DIGITAL & STRATEGIC
UX DESIGN PRACTICE
UX FOR THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
How might we help to humanise skyscrapers through digital experience design?
Making a more approachable and porous place, reframing heritage and promoting active lifestyles in the most sustainable tall building in the City of London.
Create a digital design vision which is aligned with thearchitectural scheme and critically frames the role of digital technologies to shapean elevated front of house and back of house experiences.
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The research process undertaken enabled the design teamto understand pressing and future needs of building stakeholders which led toclear definition of technology use cases.
Arup’s collaborative and empathic approach to smart designhas enabled a fluid dialogue between the digital and physical design layers toenhance the place experience holistically.
“Overall, I felt the document reads well and reflects the ambitions we have for 50 Fenchurch St.”
Maxwell Shand – YardNine
50 Fenchurch Street is a tall commercial building in the city of London designed by Eric parry Architects, which will be completed by 2028 aiming to become the most sustainable tower in London and to maximise connectivity with the surrounding community
The building will open its Level 10 terrace to public visitors to maximise the building’s value and generate a strong sense of place locally. In doing so, how the building is run and managed to meet the expectations of private tenants and public visitors while allowing efficient operations is one of the key challenges of the digital place experience design and must be considered from an early stage.
Our team joined the project during RIBA stage 2 to work closely with the Smart Buildings technical team to create a user experience playbook that will define the core challenges to be solved by the digital layer and will drive technology investment decisions.
Our work was developed building on Arup’s expertise in workplace and property innovation and supported by other Arup technical discipline leads. Applying a human-centered design approach allowed us to look at the place experience from multiple user lenses to identify the key persona groups impacted by the development, shape their user journeys and define the long list of digital use cases.
