6 Feet Humble
A floor plan is not the way people see the space
In 2017, I finished an exhibit project and had the chance to see how people experienced the spaces I have spent months developing. I was surprised by how differently people, including myself, actually perceived the space once it was built. I had been looking at the same rendered designs for months, but once I was physically standing in the space, a question struck me:
Why do designers design things from a god-like perspective for a pedestrian point of view?
My question stems from the idea that, even though we design on a big-picture level, most people tend to look at things right in front of them. For instance, if a banner spanning the size of a football field hangs in the air, most people would assume the banner could not be ignored. But counter to assumption, people walk right under it without seeing the entirety of the picture. The big-ticket items like a massive banner sell a flashy story to the stakeholders who pay for the space, but the details at the pedestrian eye level, the nitty gritty details, are what attendees truly notice.
Two zones I recently designed capture the idea of micro vs. macro experiences: Lightning vs. Einstein.
Both these zones were product launches, with roughly the same amount of square footage. Both were held in the same building, on separate floors.
Aside from having different product strategies, the most significant difference between these two zones was the different scale of elements put into them.
Micro-level case study (Lightning Zone) :
My creative team had differentiated the Lightning Zone by suspending different elements in the air. We focused on organizing the hung elements to avoid visual claustrophobia. Our team deliberated for hours about elevation, height, size, and grommet methods. Details, details, details.
Macro-level case study (Einstein Zone) :
Within our internal teams, the most highly anticipated project was the Einstein Zone. It had one large WOW factor, a giant Einstein head. We had an open floor plan anticipating attendees to gather and discuss. But the entrance was what we hoped would draw the attention of the crowd, bring a bit of the wit and humor, where people can say ‘Oh, I get it!’
Stakeholders tend to be wowed by the large and impressive things in the proposal, but when it comes to seeing things in person, large is not necessarily the best solution.
Scale perception is where the Lightning Zone’s story really came to life.
We had 5 categories of flying objects at varied heights in the zone. Some of the paragliders came right above the attendee’s eyes, while others created canopies that enclosed areas. People looked up to see characters hang gliding and stats being pulled by a three-dimensional plane. Seeing these objects in person no longer made these flying objects seem so small. Attendees became part of the storytelling experience. The Lightning Zone was enriched with details of flying objects, and those were the moments of delight that you would hear attendees talk about when they passed by the space — it became the “space that flew”.
Einstein Zone, on the other hand, required you to take a step back and appreciate its scale.
We had a 24 foot high by 50 foot wide Einstein hair structure where attendees would walk through the glasses of Einstein, metaphorically telling the story of seeing ‘through his eyes’. With something that big, the best way to see the entrance was from the middle of the floor, like we showed in the renders. But most people came up the escalators, bringing them right up to the entrance. Those who were not paying attention would not have seen the hair unless they walked further away. Even during the build, union workers who spent hours helping us assemble the Einstein hairpiece didn’t realize it was hair until the very last minute. In my opinion, the scale we were working with, did not work with the circumstance.
Both zones were successes in their own merit, but the Lightning Zone did not ask attendees to work in order to be delighted because it focused on the experiences at human scale.
Simply put, bigger isn’t necessarily better.
Perhaps we should question the status quo of pitching visualizations from a 360-degree drone perspective if people who experience the space will never see it that way. It is tempting to pitch ideas of grandeur and test the limits of how large we can build. Still, it won’t change the fact that when a human walks in to experience a space, the average person stays around 6 feet humble.
More on process behind these projects:
