Collaborative Place Making for
NYC Public Seating
Website renewal project
Have a seat is a facilitators who act as out-of-home marketing consultants to promote small businesses in NYC to participate in our business that uses one-of-a-kind marketing strategy and create sustainability activities for the public.
In New York City (NYC) public seating, including city benches, are disappearing or are predominantly owned by private owners who secure their space with hostile architecture to prevent public use. NYC residents and tourists are impacted by this shortage. Further, seating facilities in tourist attraction areas in Lower Manhattan and Midtown are mostly owned by private businesses such as coffee shops and big franchises, and walking-tour pedestrians are struggling to find a place to take a rest.
Our intent is to develop a partnership with NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) to provide seating facilities available to the public across the city. Our objective is to create more seating facilities and make meaningful collaborations with a variety of stakeholders to provide sustainable activities to the public. We plan to work with various design, construction, and legal frameworks and methodologies. Our design solution will be beneficial to key stakeholders including small businesses, property owners, government agencies, and the public.
Public seating in NYC
In New York City, people walk farther and faster than any other people in the world. New Yorkers on an average walk anywhere in the city from two to five miles, or about 10K steps a day. This is not just limited to NYC residents but also true for travelers because many NYC attractions and
stables are located within walking distance. However, imagine that you need to take a rest while walking and you do not wish to spend a single dollar to sit in a privately owned seating area, such as coffee shops or restaurants. When you are walking through popular attractions such as
Midtown and Lower Manhattan, you will notice that there are not many public spaces to rest.
Top Challenges for small business owners
33%
13%
Lack of Capital/ Cashflow
Recruiting/
Retention of
employees
15%
13%
Marketing & Advertising
Administrative
work
Time
Management
13%
13%
Marketing & Providing benefits
Small businesses in NYC
There were more than 2.1 million businesses in
New York City, of which 99.8% are small businesses and one of the top challenges that small businesses face is marketing and advertising. In the middle of the big data era, these companies are lost in finding an effective way to reach out to potential customers and promote their products and services. Since the audience is overwhelmed with the number of advertisements that they daily receive, enterprises have to give a meaningful and unique impression to appeal to those customers their businesses.
Problem
Even though there are other seating facilities owned by private owners, these are predominantly sponsored by big corporations and marketing agencies to promote their businesses by placing advertisements on the facilities. Comparatively, small businesses, which usually have financial difficulties to invest aggressively into marketing plans, have fewer opportunities to own and utilize such seating areas as their marketing medium. We discovered two problems that are occurring.
1
2
Public seating in New York City is disappearing, especially near tourist attractions.
The majority of businesses in NYC are small businesses and one of their biggest challenges is their lack of capital to promote businesses.
Key Players
SMALL
BUSINESSES
Small Businesses that are trying to promote their businesses with effective marketing strategies
LARGE
CORPORATIONS
Small Businesses that are trying to promote their businesses with effective marketing strategies
GOVERNMENT&
3RD PARTIES
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Approvals and Supports from Government agencies such as NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) and Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless, Inc. (ACE NYC)
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Local Community Board
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Property owners
Facilitators and Design Strategists to connect stakeholders and promote sustainability activities for the public
Target
Our target audience is divided into two sectors. First, the NYC residents and tourists who may actually use or be affected by our product or service. The other is our clients, small businesses, who may seek our marketing solutions.
1
Residents and Tourists
End users who directly use our seating facilities and perform social activities within the community
2
NYC Small Businesses
Our clients who use our marketing strategy to increase brand exposure, present their values, and create more connections
Website Prototype
We created the end product as a website which is a communication platform to create more opportunities for those small businesses to expand their market. The reason why we chose the website because of its convenience, accurate data, and affordable subscription investment since most of the time small businesses struggle with cash flow.
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1st Step: A new user has to create an account with us by clicking the "Sign in" button. We'll ask them for some information about their company and pain points to help analyze their business operation.
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2nd Step: We'll get to more details by asking about their location preferences and specify the neighborhood that they prefer to install the seating.
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3rd Step: We'll ask the user more about their ideal materials and their company's concept so we can figure what design, location, and materials would fit their expectation.
4th Step: Then after we gathered all the information, we provide renders of the installation prototype to show if they match the customer's expectation.
5th Step: When the customers settle down with the prototypes, they will be brought to the next step of making an appointment to meet with our professional consultant team.
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Profile Page
After the users created an account with us, they will get a profile page that allows them to share their company's overall information so they can build more connections with the similar business industry in the future.
Partnership
The users can learn more about those organizations that we collaborate with to showcase their daily operation and how they can benefit small businesses.
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Color
#FFFFFF
#F8CF2D
#262827