We choose to look at the Castle Clinton area in Battery Park, which is the main area for departing to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
We choose the area because we were interested in a space that had a poor system for dealing with lines.
From May to September lines up to 30 minutes for tickets, additional 90 minutes for ferry.
Little signage and poor wayfinding.
Not utilizing or showcasing historical significance of Castle Clinton or other monuments.
People don't interact with eachother. A sense of competition for tickets.
The space is dull and vacant.
This makes people even more frustrated, bored and anxious.
Castle Clinton has a rich history.
A very diverse group of people, from all over the world, come to Castle Clinton to take the Ferry, and yet often have little way to experience the diversity of their fellow visitors.
Make it clear that Castle Clinton is where to get tickets for the Ferry.
Reduce need to wait in static lines.
Make people aware of the history of Castle Clinton.
Give people a sense of ownership and interest in the space.
Facilitate interaction among the people waiting for the Ferry.
1. Help alleviate lines, by giving people a numbered Ferry ticket early on.
2. Let people wander around in Castle Clinton and in the park by the River until their ticket number is called.
3. Install Video screens and create a video wall with historical and tour information on them in and outside Castle Clinton.
4. Create a way for people to post pictures of themselves to public screens that emphasize the diversity of visitors.
The left graphic below shows an overview of the flow of people in the space currently.
The right graphic below shows how we can reduce the size of the initial line and allow people to linger and gather in the castle.
The white bubbles are people, and the informational and photo kiosks and video wall (which are detailed below) are labeled.
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The wall highlights history of Castle Clinton through large scale visuals and provides way finding to ferry and announces ferry groups.
This is a simple mock up fo the PhotoKiosk.
Here people can come and navigate a series of steps (shown below), that ask where they are from, and then takes a picture of them.
On top of the Kiosk is a scrolling text explaining what the kiosk is for.
The photos are then posted to a video screen which shows a picture of the Earth, and as it rotates people's pictures pop up according to where they are from.
The Kiosk also prints out a ticket with a website they can go to later on to view their and others pictures.
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These are Screen Shots in Sequence from Left to Right that show the screen system people would interact with to post photos.
The language used in the instructions would be chosen on the first screen.
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This is an example of how the photos could be shown on the video screens.
The underlying globe could also be made out of a political map with the countries of origin colored in.
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The main inspiration we took was from Benetton's United People system, which allows people to take short video of themselves and post it on the web and to screens in Benetton stores all over the world. An interesting way of unifying the brand. We first learned about this at a recent Friday Evening Talk with an ITP alum.