Here is my quick indie project.
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RecitoRide – Quick Indie Project by Anupma
I re-imagined Recito, (a project i worked in Crafting interaction class, last year) as a crowd-sourced system installed in NYC subway station where the content-consumed by the riders feeds into the Recito system. This system monitors and recommends popular content to the riders at the station kiosks. People can get the content (as audio logs/ offline reads) on their phones using ‘touch and scan’ technology.
Read more about this project here.
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How to get rid of our “Third Places” and thoughts on: Our Vanishing “Third Places”
“An electronically-operated garage door out front and a privacy fence out back afford near-total protection from those who, in former days, would have been neighbors.”
I think that separating ourselves from the outside world is in vogue. From immersing ourselves to our systematic daily routine (and not looking out) to grabbing with our eyes any digital device screen (and reducing to a minimum our peripheral vision) we create “bubbles” and occupy them at all times. If that process is increasing by the minute, it means that the demand for “Third Places” is decreasing and of course the customer is always right.
“The flaw in much of today’s residential land use pattern — all space is used up and there’s no provision for a community life.”
I think part of the flaw is a response to how our “home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle” works: mainly as a car commute. Therefore, that need was answered by a city-grid planned around vehicles with a very high percentage of the public property dedicated to vehicular circulation and the rest to pedestrian circulation only.
If you want to get rid of our few “Third Places” simply do nothing or move as far away from work as possible.
On the other hand, if you want them back follow what advanced societies do:
“THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE ARE PEOPLE-FRIENDLY CITIES” (http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/the-cities-of-the-future-are-people-friendly-cities/)
I think the best way to try to rescue or create public “Third Places” might be to transform our sidewalks from being circulation-paths to a series of bay-spaces or plazas by lowering the percentage-area that is currently assigned to cars.
“Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places.”
The moment “Third Places” appear people will start using them.
About six years ago New York City created a “Third Place” in Times Square as a series of plazas that potentiated the place to become an actual square. In my opinion an excellent move. It helped near by businesses and attracted many interesting people like “The Desnudas”.
“The Desnudas of Times Square, Topless but for the Paint” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/nyregion/the-desnudas-of-times-square-topless-but-for-the-paint.html)
Unfortunately, if you want to get rid of our few “Third Places” simply become one.
“Mayor de Blasio Raises Prospect of Removing Times Square Pedestrian Plazas” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/nyregion/mayor-de-blasio-raises-prospect-of-removing-times-square-pedestrian-plazas.html)
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Thoughts on Ray Oldenburg’s article “Our Vanishing ‘Third Places’”
In the article “Our Vanishing ‘Third Places” Ray Oldenburg argues that our happiness hinges on our ability to socialize with the people around us, and we need places where we can support this social interaction. Oldenburg coined these places as “third places,” defining the “first place” as home and the “second place” as work.
Oldenburg outlined the importance of “third places.” They serve has hubs; they benefit communities by providing people with a place for getting information, exchanging ideas, and connecting with each other. Since Oldenburg wrote this article, we have (to some extent) resolved many of these needs with the internet. We have created accessible virtual places within games, social media, and public forums where we can chat and mingle. There are innumerable ways to be informed, entertained and self educated with the internet. While Oldenburg’s vision relied on a local gathering place that people can walk to, we now have an even closer alternative right at our fingertips.
Still, it’s worthwhile to consider the nuances of Oldenburg’s physical “third place” today. Even though the internet has created a version of his “third place,” it doesn’t quite hit all of his points. While the internet can help facilitate conversations, it does not directly replace meeting someone in person. On the internet, we have a high amount of control over who we meet, when we meet, and how we meet. It doesn’t help populate Oldenburg’s barren suburban streets nor does it create the ideal conditions for the casual, spontaneous interactions that he valued. While we have invented technology for us to communicate efficiently, we have not created technology to communicate naturally like we do in real life. We can’t hug a sad friend who is miles away. Unless provoked, most people aren’t proactive to meet their neighbors. Oldenburg’s physical “third place” forces individuals to step out from behind the screen and actively participate in their surroundings. Unlike your computer or device, you can’t turn off or log out of your physical environment. Oldenburg wants people to contribute to the humanity of a community by being both mentally and physically present.
