I send this pothole pic to @311NYC a few months ago. 311 replied and referred to their protocol on their website to submit and upload issues. I’d much rather participate in reporting through a tweet.
Kyle McDonald showed me http://bkme.org/ an ITP project. Input/output mapping system for bike related street issues via twitter.
A growing list of shops and resources
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=217872516614142342392.0004aa16cfdc60ea503cd&msa=0
This November I got the chance to do a narrative design workshop at the Digital Media Department at RISD. Some very interesting questions on methodologies and process came up. What is the value of prototyping with video?
What is just enough prototyping? Where does it make sense to develop working devices and where is (fake it real) much more efficient in the process. Maybe this practice can be referred to “just enough prototyping” and iterative in terms of improving the interaction, narrative to find problems in the scenarios. Ideally producing scenarios that asks questions and not just solving problems.
Of course we watched the classic collection of corporate future videos. 90 minutes of corporate silicon valley futures from the 80-90ies. Slick futures, seamless Experiences, advertisement-device-techno-future-smarthome-family-happiness scenarios.
With the “Perceptive Machines” brief we started exploring needs not addressed in typical design. Some students started looking at the idea of emotional and psychological needs. Watch Dan’s “Okay Therapist” robot prototype.
Night School: Camera Hacking with Chris Woebken and Kyle McDonald 11 30 2011, a set by Studio-X Global Network on Flickr.
Don’t you remember Sun’s Starfire and Apple’s Knowledge Navigator video? The corporate imaginations of the future created in the 80ies are set 10 to 20 years in the future, but they outdated immediately. As a thought experiment I dubbed a collection of Silicon Valley’s corporate futures dubbed on a “Back to the Future” rental VHS tape.
I shared this BTTF tape with Julian Bleecker and we started and exciting discussion about these corporate future video’s. Why are they so ikky? Is it the idealised smart home, the device centric scenarios, the language or the uncanny happy family setting? Maybe there is good examples in movies to find. Sometimes the technology disappears in the background. The first example that came to my mind was a scene from “Fahrenheit 451” that Noam Toran showed in a presentation at the Royal College years ago. In the movie you can see a smart home(ish) scene from the future with flat panel displays, automatic doors. What’s different than the corporate visions is that it seems the technology is ambient in the background. Is it because you can notice something is wrong in the relationship of that couple in the film?
