The Community Chest

A community project aiming to encourage recycling in Fife, Scotland

 

The Community Chest was a project involving the town of Gauldry, Fife. The community could swap, add or remove items from the chest. Primarily old unwanted items were placed in the chest. This reuse of old items and giving them a new lease of life encouraged communication and recycling in the town through novel means.

 

 

The project was based upon designing for fictional users. The aim, through research, was to expand this small amount of information that was provided for the character. This has value because it enables design for users when regular contact with the group is impossible.

 

For research purposes i was trying to think like our users but to replicate abnormal psychological conditions in our daily routine was impossible. It is a contradiction.

 

To create abnormal psychological conditions i was forced to upset our daily routine by imposing physical boundaries and conditions on myself. This involved an experiment with a tent, laptop, video camera, and a small town called Gauldry. The experiment took place outside of Gauldry town hall for one day. I personally stayed in the tent for 24 hours and created a video diary to record how I felt hour by hour.

 

A small experiment in participatory prototyping was carried out with some members of the community to establish the ideal environment for the project to be placed in. Using Lego an other on-hand materials small mock ups of the village were altered to create the ideal community.

 

On the 2nd November 2005, the Community Chest was placed in Gauldry with full support of the community council. To begin with locals were sceptical of the service, believing it a potential target for vandalism. As weeks went by the chest became more recognised and the community council on the 8th November requested the service be continued past the planned test period of one week. The Chest was finally removed on the 30th November 2005 after being in location for a total of 28 days without any major problems.