STBY has used film over the past years to explore and understand the people and situations that innovation teams design for. This project website gives a rare insight in how we do that, as almost all of our work is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements. To be able to share a glimpse of our way of working, STBY intern Izaskun Bilbao and creative director Bas Raijmakers initiated a demo project to illustrate how we use film.
Of course STBY tailors every project to the research question a client has, but the pioneering approach to filmmaking for design is always present, as this demo project shows. The question Bas and Izaskun started off with is close to their own passion of cycling: What opportunities exist to improve road safety for cyclists in London who use the Barclays Cycle Hire service?
Below you will see first the films that resulted from the design research, followed by an introduction of the three participating London cyclists and more materials that were created and used in the process. For the filming we developed a special technique to raise empathy with the viewers: Izaskun had a Flip camera mounted on her handle bars to film the participants while following them, and at the same time the participant wore a separate audio recorder with tieclip microphone. We asked participants to give a live commentary on their journey as they cycled which we later synced with the camera footage. This gives the impression that as a viewer, you are on the bicycle yourself. At STBY we always think hard about how to film in such a way that empathy is maximised.
A second thing to note is that the films resulting from this are in fact embedded with analysis, which is delivered through the editing. By putting certain statements and situations together, the evidence for a certain insight arises, and an opportunity emerges from that. Film can be used to not only capture the great outdoors of design, but also to thoroughly understand it and to see what could be done differently: the opportunities for innovation.
We hope you have as much joy watching the films as we had making them. If you would like to get into conversations with us about our film work, please contact Bas Raijmakers via bas [at] stby.eu or leave a comment below.