R E S O U R C E M A P : A P R O J E C T
F O R P A R S O N S H E A L T H Y M A T E R I A L S L A B
Problem
Year 4 of Healthy Materials Lab’s (HML) existence saw a renewed dedication to producing original tools and resources for our audience. Sharing these resources caused our audience to grow significantly. Although our resources were plentiful, questions and feedback we received made me realize that it must be difficult for new audience members to get a complete idea of what Healthy Materials Lab has to offer. Some questions and themes that summarized this problem are:
How might I design a solution that provides HML audience members a holistic understanding of our menu of offerings?
How might I design an experience that guides a certain user’s to the tools that were designed with their specific needs in mind— while not burdening them with tools they might find unhelpful?
Opportunity
In Fall of 2019, HML hosted our first symposium. This event was attended by over 350 people, and was an opportunity to engage both old and new audience members in person. This interactive resource map was designed and conceptualized to guide symposium attendees through our menu of tools and resources. The design was inspired by quizzes one might find in a magazine— and was intended to be familiar and slightly nostalgic.
QR codes led individuals to specific website pages, where they could learn more, download resources, and watch educationall videos. The resource map also served as a key. If your journey along the resource map led you to a postcard, you could grab your own copy to bring home and refer back to at your desk or in the studio. These postcards had the same links and QR codes as were present on the resource map.
Future iterations
This resource map was designed to be an interim solution that can be employed at in person events. Feedback from this exercise spurred our communications team to strategize how we might digitize this experience and transform it into a navigational function on our website’s home page. This resource map also taught us the power of a narrative. Future research questions include:
How might we design tools, resources and experiences that provide a narrative for our work?
How might we re-design our website UI to support the varied needs of our audience sectors?