Recommendations for the Management of the Green Garage's Information Kiosk

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Recommendations for the

Management of the Green

Garage’s Information

Kiosk

Matthew Piper LIS 7400 12/09/10




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This semester, each student in the Urban Libraries Seminar taught by Maria Gonzalez atWayne State’s School of Library & Information Science partnered with a different Detroitnonprofit organization to help it meet some promotional information need. The outcomes-basedprojects were informed by student-led seminars given throughout the term on subjects rangingfrom social capital to the 21st century library to public relations and marketing. The projectswere designed to encourage students to develop a broad conception of what contemporaryurban library and information services might look like, as well as to begin the work of buildingmeaningful connections among area institutions in the service of a better Detroit. My site partner was the Green Garage, a developing green business incubator whose primarygoal is to provide office/work space and resources to start-up green businesses in Detroit.Driven by a strong sense of community and a commitment to information sharing, the GreenGarage intends to create a public information kiosk and display it on a fence at its historicmidtown location. My project was to visit other area businesses with existing public informationdisplays in order to learn from them and generate a set of recommendations that the Green

Garage can use as a guide to manage its kiosk.

What follows is a more detailed look at the Green Garage and my project, as well as my final listof four broad recommendations (and several sub-recommendations for each).

Introduction




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The Green Garage is an emerging green business incubator housed in a historic building inmidtown Detroit that is currently undergoing a sustainable renovation. The building, on SecondAvenue at Prentis, was originally built in 1920 and was once, among several other things, aModel T showroom. When it re-opens as the Green Garage in early 2011, it will provide officeand workshop space for developing green businesses in Detroit, acting as one of the first majorparticipants in the effort to revitalize Detroit through nourishment of a nascent green economy.The Green Garage is the vision of Tom and Peggy Brennan. It is guided by at least threeprimary organizational values: sustainability, community, and history. Sustainability The Green Garage is committed to environmental sustainability. From its function as a spacefor emergent green businesses in Detroit to the sustainable rehabilitation of the building itself,this value underscores everything the organization does. As just one manifestation of thisvalue, the several-year rehabilitation project has resulted in only a single dumpster full of refuse;all other materials from the original building have been recycled or re-purposed for use in the

renovated space. The rehabilitation has been carefully designed to result in a building thatadheres to net zero energy standards, producing no carbon and relying on natural lighting andventilation, geothermal heating, and re-used water for plumbing.

Community A sense of community guides the Green Garage in several ways. For one, the project itself wasborn out of community involvement, with more than 120 volunteers contributing their energiesand expertise toward conceptualizing and realizing the vision of the organization and building.Further, the core team hosts weekly, open lunches, to which anyone is invited to learn about theproject and/or contribute their efforts. The Garage’s approach toward incubating greenbusinesses, too, is community-oriented, with member businesses expected to maintain mutualstewardship over the building while they share it, and with multi-purpose spaces inside designed

to foster idea sharing. Further, a resource center to be located inside the building will beavailable for use by the businesses in residence, but also by the community as a whole to learnabout sustainability on a personal level. Finally, the Green Garage is dedicated to participatingin the cultural life of midtown Detroit, opening its doors during local festivals and partnering withother local organizations to help build a solid, tight-knit small business community in midtown. History The Green Garage is fully invested in understanding and documenting the history of the buildingand the midtown neighborhood in which it sits. To that end, volunteers have spent many hoursresearching the building (which is on the National Register of Historic Places), its previoustenants, and the 19th-century families who lived in houses on the site before construction of thebuilding. Artifacts from this long history have been unearthed along the rehabilitation process,

and have been archived and published on the Green Garage’s Flickr page. Additionally, anumber of historical photographs have been uncovered, offering glimpses of the Garage andthe neighborhood through the decades; these are available on the organization’s wiki. TheGreen Garage’s sense of history helps it understand both its present circumstance and Detroit’spotential future. The Green Alley, a project developed adjacent to the building, was paved withbricks that had once covered the building’s large windows after Detroit’s 1967 riots, a stirringexample of this historical sensibility and optimism for the future.

The Green Garage




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Once renovation is complete in early 2011, the Green Garage intends to mount a communityinformation kiosk on a fence in front of the building along Second Ave. This bulletin board-typespace will be available to the community as a place of information dissemination and exchange.Tom and Peggy asked me to perform a study of surrounding area businesses and organizationsthat have similar designated spaces for informal information sharing. The nine businesses Istudied were:

Avalon International Breads Bronx Bar Bureau of Urban Living Cass Cafe City Bird Motor City Brewing Works Source Booksellers Starbuck’s Traffic Jam & Snug

The study addressed the broad question “How does Detroit communicate informally?” Morespecifically, it investigated the following, for each business studied:

What are the goals of the information spaces?o Are they the same or different across businesses?o Does anyone know if the goals have been met?

