Service Design as Entertainment

Why Pooptopia? A view into my design process.

Problem:
The sidewalks of via Watt are littered with dog poo. The neighborhood is what I have termed a "Pooptopia." Heaven if you like dog poo, but hell if you don't. This is a problem for me because my wife fears walking down the street to my school. This is also a problem for other people as well. Some of the poo has been flattened and smeared by unwary walkers. I happened to observe one unlucky lady wearing lovely boots as she stepped in poo across the street. We live in Milan and there are lots of fashionable people wearing nice, expensive shoes. I'm sure the poor girl was horrified to be scraping the bottom of her boots in the dirt and bushes.

Observation:
Around the big park near my apartment the sidewalks are clean. The park is huge by local standards and it has a sizable dog run, a fenced-in area for dogs to run free. This is a "Puptopia." Heaven for dogs, dog owners, and people just out for a walk. Me and a friend interviewed several dog owners enjoying the park with their dogs. They felt it was their responsibility to pick up after their dog. They all carried plastic baggies with them, made sure their dog only went in the grass or in the dog run.

This was also clearly a community. We were among friends and neighbors. They knew each other's dogs by name. Most of them take their dogs out 5 times a day, so they probably saw each other quite regularly. The dog owners had a lot of time to chat among themselves while their puppies played in the dog run. We observed something very special. As we were talking with two ladies, a third woman on a bicycle with dog on a leash and little girl riding in a child seat behind her, paused briefly to hand over the dog's leash to one of the ladies we had been talking to and then cycling away. Some time later she returned on her bicycle, alone. She must have dropped her daughter off at school. I realized that this was a daily ritual for both her and her friends. No words needed to be exchanged, everything was already understood between them. They had a strong community here and I think the park had a big role in this. It reminded me of the talk Enzio Manzini's gave to our class last year about the Commons, areas shared by the community. Poop-free sidewalks are just one beneficial side-effect of the Commons. I know you, you know me. I clean up after my dog, you clean up after yours. I look after your best interests, you look after mine. It's so simple.

Hypothesis:
Via Watt is a mixed commercial-residential area. No grand parks or grassy sidewalks. Just auto-shops, furniture makers, and hardware stores along with a couple pizzerias and kebab joints to feed to local labor force. Domus Academy and Interaction-Ivrea just moved into the neighborhood which signals that perhaps neighborhood is verging towards industrial-chic but it's not quite there yet. It also means the neighborhood has a strong flux of transient visitors, busy during weekday working hours, empty on weekends and evenings. Via Watt does have some residents, and obviously a number of them have dogs judging from the evidence. But I would guess there is no sense of community. Dog owners do not congregate in the street. They pass each other on the sidewalk, walking in opposite directions, meeting rarely. No one is looking out for anyone else, and if you're not going to pick up you're dog's shit, why should I?

And that, my friends, is why the people of Watt and Watt-like neighborhoods across the globe need M.P.A.A.S., the Mobile Poo Awareness & Avoidance System brought to you by turd-herders of Pooptopia LBS (Location-based service). Part of Service Design As Entertainment.

View the Flickr set for this project.

This post is dedicated to Neil Churcher for always asking WHY and was motivated by reading this post by Julian Bleecker. Pooptopia owes a large intellectual debt to Enzio Manzini and Jane Jacob's wonderful book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."