Creating Relaxation Pods for the Youth

“Sit, Relax, Breathe. There are 1440 minutes in a day, so taking 5 of those to re-energise will not be the end of the world”

Helping fellow humans to relax within the business of life.

Bluff Trail at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve Park, California. One of my favourite rejuvenating spots. That’s my husband having a power nap!

Brief

This project started out as a classroom project. I was studying at Design School, when a group of friends were given a task to design a space which is like a time machine. We were very interested in creating a space that helps with relaxation and rejuvenation. We also wanted to explore ‘childhood memories’ as theme for our time machine. Put simply, we wanted to create a space that can transport the Youth to their childhood and have a soothing and calming effect on them. (I am well aware that not everyone has an ideal childhood, some of us have traumatic and horrifying experiences while growing up. But this project was an endeavour to just relive the positive memories) The project is an outcome of a 2 week research & design module.

Process

The project was a 2 week sprint and we had to identify the fondest memories of adults from their childhood, visualise these memories as features within our space and design and build the space within the 2 weeks! To make the work more efficient, we decided to delegate and have certain milestones set in the beginning itself. We divided ourselves in smaller groups that were either going to research or design. I was leading the research team and had to only assist with the building later. For the research phase, we used quick research methods such as Surveys, Card Sorting etc. The participants were chosen carefully but deliberately from different parts of India and were a mix of men and women because we wanted to find common links even in diverse backgrounds.

Research Methodology

The research for this project was divided in two parts. The first phase was the ‘Exploratory Phase’ and the other part came after the building was done which was the most integral, ‘Evaluative Phase’. It was a project which emphasised more towards the deliverable, which was the space itself. But I was excited to bring the data to the design team that can help them build the space.

Primary & Secondary Research

I planned a quick 3 day field study where I had to do the following things:

Sending and assessing surveys to 50 adults at the Design school. These adults were also people who have worked in Corporate spaces earlier and since its was a Masters Degree, most of them were above the age of 25. We had a good mix of men and women and was interesting to see how different their takes were, but still be able to find patterns. The surveys incorporated questions related to childhood memories, what they liked about their fondest memories, what relaxation means to them, how much time in the day could they give towards rejuvenation, etc
The second thing I wanted to observe was how corporate spaces incorporate relaxation spaces if any. I did a bit of secondary research to find what kind of relaxing pods are set up in offices, the time spent by employees in those spaces, how it affects their working style and does it add up to higher work efficiency. I set up virtual interviews with a few people I knew who worked in corporate offices. I identified what kind of spaces they had and what they liked best about them.

Data Analysis & Synthesis

After spending collectively around a week, we sat down as a team to make sense of all the data we had collected. We tagged the information on stickies and placed it in front of us to help us synthesise it. We identified that the participants reflected how they felt most relaxed when they slept in their mother’s lap, or how they remembered the sound of their mothers anklets and bangles. We had some very interesting findings where few of the participants mentioned playing with reflections created by hands, or flashing the wrist watch in sunlight to throw light on their friends in the classroom. Few people mentioned how they liked walking barefoot in sand or in grass and it was relaxing for them. A few mentioned that visiting beaches were a memory for relaxing and building sand castles was something they loved as a kid. All these insights were labelled and jotted down and shared with the design team which then went ahead and built the space in the school campus.

Design Development

The Design team used the data provided to them and built a space that could help individual transcend into a relaxing break from work in the middle of a work day and help them gain the boost they need to get through the workload. The location chosen to build the space was a breezy spot which was shaded and protected the space from harsh light. It had diffused light coming in from 9am to 6pm. It was close to the academic building and the students could access it whenever they wanted to. We called this space ‘Tranquiland’, as it was a space that provided much needed tranquility & peace.

Feature 2

Tranquiland also had mirrors which played with natural light and created beautiful reflections which reminded them of the childhood where they played with the glass on wrist watches or mirrors and loved watching how they reacted with sunlight to create the reflections.

Feature 1

The space was created with ribbons which kept flowing with the natural breeze where users were surrounded by them felt warm and cosy while remembering hide and seek which they played as kids. These ribbons had tiny bells attached which makes the calming sound of the anklets as the breeze catches them.

Feature 3

Tranquiland had created beautiful experiences inside this space where the users could experience various textures and play with these additional soothing elements which were added to relieve them from the stress of routine life.

Feature 4

There is a play experience which is recreated in Tranquiland from the moment the users step into the space barefoot. We created the experience of the sand at the beach using artificial elements other than sand.

Testing

After building Tranquiland, we opened it to all students and tested if it it actually worked. At various times during the day we went in to check if people liked using it. We spotted many people coming in a playing excitedly like a kid in the space. We observed some people just taking power naps in the space, (even though we had mentioned that it was not a space for that). We also noticed how people brought their friends over and tried some antics together. It was fun to see that even some of the pet dogs in our campus found the space calming and were spotted napping inside. Overall, it was a fruitful end to the project seeing people content and relaxed after utilising the space we created.