Gideon D'Arcangelo, principal at Arup, argues that experience design should lead building design: map each user's journey first, then shape the spaces and digital layers around it. He explains what it will take for digital twins to become normal practice.

Gideon D’Arcangelo, Principal, Arup

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In this conversation

How Gideon moved from the Global Jukebox, a pre-web interactive media project, into interactive museums at ESI Design and then into buildings.

Why he treats digital and physical as one world, and experience design as the way to bring the two back together around the person.

His journey-line method: identify who the users are, walk them from before they arrive to their usual spot, and mark the pain points where design can help.

How the PNC building lobby in Pittsburgh turned building automation data into a display that let occupants help the building perform.

What has to be true for digital twins to become normal: owners who require the model to pass from design to construction to operations, and a data governance plan up front.

What success looks like at JFK's new Terminal One: a family that wishes it had arrived an hour earlier.

I practice experience design, which is really thinking not about digital or physical but just about human experience and how to make it excellent.

Gideon D’Arcangelo

Chapters

From digital media to buildings

Gideon's path from the Global Jukebox and ESI Design's interactive museums to technology in the built environment.

Mapping the user journey

How experience design borrows from UI/UX to map users, their journeys and pain points, complementing architecture's focus on volume.

Showing occupants what the building does

The PNC lobby data visualization, and why most building data will flow to facilities teams and eventually to trained models.

What it takes for digital twins

Arup's three-part definition of a digital twin and the handoffs, data governance and early wins needed to make it standard.

Orchestrating Terminal One

Designing a curb-to-gate journey at JFK that tells a New York story, and experience design as a horizontal integrator.

Take the lead

His advice to young designers, drawn from designing downtown Providence from user journeys before placing buildings.

In a few years' time the conversation will be more like "What are you doing with your digital twin?" not "Do you have one?"

Gideon D’Arcangelo

Takeaways

Experience design maps user journeys and pain points, borrowing from UI/UX, and complements architecture's focus on volumes and capacity.

At the PNC tower in Pittsburgh, a lobby data visualization showed occupants what the building was doing so they could help it perform better.

Arup defines a digital twin as a 3D model, live data from building systems or IoT, and analytics that together allow what-if scenario planning.

Digital twins need owners to require the model's path from design through construction into operations, plus a data governance plan up front.

He tells young designers to take the lead, as Arup did in Providence, designing a downtown from user journeys before placing buildings.

I like to think of audiovisual technology like another material, a choice whether you're going to put marble in your lobby or something communicative.

Gideon D’Arcangelo