There is certainly value to physical “third places.” Yet, I don’t think that “third places” need to be formal structures like Oldenburg’s taverns or corner stores. Even though proximity is obviously convenient, his argument for “walking cities” might be irrelevant in the next few years. With driverless cars or even improved public transportation, it will be much easier for anyone to make it to their “third places” no matter what the distance is. Accessibility is no longer a strong enough reason for building local physical “third places.” (Though urban sprawl might be.) Kathy Madden’s article “Third Places I Know” describes impromptu “third places” that occur on the sidewalk or in a parking lot – a place forms when and where ever people happen to meet. Services like MeetUp, Lyft, Swarm and even dating apps start to create flexible gathering places that can occur while in route or in situ. I imagine that the future of “places” won’t all be contained in neatly framed buildings. They’ll be unconventional, shapeshifting and mobile – maybe they’ll be highly evolved food trucks or mobile gyms?
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Welcome 2015 Public Interfacers
Hello-
Hopefully you all have usernames and passwords for this blog.
I am looking forward to meeting each of you and exploring methods of designing for pubic space. The syllabus has been mostly updated if you want a sneak preview.
See you all Tuesday the 8th at 6pm.
-Michael
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Final Presentation Schedule
6:05 – 6:20 Park Talk
6:30 – 6:45 Jared
6:55 – 7:10 Flux
7:20 – 7:35 Break
7:50 – 8:05 Malm
8:15 – 8:30 Tapper
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Team Jared Final Prototype
We when out to Union Square and 3rd Ave to interview people and collect media, pictures and video. Our goal was to collect information from each area to influence the content we are making within the subway.
Area right by the 3rd Ave. stop.
The north end pavilion in Union Square.
Patterns and color schemes for 3rd Ave’s subway stop.
Patterns and iconography for Union Square.
Possible Audio:
3rd Ave’s subway stop: 3rd Av
Union Square: 14thUS
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Team ParkTalk – DHNS
Concept:
Crowd sourced prompts (learned through previous prototypes) for a life size dice (as previously discuss in our brainstorm session and what resonated when shared with Melody and Amy) for users to discover activities and locations of WSP. Also, we chose to do something slightly different and with knowledge/data learned from previous experiments.
Materials/components:
WSP big foam core map + 20″x20″ cube with prompts on each side
6 prompts total with one being left empty so that we were able to change it out based on what was happening at the park
Temperature:
Date/Time: Sunday Nov 23rd @ 12:40
Launched for 30 mins.
3 locations: West of Fountain 10 min, North of Fountain10 min, Plaza East of WSP 20 mins
Reception
Very few people were engaged in the prototype
A few ppl stopped to look at the prototype but no engagement.
Less children engaged today overall
Only one lady stopped by to engage in prototype but she ended up writing on the board to indicate where the pigeon guy is located on the map
Today, there were many activities happening in the park, therefore possibly competing attention with our prototype
Live Piano player
Lady creating huge bubbles (had huge kids engagement)
Fake pigeons by the North of WSP by the Arch
Live pigeons by the plaza towards the East side of the park
Brand Trio on the South side of the park
Our intentions:
We had intended for the prototype to be a way for park-goers to discover new activities or parts of the park.
The board set up was on the ground verse eye level this time. We also made sure to observe from afar. At a few times we engaged flipping the cube to help cause traction in interest of the prototype which still led to no response.
Our Takeaways & questions going forward
- A drawn ‘How to’ example could have been helpful for today’s prototype.
- Dice should have possibly looked like a real dice. Our dice prototype looked almost like just a big craft box.
- Maybe creating your new path with the dice would be more fun instead of pointing out to just one direction. (Or reward something?)
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The cube with the prompt . . . not sure if pole knew how to engage with it? Did we need another prompt indicating to “roll the cube”.
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Was the cube suggestive enough as a dice to have that game aspect
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Was the set up inviting enough?
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Were there too many other activities at the park that competed w/our installation?
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Did we have it at the right location or faced the right way that allowed users to see better and allow easy engagement.
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Team Jared: Projection Prototype
Our focus over the week has been using projection to display content. During IxD open house, we projected pictures of people within the IxD space and let others participate by tagging their photos of IxD via Twitter and Instagram. We curated the pictures and then projected them onto the wall. Fun stuff. This helped solidified that content is what truly connects us and opens us to engage in it.
Then we wanted to show specific content surrounding the area of a stop. We chose the N/R stop on 23rd under the Flatiron building and next to Madison Sq. Park. We put together a looping deck of Flatiron and Madison Sq. Park imagery and then projecting that on the subway’s walls as people passed by.
Sadly, the battery to power the projector failed on us before anyone could engage with it.
Setting up.
Right before the battery failed.
But here are some concepts of what we would have liked to happened …
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Team Jared: UX Diagram
We want to engage in a few touch-points within the subway to give riders a better sense of the actual place at a stop while riding underground. This week we plan on tackling two of the touch-points, the subway walls via projection and screen display signage.
Here is two user journeys plotted out that give examples to each on the same trip.
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