The Ventra Vending Machine
Aligning an information display with the user experience
Faculty Leads:
Tomoko Ichikawa
Jody Campbell
Teaching Assistants:
Rachel Huvard
Cagla Kuzu
Class:
Introduction to Visual Communication
Students:
Aamena Ansari
Samar Anwar
Rodrigo Dyer
Samar Elhouar
Lizzy Engele
Jessie Gao
Hugo Hsiao
Noah Keppers
Evija Kristopane
Eddie Kure
Shinichiro Kuwahara
Stephanie Meng
Anand Nagapurkar
Veronica Paz Soldan
Zack Schwartz
Faye Sun
Pukka Tackie
Julian Walker
Alison Yang
Minyi Zhang
How can you redesign the information on a physical artifact, such as a vending machine, to better support a busy user? In a hypothetical project to improve the communication graphics on the ticket vending machine for the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) — a standard and widely-used device throughout the city — students observed how users actually used the machine and redesigned the non-digital aspects of its information display.
This capstone project of the Foundation program challenged students to apply their cumulative learnings from the entirety of their Intro to Visual Communication course. The two-week project entailed deciphering and redesigning an informative and instructional portion on the top of the unit as well as a navigational portion that mapped to different parts of the machine.
The primary goal was to understand how users—whose main focus was to catch the train—would need to step through this experience in an efficient way, and to translate that insight into a visual experience.
The ID Foundation program at the Institute of Design welcomes students with no design background. Students take Foundation classes in Communication, Product, and Interaction Design, together with Photography, to become versatile, well-rounded, designers.
by Zack Schwartz
by Minyi Zhang
by Alison Yang
by Samar Elhouar
by Stephanie Meng
by Julian Walker
by Shinichiro Kuwahara
by Pukka Tackie