What is the content of the information displayed?o Is it explicitly relevant to the business or broader in scope?o Does someone in the organization determine what can go up? If so, who?

What is the extent of the “collection?” o If there is a limit to the number of items that can be displayed, what is it? How is

the line drawn? Are there policies in place to govern this? Are the policiesconsistent with the organizations’ goals?

How much space does the display occupy and what form does it take?o Is information displayed in more than one place? If so, is there a meaningful

distinction between the different locations?o Is it easily accessible?o Is each piece of information represented by a single item that stays in the space

or are there multiple copies for customers to take away?

What is the level of interest on the part of customers? What is the shelf life or turnoverrate of the information?

o Have the businesses had feedback that the content of the information is of valueto customers?

What are the lessons learned from maintaining these collections over time?o Are there any obvious problems with setup of the display?o Have the businesses made any changes to its display based on prior

experience?

My Project




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In order to answer these questions and begin to understand how the Green Garage’sinformation kiosk might fit into midtown’s existing informal information sharing network, I took athree-fold approach that included observation, interviews, and research. Observation I visited each business several times to get a sense of the information displays: their size,placement, and content. I was interested in attempting to determine how successful thedisplays were (i.e., were people looking at them?), and in taking careful note of the extent ofeach collection (e.g., how many items, what kind, how arranged?). This observation gave methe opportunity to independently form important conclusions about the displays and theirsuccess (or, as it turned out in some cases, lack of it). Interviews At the businesses, I spoke to employees or proprietors about the management of the collectionin order to get an organizational perspective on the displays. I prepared a list of questions toask representatives from each organization (see Appendix A), but found that the most fruitfulconversations were the ones that were ultimately allowed to develop more naturally.Unfortunately, due to constraints on the interviewees’ and my time, these longer, free -formconversations were few. Nonetheless, each interview yielded important information, and thebest conversations provided substantive, exciting directions for the project to take. Research In order to provide support for some insights, structure my recommendations in a morethoughtful way, and draw on the work of experts, I conducted some basic research in the field ofInformation Design. My original research in the literatures of Library & Information Science,Communications, and Urban Studies yielded a disheartening dearth of information about thepublic display of information. A consultation with Judith Moldenhauer in Wayne State’s GraphicDesign program, however, pointed me in the direction of Information Design, a discipline withwhich I was previously unfamiliar and which proved to be strikingly relevant to the project and

quite insightful.

Together, these three strategies resulted in the following list of four final recommendationsaddressed to Tom, Peggy, and the rest of the core Green Garage team. Each is discussed inmore detail in the subsequent section:

1. Use the kiosk as a way of communicating the Green Garage’s values of sustainability,community and history.

2. Maintain an active curatorial and organizational hand in the information displayed.

3. Be prepared to accommodate documents/flyers in a variety of sizes.

4. Become an information destination.




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1. Use the kiosk as way of communicating the Green Garage’s valuesof sustainability, community, and history.

The kiosk will be, among much else, your introduction to the local community. For many, it will

be their first encounter with the Green Garage, and as such, is an ideal opportunity to express(even implicitly) your core values of sustainability, community, and history. Support

Claire at the Bureau of Urban Living makes clear her organizational values of art,design, and support for the local businesses community by actively curating hercollection with those values in mind. She wants her information display to be of use toher customer base, which she describes as also being interested in those things. Sheuses her display, therefore, to further her organizational goals in a way that also speaksto her customers’ interests. Similarly, Janet at the Source Booksellers curates her display with respect to the valuesof health, well-being, women’s issues and community efforts toward social justice, whichare the values she wants to promote at an organizational level. She does not allow thedisplay of what she terms “negative stuff,” and wanted to relate that, “You don’t want thecommunity to run the show” in case you end up promoting others’ values. Avalon International Bread’s primary information display board incorporates photographs(of children baking bread and the installation of a new oven, for example), news articlesmentioning their organization and/or the midtown neighborhood, and a “Givin’ the Local”sign, all of which emphasize Avalon’s values of community and sustainable, local foodculture. Emily and Andrew at City Bird and Claire at the Bureau both have special sections neartheir check-out counters where they display information advertising events/organizationsabout which they’re especially passionate. These informational pieces may or may notalso appear with the rest of the displayed information, but by singling them out, theproprietors are making pointed statements about their own values.

