Concept Selection Process: Criteria Evaluation Stage 1

After completing all of our concept cards, we now had the job of narrowing the field.

Using the brief to form the basis of our evaluation criteria we took some attributes we thought most relevant and rated it from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest), considering the following:

Experiential: Does it provide users with a real physical experience? Do users actually do something? How social and public is this experience?

Interactive: How much can users input feedback into the system and get feedback in return? What will the quality of this feedback be like?
Engaging: How pleasing is the concept to users? How much does it hold a user's attention? Is it enjoyable?

Innovative: Does it incorporate new ways of approaching an existing product/system? How much can the concept transform into a useful application?
Relevant to Airport: How useful is the concept in the context of a new Brisbane Airport, Domestic Terminal for low cost carriers - considering the possible size of the terminal, types of passengers, and passenger numbers.
Feasible: How practical is this solution? Will it be cost-effective for the Airport Corporation to implement?
Original: Is this a completely new concept, different and unique to what already exists?

After all reviewing each concept and rating using the criteria above, we all chose a top 3 or 4 individually. We shared our preferences and tallied the concepts that appeared the most in the top.
The resulting top 8 (in no particular order):

1. Modular Seating
2. Entertainment Area
3. SmartTrack (Baggage Status Updates)
4. Line Markings
5. Interactive Wayfinder
6. Airspoon
7. Physical Locater
8. Pool/Sauna

In order to further refine down to a top 3 concepts, we then went through and considered which out of these attributes ranked more important than others in our expectations for the final concept that fulfilled the brief. We ranked this higher or lower depending on importance - where a ranking of 3 was "neutral".

Experiential x3

Interactive x5

Engaging x2

Innovative x4

Relevant to airport x5

Feasible x3

Original x4

Relevant to Airport and Interactive ranked the highest, whereas Engaging ranked the lowest. 

An interactive experience is a top priority as made clear in the brief. Relevance to Airport is also an important factor as it serves as the environment and context for the concept, with factors such as traffic, size of terminal, types of passengers informing the design decision we make. 

While Engagement is an still important attribute, we felt it not as important since some of the most useful systems in an Airport are those that may go unnoticed - such as systems that reduce waiting times. A concept that is enjoyable is a nice thing, but not always a necessity.

Experiential and Feasible were thought of "neutral" attributes and were left ranked in the middle. All of our concepts have an experiential aspect so this didn't need a higher or lower ranking. Feasibility is a definite consideration but also a factor we already considered in our original concepts, so for the most part this was already covered.

We then multiplied the concept scores by this extra ranking to produce a final tally.

Our top three, based on the highest scores were.......

1. Baggage Status Notifications (renamed to "Smart Track"): 105 points

2. Modular Seating: 99 points

3. AirSpoon (app to pre-purchase food): 95 points

Now that we have our top 3 concepts chosen, we now have to choose one. 

The next step is getting some users to evaluate these 3 concepts.