Micro UX: Peoples Pub Partnership

Designers: Ranga Bhave, Fangxue Chen, , Effy Liu, Parth Loliyania, Zhe Lou, Ava Shepherd, Kristen Sullivan, Jacob Tomes, Ella Wilson

This week is the first week of Micro UX! For this brief MA UX will be collaborating on a 7 week project with external partners. For the duration of this project, myself and 8 other students will be working along side 'The Peoples Pub Partnership' (PPP).

Mark Dodds, founder of The People's Pub Partnership, started the day off with a presentation about his organisation, what they do, and why this company means so much to him. Finally he presented us with our brief to 'Design a way to materialise the community governance model of pub ownership'

Initial Research

After receiving the brief, our group decided that the best approach would be to use this first week to do initial research and think about the approach we wanted to take. None of us were very well versed on the different governance models that pubs use and how these different models may affect the pub as a whole. Therefore we spent the week doing our literature reviews and primary research.

Notes from research

Key differences in governance models

From our research we were able to learn the key differences between the different pub models.

Tenanted = Rented establishment from a pub company or brewer (co-owned)

• Have control over the pub workers, stock and upkeep (supplier depend on the whether it is rented from a brewer)

Managed = Establishments run by staff working for a pub chain (co-dependent)

• Have no control over the pub itself

• The pub chain controls all stock, design, supplier, workers and upkeep

Owned = Owned and run by the landlord/manager of the pub (independent)

• Fully managed and controlled by the landlord and workers of the pub

Community = Owned and controlled by a large number of people within the community for community benefit.

Pub Research Tour: AEIOU

Following our initial research, we decided that it would be beneficial to explore the different types of pubs around London. This would allow us to understand how the different pub models affect the overall atmosphere and characteristics of a pub

List of some of the pubs we visited and their pub models

We therefore broke up into small groups to explore a range of pubs across London and use the AEIOU research method to gather data.

Us in our groups exploring pubs

Collection of photos from different pubs we visited

AEIOU Analysis from pub research

Testing Probes

Finally, once we began to understand more about the community governance model we wanted to explore different ways we could easily bring community engagement into the pub. One idea was for people to be able to design and customise their own coasters. As coasters are something found in most pub settings we thought it could be an interesting angle to introduce a sense of community.

Testing this idea was generally very successful, people were excited to participate in our project and decorate their own coaster. We found this to be a positive form of community engagement and a possible route to continue in the future.

Reflection

Overall we were able to get a lot of work done this week. At the beginning of the week, we decided that we wanted to stay as one large group compared to splitting off into smaller ones. This has worked really well so far as it has allowed us to explore lots of different avenues and do lots of initial research as a team.

During our presentation this week we received feedback that it would be beneficial to extend our analysis of the pubs and use more research methods than just AEIOU to fully understand why people go to the pub, what they like at the pub and what a community pub is to people. This is what we are going to work on this week.

Next Post: Week 2: Further research and prototypes