Sub-recommendations

a. Keep your values in mind, but conceptualize them broadly so that your display is notexclusive. Be creative in what you consider related to sustainability, community, and history inorder to be inclusive of the community.

b. Have a personal presence on the kiosk. Hang photos, news articles, award certificates, amission statement, etc., so that the community knows who you are and what you stand for.Advocate for a sustainable lifestyle through informational materials that you create and share.

c. Create an additional information space inside the building that is reserved for informationabout events/causes/organizations that are especially dear to you. Since the public will beinvited in through the cafe and resource center, this is another opportunity to clarify anddisseminate your values.

Recommendations




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2. Maintain an active curatorial and organizational hand in theinformation displayed. By making the kiosk open for the public to populate, you are inviting the good as well as thebad. Don’t be afraid to remove materials that you find inappropriate (for whatever reason,

whether they contain off-color language/imagery or just don’t mesh with your values) or thatunnecessarily clutter your board. Entropy happens; work diligently to avoid it by regularlyscanning the kiosk and removing out-of-date information. Support

Nearly every person I interviewed mentioned that they have no compunction aboutremoving materials they find inappropriate. “Inappropriate” is defined locally, so you willneed to determine what that means for the Green Garage. At Starbuck’s, for example,inappropriate materials include anything that advertises a for-profit enterprise. AtAvalon, inappropriate just means containing offensive language or imagery. At the CassCafe, it describes content not relating in some way to Detroit. At Starbuck’s, employees scan the display between 4 and 5 times a day to look for inappropriate material. Most other organizations do it closer to once a week. Atorganizations that take a more hands-off approach, information is duplicated, out of date,and/or hung on top of other information; the spaces have become so cluttered thateffective information transmission is all but impossible.

Space is precious, and Janet from the Source Booksellers told me that numerous peoplea day typically show up with information to display, so the board will probably fill quickly.Noted Information Design expert Edward Tufte said, “Clutter is a failure of design, not anattribute of information” (Baer, 2008, p. 2). Chandler Screven refers to the concept ofdesign efficiency, or “the average time it takes viewers to find and process message-related exhibit information” (Screven, 1999, p. 147). He reminds us that “recall andrecognition of visual information decline as the number of items on display increases” (p.142).

Sub-recommendations

a. Have an assigned person actively scan the display at least once a week at a specifictime. Whether the responsibility falls to one individual or rotates, assigning it will ensure that itgets done. The person should look for content that is duplicated, out-of-date, or inappropriate,and remove it. He or she should also make sure that one piece of information does not obscureanother. (This may be especially important for you compared with other local organizations,

since because your kiosk will be outside, you will be less likely to approve materials before theygo up.)

b. Don’t be afraid to move content. If you see patterns among the information displayed (suchas in content, format, color, or size) chunk it so that like items are grouped together in a waythat catches the eye or lets it flow naturally from item to item.

c. Maximize design efficiency. Remember that if your goal is to effectively transmit information,the fewer informational items, the better. Strike a balance between filling your kiosk and




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cluttering it. Invite the community’s participation but remember that “information overload andclutter...scatter attention and increase fatigue” (Screven, 1999, p. 147) and that, “The goal of communication-oriented design of messages should always be clarity of communication ” (Petterson, 2002, p. ix).

3. Be prepared to accommodate documents/fliers in a variety ofsizes. From business cards to full-sized posters, the information I observed on the various displaysurfaces came in a great variety of sizes. Different organizations have devised different ways toaccommodate this based on their particular space constraints and opportunities. Support

Janet at the Source Booksellers simply does not allow the display of large posters. Sheonly devotes a small table to the display of information and the table does not

accommodate anything much larger than 8 ½” x 11”.

At the Cass Cafe, employees have devised a system for collocating materials of similarsizes. Their information table contains exclusively postcard-sized fliers or smaller; 8 ½’’x 11’’-sized (or thereabouts) fliers are displayed on the surface of the counter behind andabove the table; posters are hung from the counter.

Motor City Brewing Works has installed recessed shelving to house its collection ofpostcard and business card-sized materials. There is a freestanding rack for larger, mid-sized materials, and posters are hung on the wall.

Avalon, which accepts almost everything the community wants to display, initially had

one bulletin board and decided to add another to accommodate the ever-increasingamount of information. Even with two, the information items cannot be contained on thetwo boards, and many larger items have by necessity been hung on the walls.

