This social design project is made in collaboration with the social café "Cafe Paraplyen" in Kolding. A café where the guests, often vulnerable citizens, use the café as a place to hang out and get the warm dish of the day. The guests often sit alone and don't dare to ask for a seat at a table where another guest is already sitting. With the table umbrella design, the guest can signal that other guests are welcome to take a seat at their table, without guests having to ask.
SELECTION FROM THE PROCESS
When working with "Café Paraplyen", we had to identify a problem in their community. We volunteered in the café for a few weeks to understand the place, its guests and the volunteers. We wanted to work on something that would make a difference for guests, even though they were difficult to get close to.
We had noticed that many guests were sitting alone. We wanted to help create more and stronger relationships between the guests by designing something that would make it easier for them to open up conversation. We concluded that it would be best to design a way for the guest to signal that they were interested in getting company in a slightly discreet way. We experimented with different ways one could show this through physical objects. We ended up choosing an umbrella as it is decorative and has a clear difference between it being open and closed. An umbrella also references to the "Café Paraplyen's" logo and name. We made mockups and posters explaining our concept to test our concept in the café. We used the feedback from the test to develop our final design.
Concept presentation
Mockups
Testing of folding techniques
Test of our concept
Test model and final design
