THE FLOOR IS LAVA

This project was part of a one-week intensive workshop in collaboration with Leif Huff & Stefanie Kubanek. The theme of this workshop was ‘Covid – Now what?’, inviting to us to design around the ongoing corona pandemic with its opportunities and needs. As scary and dramatic the situation is, it is also a unique and important moment for design to create lasting positive impact on our lives. It is a moment of opportunity for creativity, design and innovation.

Our project is targeted towards people using public transportation. Research showed that in 2016, urban and suburban public transport services carried approximately 185 million passengers on an average working day across the EU. This is a huge number, coming from the old situation in which crowded areas in public spaces was highly common. The current situation differs drastically. Few to no people at all are using public transportation today. Governments have introduced regulations that citizens need to follow. Now is the time to follow new behavior in a new situation.  The new normal.

That is the situation we have designed for by trying to answer the HMW question: How might we make physical distancing more fun and light-minded in times of worry and anxiety?

We have created a campaign using the concept of guerrilla marketing, to remind people of keeping physical distance, but in a fun and light-hearted way. The campaign is focused on different actions performed when using public transportation, such as walking, sitting and waiting. Each action follows a different approach, which will be implemented in a subway, on a bench and on platforms. To keep a coherent style for the whole campaign, the elements (earth/fire/air/water) are a recurring theme in all approaches.