Clients
City of Boston, Quest Boston
Industry
Civic Design, Service Design
Timeline
October 2024- December 2024
My Role
Lead UX Researcher
Boston draws more than 20 million visitors every year, but most of them visit the same handful of places: the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, Boston Common, and the Seaport. Jamaica Plain, on the other hand, remains largely undiscovered.
Yet JP also has places people will happily travel for, including the Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, and the Emerald Necklace. The problem is that once visitors arrive, there’s little to encourage them to explore beyond those attractions.
So instead of treating these landmarks as the final destination, we saw them as the starting point: a front door into the neighborhood. We designed totems that show visitors what's within a half-mile and mile radius and recommendation boards that let businesses point to their local favorites.
People end up at the attractions in neighborhood but never beyond.
Roughly 30,000 people come to the Arnold Arboretum for Lilac Sunday. Nothing at the exit tells them what else is nearby.
White Stadium draws 10,000+ for a big soccer game. Centre Street sits half a mile away, and almost nobody there knows it.
Four Orange Line stops run through JP: Jackson Square, Stony Brook, Green Street, Forest Hills. None land in the commercial corridor, so foot traffic already in the neighborhood gets no push toward it.
We took a walking tour of JP with Collin Knights @ Live like a Local Tours, as well as carried out an extensive literature review to understand what’s there in JP.
We didn’t want to design for local businesses from a distance, so we went into Jamaica Plain and spoke directly with business owners to understand their perspectives and needs.
01 Totems outside big attractor destinations
Each totem shows a proximity map of walkable local businesses, with distances that make the neighborhood feels navigable rather than unfamiliar. The goal is to answer the question visitors are already asking: “What’s around here?”
The funding model matters too. JCDecaux already supplies Boston’s bus shelters and public maps through an ad-for-amenity arrangement — meaning the city could deploy totems at no additional cost. This was a design consideration to make the proposal genuinely feasible.
02 Physical magnet boards at the businesses
One of the most unexpected moments of our research: every interview ended with a referral. “Have you talked to Ross at Boing!?” “You should go speak to Brad.” We arrived with a list of four businesses and left with a map of a community that was already looking out for itself. Nobody had designed this network — it had just grown.
The magnet board makes that network legible to outsiders. A simple countertop display where owners place tiles for the businesses they genuinely recommend — not curated by an algorithm, but chosen by the person who knows the street. Each tile is QR-scannable, so a visitor can get directions in one tap.
01
Where the businesses are
Centre Street and Hyde Square have the highest concentration of local retailers and restaurants in JP — but most visitors never make it there
02
The big attractors
Jamaica Pond, the Arboretum, White Stadium, Franklin Park Zoo — these bring people to JP. The problem is, they also let them leave without ever seeing the rest of it
03
The T stops
Four Orange Line stops run through JP, but none land directly in the hot spots. A totem at each stop is a low-effort way to redirect foot traffic that’s already in the neighbourhood
04
