TIMELINE
3 Weeks
COLLABORATORS
Eric Ertmann
Jabili Kaza
Adam Menz
MY ROLES
Experience Design
Storytelling
Domain Research
Methods/Tools
Domain Research
Concept Design
Storytelling/Copywriting
Visual Rendering
Adobe Illustrator
Sketch
the challenge
"There are many wonderful urban environments around the world where millions of people live, work and play every day. Select a large and densely populated urban area, and design an experience that temporarily or permanently transforms the city for the enjoyment of its citizens and visitors. The experience must take advantage of existing infrastructure, and may be above, below or anywhere in between existing development."
the process
Research
Our initial inclination was to pick a lesser known yet beautiful and untapped city as the city to focus on, however, we ran into trouble identifying a particular infrastructure to transform. After all, there needs to be a story behind the choice of infrastructure as well. After many affinity diagrams and collaborative discussions later, the team decided to concentrate on iconic infrastructures including but not limited to New York City, San Francisco, and Venice. While brainstorming potential concepts and ideas for each of these cities, the team had stumbled upon the story of abandoned subway stations in the Big Apple.
Story Development
While opportunistically aiming to utilize this abandoned infrastructure, the City's iconic pizza came to mind, and alas a story was born as follows:
“The best pizza in New York City is not on the corner of Spring and Mott. Nor is it on E 15th St. and Ave. J. No, the best pizza in New York is a well-kept secret, and for good reason. Catering to a peculiar clientele and situated deep beneath the streets, lies an underground pizzeria, where Joey the rat works feverishly to feed an army of NYC’s infamous rodents.
Ego, now a small business investor determined to share the heart-warming nostalgia he experienced at La Ratatouille, asks Remi to help him find more “diamond-in-the-rough” chefs. Remi, having heard of Joey’s pizzeria, offers to travel with Ego to NYC and help convince Joey to work with humans.
They find Joey in the abandoned City Hall Station and share with him the principles of the late Gusteau. Remi extols the virtue of ‘Anyone can cook,’ and Joey is convinced that he needs to share his pizza with everyone and encourage each patron to try his or her hand at cooking, humans and rodents alike.”
I was responsible for designing the vehicle which would transport customers from City Hall Station to the "hidden" pizzeria. After several iterations of paper sketches, I went on to render it digitally through Adobe Illustrator, with the final deliverable as seen as below.
