Service design (Intervention), UX design
ARCT_Citizen Science
Redesign an art residency program based in Milan Corvetto, which welcomes artists periodically, in order to carry out a project for the citizens and bring science closer to them by data visualisation and digital services.
CLIENT
VILA CLEA art residency
Milan Corvetto neighbourhood
PROJECT DURATION
2022-2023
SERVICE AND OFFER
Product Design
Strategy and Service design
My role
I worked as a UX researcher and service designer throughout the project, also planning, designing, and facilitating the co-creation sessions. And the delivery phases of the project cycle, including the entire service system and the production of all the digital media assets.
Approach
Primary and secondary / field and desk research, collecting and organizing all the insights with lateral thinking, co-design with experts, and innovators from the art residency. Promote deep and accurate development of the ideas into product-service-system solutions.
Value delivered
Consists of the full development of the idea from multiple perspectives, creating project summaries, delivering product-service systems using articulate narration, and developing prototypes.
Design challenge
How could a space for art residencies in the Corvetto neighbourhood be transformed into a new hub of social interaction, where hosted artists can collaborate with researchers to bring science closer to the people and raise awareness about sustainability?
01
Research to uncover current issuses
In this phase, qualitative and quantitative research was conducted (including desk and field research, interviews, and observation). The information was analysed, and several insights and conclusions were constructed.
Mapping the neighbourhood
The hidden relationships
A sense of contrast
What people are saying
Underlying issues
Environment crisis
Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared.
As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible highs, now is the time for bold collective action.
Citizens' detachment from
science
Lack of knowledge about science and sustainability. They find a wall between their lives and what goes on in research.
A sense of disconnection with natural resources.
Artists creative isolation
Young artists have limited opportunities to connect with local residents and build valuable networks, which further restrict their ability to grow within their communities and the art world at large. These obstacles hinder their creative potential and prevent them from fully engaging in collaborative or professional opportunities.
Check out our research report
02
Insights diggeingout
By synthesising our research insights, we were prompted to adopt a "thinking out of the box" approach to explore innovative solutions. This process led to the discovery of three potential resolutions that mitigate the current issues.
Tranferring into new opportunities
Environment
Empowerment through citizen science
Citizen science mobilizes communities to contribute directly to understanding and mitigating the impacts of climate change. It bridges the gap between science and everyday life.
Citizens
Strengthen the desire of participation
There are a lot of residents that are actively participating in the improvement of the area, starting new initiatives and ideas that many neighbors welcome.
Artists
Act in a transformative role
Actively engaging artists in collaborative or professional opportunities, to bridge the gap between scientific data and public perception, artists can also shape how citizens understand and respond to the environmental crisis, amplifying the voices of communities and sparking meaningful change.
Creative Exploration
Breathing Corvetto-Ideating the intersection of art and science in natural creation
03
Co-design to inform the more attractive concept
Through co-design workshops with experts, target users, and other relevant stakeholders, we discussed, reoriented, and refined our ideas to arrive at a sounder solution among the three creative concepts.
Co-design video presentation
Co-design analysis tied to the journey
1_Iterated design opportunities
Environment
Citizens
Artists
Experiment and research
Villa Clea becomes a base for experiments and citizens conducting environmental research.
Environment
Citizens
Artistszens
Reaches people and brings education & science close to them.
Applying the concept of
citizen science, combine with artistic interpretations.
Environment
Citizens
Artists
Works with data and transcribe into art.
Using data as a bridge to connect citizens and artists.
2_Synthesis co-design results to determine the final concept
Session 1: Participants impression and HMW
questions exploration.
Final choosen concept:
The neighborhood researchers
Session 2: Participants impression and HMW
questions exploration
Final choosen concept:
The neighborhood researchers
Consensual service design concept
"The neighborhood researchers"
In this process, citizens work as amateur/non-professional scientists together with artists and scientists/bio-scientists. We will achieve this through art, envisioning a deep connection with science and research, with the aim of joining forces and undertaking our role in safeguarding the planet.
04
Elicit the final design concepts
After completing the co-design workshops, we synthesized the insights gathered from experts, citizens, and partner institutions to refine and consolidate our initial ideas.
What is the service?
Who are the users?
Why this service exist?
The four mechanisms of user engagement
The four mechanisms outlined in the final proposed service concept provide a participatory approach where citizens, artists, and research scientists have the chance to gather environmental and behavioural data and translate it into art interpretation through a joint effort. In further detail,
The designed service began with accessible probes for data collection, in line with the core enactments of citizen science, moving through data visualisation and culminating in creative and collective outputs of scientific research insights. . This service aims to increase citizens' ability to perceive the scientific and ecological world tangibly.
Toolkit
A hands-on participatory method where citizens use simple physical probes to collect environmental data and contribute to the artistic process.
Participants co-create the dataset and the material elements .The toolkit becomes both a scientific probe and an artistic medium.
Hands on
Citizens gather environmental measurements (air quality, water levels, biodiversity, etc.) through sensors and translated them into visual forms that artists reinterpret afterwards.
Data becomes the “first wire” or structural inspiration for an art piece.
Digital twin
A virtual representation of a natural system, such as a park, resource, or ecosystem, illustrating its current and projected ecological health conditions.
The digital twin serves as an immersive interpretive object, often displayed through screens or holograms.
Audiovisual
Citizens record their everyday behaviours (mobility, consumption, waste, and habits) through smartphones or shared cameras, capturing lived experiences connected to environmental issues.
These recordings become part of an installation where people can view, reflect on, and comment on behaviours.
05
Reflection of Arct
This project helped me see how the core idea of Villa Clea: connecting artists, citizens, and scientists, can be scaled up far beyond the neighbourhood.
By studying similar initiatives and imagining how this concept could adapt to different community dynamics, I realised that its global potential lies in raising awareness about sustainability and climate change. The mission behind the service achieved through a collective and participatory approach is not bound to one place.
This journey helped me understand the long-term responsibility of service designers, which is to create systems that can evolve, be replicated, and be meaningful even outside their original setting. By envisioning how the service could grow sustainably and adapt in diverse environments, I gained a more profound foresight and the transformative lens of design when it is connected to global challenges and down-to-earth user initiatives.