HartNav - Navigation device for Hart House
Established in 1919, Hart House, a recreational center at the University of Toronto, is one of the older buildings on campus – and hard to navigate. As a project in my Engineering Strategies and Practice 1(APS111) class, my team was assigned to reimagine wayfinding. This was the first engineering design concept I worked on.
Design
When generating ideas for navigating Hart House's multiple floors, numerous events, and twisty hallways, my team categorized ideas into solutions implemented into the building itself and solutions that interacted with the user directly. To the right is an alternative design made by a teammate and myself, which we proceeded with as our final design.
Considerations
When picking our final design, we had to consider feasibility, stakeholders, and what we believed our design should excel in. Since the building is an artistic icon at the university, we decided on a user interaction based device instead of modifying the building.
Conceptual Design
Our final design, HartNav, is a proprietary device that displays a live interactive map using its own positioning system. This unique positioning system is only usable at Harthouse and has Z-axis location finding to assist users through multi-floor direction. A projector on the back side visually projects directions on the ground.
