informed about the importance of well-being before they can contribute to the map
Outline of Project Structure
Landing Page
As the research and focus of this project lean towards trains being the best form of transport for your well-being, the landing page will be an image of a train station with minimal text introducing the documentary and inviting the user to click through and ‘explore’ the content. Below is a rough layout for the landing page (picture and font to be replaced).
Main Page
The main page is where the user selects a path to explore and is introduced to the four main types of commute. The page asks the user to reflect upon their own commute and select their mode of transport.
Intro Pages
The intro pages for each mode of transport detail the research and statistics collected about this mode of transport. These pages include Data visualisation of the most common thing done by commuters while in commute as well as ways this commute affects your well-being.
Well-being pages
These pages through engagement with research detail how this form of commute is changing and how that change is changing us. The pages offer advise on general ways to make the most of your commute and enhance your well-being.
User stories and interactive map
The final page in the online documentary is the interactive map. This page allows you to view other commutes on a map similar to Google maps. As you hover over each visible commute a window to the side of the map opens up showing whatever media has been attached such as vox-pop videos or comments posted via twitter of commuters that have used the hashtag #commutewellbeing. The user is able to add their commute to the map and interact with the collected data. Below is a rough example of the layout.
Feasibility
The interactive documentary Commute/Well-being is a highly feasible project that can be achieved within the five-week timeframe. The project is based on ready to go compiled research from the scholarly writings of professor David Bissell, statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics as well as international statistics from the Office for National Statistics in the U.K. To round off the research content, empirical data will be collected through the use of surveys and vox-pop interviews to be filmed with consenting commuters.
The surveys will be compiled through Survey Monkey and distributed through social media by the team and creators of the online documentary. These survey responses and vox-pop interviews will be enough content to launch the documentary as the integration of social media and the ability to add user stories, and commutes post-launch will see the content of the site grow.
The survey will be able to continue to run until the final day before submission as the data visualisations and content will be ready to go and require only a simple tweak to change the numbers. The vox-pops will be shot using the canon camera supplied through the university and a Rode NTG 3 shotgun mic to ensure quality capture of content. This will not take long to edit and compile, as they will be short interviews.
With the content sorted and steadily feeding in, the team will have most of 4 weeks to test and build different types of data visualisation and refine the user experience. As mentioned in the proposal I intend to use sound design to enhance the immersion of the documentary. As I am a sound designer, it will not be an issue recording, editing and implementing the sound design. I will spend a day with a PMD recorder and an NTG-3 shotgun mic recording original content. The post-production process of these audio files will take no longer than a day.
Finally, the team will need to capture high-quality photographs of different commutes to be used as the background images of the different scenes. With access to the university camera and our own devices, we will both stage scenarios and take professional grade quality photos in public places such as train stations, bus stops and busy intersections. The photos will be enhanced in Adobe Photoshop before being implemented in the documentary.
The software we will use to develop the interactive documentary is Hype 3. As we have all had workshops and are given twenty-four-hour access to computer labs with this software I am confident we will have no issues with the final set up of the scenes and transitions.
Bibliography
Bissell, D. 2018, How the commute changes us — and sometimes it’s for the better, ABC News. Viewed 9 September 2018, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-31/how-the-everyday-commute-is-changing-who-we-are/10054918>.
Commuting and Personal Well-being, 2014 – ONS 2014, Webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Viewed 10 September 2018, <http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105231823/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/commuting-and-personal-well-being–2014/art-commuting-and-personal-well-being.html>.
Wireframe.cc – minimal wireframing tool 2018, Wireframe.cc. viewed 11 September 2018, <https://wireframe.cc/SVfOSu>.
OnlineDocumentary Assignment 2 