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Canada’s most expensive cities, which can limit people’s social activities
and stifle new creative growth. Although this problem still plays a role
in my project, | failed with this solution to truly explore the breadth of
possible outcomes. By merely highlighting one function (searching by
price) in an already established format, | limited myself and my project,
which made further developing the concept into a community-chang-
ing, interactive experience initially very frustrating.

| had not yet embraced the “fuzzy end” of design — the beginning
phases of Elizabeth Sanders and Pieter Stappers design process, illustrat-
ed in Figure 3. [6] This stage includes the “many activities that take place
in order to inform and inspire the exploration of open-ended questions.”
[6] This front end is meant to be ambiguous and chaotic, with the final
form of the deliverable often unknown. Because | had already tightly
defined my problem (the high cost of living in Vancouver limits the
cultural interactions people can have) and the form of its solution (a

website listing events by price), it was frustrating to go back into the
design and ask: “How can | improve people’s interactions with music in
Vancouver?” “How can | make these interactions new, exciting and dif-
ferent?” “How can the artists and the audience grow from one another?”
Only once | let go of the standard format of an events site was | able to
go back and explore answers to these questions.

Opening up my design process to my peers was an important element
in opening up my design’s application. The classroom environment
helped facilitate conversation-based research and brainstorming
sessions, which became a very fulfilling way for me to ideate (Figure 2).
By becoming less possessive of my ideas, | was able to let them grow in
interesting new directions. Mirroring modern trends in design research,
| tried to include more public participation in the informing, ideating
and conceptualizing of my design. [6]