rethinking the TSA: Senior Design Studio

PREFACE

The Transportation Security Administration or TSA was formed out of the post 9/11 legislations, to make America safer and more secure. In short, the TSA has become a design disaster. TSA security graphics and screening queues are confusing, amateurish, and are inconsistent from airport to airport. Security queues were created from make-shift objects and materials, creating a temporary feel to a mandate that is anything but. These poorly executed solutions are evidence of the need for mediation of what is a very important design problem: Moving people easily through security, while communicating the rules and mandates which they must comply by all while making people feel comfortable, allowing them to navigate the protocols in an accessible manner, while presenting them with graphics that clearly communicate procedures that are often random and disparate depending on location. Despite the flaws, the TSA has started a design strategy called Checkpoint Evolution to make security better. This strategy has been recently implemented at BWI (Baltimore Washington International).

OBJECTIVE

The object of this studio is to rethink the way the TSA could use design as a strategy to improve signage, instructions, graphics, space navigation and people flow. As designers you will be required to dig in from scratch to research, identify, rebrand, rethink, and reconfigure the way information, graphics and wayfinding are deployed in typical airports in a 250 mile radius of the University of Cincinnati Campus. You will be working in two person teams. To make the project more realistic, each team will be focusing on a physical site. Cincinnati (CVG), Dayton (DAY), Columbus (CMH), Indianapolis (IND), Louisville (SDF) are five major airports within a two hour drive of Cincinnati. Two or Three teams will select each airport. Part of your research will be on-site for examining, sketching and documenting existing conditions and to meet with security officials. To the casual traveler, one may not notice the abrupt design solutions implemented by the TSA. Designers of all sorts will notice the flaws, the mishaps, and the areas where grand improvements can be made.