Portfolio: "social awareness"
Smooth Driving.

The concept of the TAXI Visitors Book is mainly for a bit of fun, enabling a driver to build a collection of compliments (hopefully), from selected passengers, about 'good service' and 'smooth driving'. It may also be a place for the driver to make an entry, perhaps about an unusual job or an incident that has occured... a sort of special diary note.
The visitors book is not intended as a formal or official document. In time the book should build to be a collection of some of the more positive reminders of 'good work' and 'smooth driving' over the course of time, whilst working with the general public and all the flavours of atmosphere this entails.


main cover design (second edition)

The design for the cover started with the choice of a bright patchwork display. This seemed fitting as the day of the working taxi is often made up from a collection of small jobs that are often all different in their own right.
These differences are true of the people, such as well dressed people going out to a special function, perhaps followed by someone going home after finishing a heavy days work at a local factory. These patchwork differences also apply to a 'next-job' change in driving requirements, such as short traffic-congested inner-city jobs, perhaps changing to long distance open-road driving to get someone up to the airport.
The visual images for the front cover were also arranged to follow the patchwork style of design.


front cover image design (second edition)
Once the patchwork design for the cover was agreed, it was decided that a collection of images would be effective to visualise 'some' of the patchwork of jobs that may make up a day in the work of a taxi. These images would then be laid out to blend into the overall patchwork cover.

Each image was selected from a range of images collected over time, to offer a sample variety. To get the images, a camera rig and a selected lens was designed so it would ride along over a period of time, taking images as the variety of conditions unfolded.
The important part of the camera rig design was that the camera would remain in the same perspective in each image, so the only change for the viewer to observe would be the conditions surrounding the taxi. There were around 100 choices of conditions, from which, 5 were thought to be sufficient to offer an effective visual sample.


interior layout design
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The main content pages were designed to enable a collection of visitors-feedback to be entered. Each page was given three visitors-feedback areas. Each feedback-area was designed with a simple basic information layout consisting of three sections:
Section one allows reference to date and name. Section two gives a visually easy 'tick-box' choice of 'smooth', 'good', 'bad', 'ugly for the 'drive' and for the 'driver'. Section three is the main 'comments' area. This is a reasonable size so as to allow an easy writing area, to account for the awkward and limited space inside the car.
There are 100 pages, each with 3 visitor-feedback areas, giving a total of 300 comments to be collected.


Concept evolution
The initial concept was to introduce a conversation and stimulus using a public road vehical (taxi), about smooth driving... being good, safe driving. A few summarised sentences were collated and written, introducing the physics of being smooth on the road.
The Taxi Visitors Book, first edition "The Art of Smooth", was produced, then tested in a private hire taxi (me driving) over a period of time. The result was a lot of stimulated discussion about benefits of smooth driving, its merits for general road safety and an educational stimulus of some of the physics behind the mindset. It was always to mind, that the positive aspect of the idea, was enabled because the driver was familiar with both physics and experience as an educational instructor.
It was noted that the concept itself was successful in the main because of the driver's educational ability and not the content of the Taxi Visitors Book, in its own right.
It was concluded that the subject and potential public discussions on the subject of "smooth driving" were interesting and so had merit regarding a road safety subject and public interest and intrigue.... but the book was no more than a visual stimulus for the public and the discussions were more to do with the knowledge (applied physics) and educational engagement of the driver.... and so the book would not work well, released on it's own in the real taxi driver world.
This led to a rethink and the introduction of the revised Second Edition.

The Taxi Visitors Book, second edition, was produced to allow the book to be on a level with mainstream drivers, about mainstream service and driving quality.... the heavy end physics education stimulus was removed and given a platform of its own (under another concept "A road safety concept based on "Momentum".
Once the physics had found this more suitable platform, the Taxi Visitors Book could just include a page with a few sentences about, good service and good, smooth, driving.
The second edition was produced and tested again in a private hire taxi. The result was a lot of stimulated discussion about the merits of good service, including the relevance of safe, smooth driving. As the heavy end physics education was removed from this platform, the feedback also changed.
The change was that feedback was still positive, but had become lightweight and almost bland. There was little intrigue in the reactions of the general public.
It was concluded that this new edition book design is now suitable for release into the main stream taxi driver world, in it's own right, regarding drivers, good work, good service and.... good smooth driving.
It was also concluded that the re-design was also at the expence of removing the main purpose.... being to stimulate an education and intrigue amongst the general public, to some of the physics on our roads and the road safety benefits of smooth driving.

It was therefore decided to freeze this "smooth driving" book concept.

It was decided to broaden the new concept platform (where the removed physics info was placed).... The new concept platform, being:
A Road-Safety-Concept "MOMENTUM EXISTS" (an online educational platform)