Sub-recommendations a. The large size of the Green Garage’s kiosk is probably in your favor here. Consideraccepting fliers/posters of all sizes for a time and see how it goes.

b. If the large-sized posters end up taking up too much space, consider asking communitymembers to supply smaller-sized versions. My observations made clear that in most cases

when an individual or organization has gone to the trouble of producing large posters, they’vealso printed smaller versions for wider distribution.

c. You may also want to consider enforcing a size ban based on the constraints of the kioskand the number of materials displayed at one time. Alternatively, you may consider enforcing a“1 or 2 posters at a time” rule.




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4. Become an information destination. When the Green Garage opens, it will be the hub of sustainable innovation in Detroit, and will bethe city’s green heart. Capitalize on that distinction by drawing Detroit’s visitors to your organization as their introduction to understanding and visiting the green initiatives throughout

the city.

Support Claire at the Bureau told me about a bulletin board in a coffee shop in her formerBrooklyn neighborhood. Any time community members wanted to rent, lease, buy, orsell an apartment, they knew to visit the coffee shop to post their information or see whatothers had posted. Based on the numbers of visitors to her midtown store who havesaid, “We’re from out of town. Where are the urban farms?”, she envisioned somethingcomparable at the Green Garage: a one-stop information destination that would pointpeople asking similar questions in the right direction.

One particular book about international Information Design, the Information Design Workbook , has a special case study section on the re-branding and re-imagining ofDetroit through thoughtfully-designed maps. “How can a city adopt a new way of thinking of itself?” the book asks, and then answers, “Information design has helped”(Baer, 2008, p. 29). See Appendix B for an example of a simple, bold map designed byCalifornia-based Applied Storytelling to help create “a new sense of shared identity andpurpose for Detroit residents and businesses” (p. 29).

Sub-recommendations a. Design and prominently display a simple, eye-catching map that plots out the city’s urbanfarms, greenways, sustainable developments, green businesses/community organizations,bicycle shops, etc., as well as the routes that connect them. This map could be a permanentfeature of your kiosk, only coming down when new, more current versions are made to replaceit.

b. Include future developments on the map (clearly distinguished as such) that are likely tosucceed. Use the map to drum up excitement and show your support for the M-1 light rail line,the Southwest Detroit Greenway, and other efforts.

c. Print smaller-sized versions of the map for visitors to take with them, and hang them from thekiosk for easy accessibility.




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The conversations I had with representatives from the various organizations made severalthings quite clear: the midtown business community is thrilled to welcome the Green Garage asa new neighbor and is looking eagerly forward to seeing, contributing to, and referring people toits information kiosk. My interviews, observations, and research also revealed that the kiosk willbe unique not only in its size and public accessibility, but also in the thoughtful approach theGreen Garage team intends to take to manage its content. While numerous Detroit businesseshave elected to make information available through some sort of public display, none of the nineI studied has approached the undertaking as carefully as the Green Garage has. Perhaps as aresult, some of the businesses’ displays suffer from problems of entropy, disorganization, lack of currency, and lack of focus.

Over the course of working on this project, it became apparent that the Green Garage team canlearn much from others’ successes and failures, as well as from the insights of experts, in theservice of designing and managing their information display. You have the opportunity todesign a singularly effective, vibrant, and targeted information space that will make a significantcontribution to -- and ultimately improve -- midtown Detroit’s informal information sharing

network. I hope that the recommendations outlined above will provide a stimulating and robustpoint of departure for the realization of that vision.

Concluding Thoughts




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Baer, K. (2008). Information design workbook. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, Inc.

Petterson, R. (2002). Information design: an introduction . Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins

North America.

Screven, C.G. (1999). Information design in informal settings: Museums and other publicspaces. In R. Jacobson (Ed.), Information design (pp. 131-186). Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

References




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List of questions asked of representatives from each business

Who is responsible for managing the content of your information display?

Can anyone put up anything?

If not, how do you decide what can go up?

Do pieces of information have to be approved before they can be hung up?

How often do you scan the board for out-of-date or inappropriate material?

How do you define “inappropriate?”

Has anyone told you that they’ve attended an event or used a service based on information they

found on your display?

Are there formal policies governing the display?

Are there particular goals you intend your display to meet?

Do you consider your display successful?

Appendix A




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Map example

Downtown Detroit district map

Copyright 2010 Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau

http://www.visitdetroit.com/downtownd/mapdowntownd

Appendix B

Recommendations for the Management of the Green Garage's Information Kiosk

Documents

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