In this project we were looking at ways to interact with and engage with people.

 

What initially began as an investigation of an urban problem that I had observed, namely access to free water sources around town, became an experiment in engaging the public in discussion and to spark curiosity. 

 

Using the issue of free water access as a vehicle to explore public engagement, we set out to create an interactive public installation that allowed participants to think about and respond to issues and questions we posed, in effect functioning to collect primary-source data.

 

We found in earlier exercises that getting people to respond to surveys or questionnaires was difficult, tiresome, and often simply didn't work. How do we reduce the friction of obtaining responses?

 

Maybe if we created a scenario in which people approached the questionnaire rather that it approaching them, they may be more willing to answer some questions.

 

We created an installation of water bottles hanging from trees, like water drops dripping from the branches. Attached to each bottle was a tag that said "Take me" on one side and a short questionnaire on the other. We provided a pen and a bucket for people to deposit their responses. 

 

We called it "The Free Water Experiment"

 

After installation was complete, we observed and took some notes and then waited 24 hours to return and see what had happened. We weren't entirely sure what to expect, but thought maybe some people would do it, a few more would observe from a distance, and a lot would pass by. 

 

The next day we discovered that all of the water bottles and the tags had been taken from the tree. We took everything down that was still attached to the tree and when we returned to studio we counted and read through all of the responses. It turned out that we had 100% response rate! In fact, it appeared that after all of the tags were gone, someone used their own piece of paper to answer the questions, which gave use over 100% return.

 

Success!