CMU 51-774 : Final Project

Final Project

Background:

"The Intelligent City" may sound like an oxymoron, but this phrase is the best we have to account for a set of interrelated concerns now at the forefront of debate on urban livability. This could be a matter of diversified infrastructure, greener economics, neighborhood-centric planning, public information networks, museums without walls, entertainments, and more. Yet consistently it comes back to amenities. What kinds of places attract and foster the new economy? Recent trends in other regions suggest that urban places are at a new advantage, but only if they add a new layer of amenities. Many of these are recreational. One director at Fore Systems said "our people want a 500 foot climbing wall on Mt. Washington a lot more than a new football stadium." Amenities need not be destinations, however; they can permeate everyday spaces of living, working, and socializing. They can work in the periphery, helping us to tread more lightly on resources and more knowingly about local culture. Whether at the scale of the firm, the neighborhood, or the region, people increasingly want to work someplace that "gets it."

Members of the board of Carnegie Mellon have expressed embarrassment that the university has often simply (literally, in the case of some recent buildings) turned its back on the city. The president of the university has declared that the future of Pittsburgh and the future of Carnegie Mellon are inseparable. Faculty in public policy, architecture, environment, and history, have begun exploring prospects for a research center, and perhaps a graduate degree program, on the intelligent city.

Oakland has been selected as the obvious first study area. It's no Berkeley; it's no Harvard Square. Oakland has plentiful amenities of a monumental sort but lacks ambience. It is short on "third places" conducive to enterprising chat. It is hardly the urban laboratory that it could become. It isn't as much of a regional draw as it used to be. It sets few examples to its generally suburban-bred student population, who in often respond with neglect. For the present ambience, just look at the litter on Atwood Street.

What is the role of interaction design in neighborhood amenities? What applications of ubiquitous computing could contribute to this place? That is our point of departure.

Assignment:

You are asked to develop a design proposal for a smart place in Oakland. This could be public or private, on campus or off, infrastructural or a point of interest. It could be art, entertainment, conviviality, civics, or shopping. It could serve a chosen client group, or market segment, or membership, or it could be there for the arbitrary passer-by.

As throughout this course, your design work should focus on the meeting of portable and embedded information technology. Likewise it should continue its emphasis on process: design as research, contextual inquiry, scenarios, and product development. Meanwhile if you delve into "clicks-and mortar" situations, you will have to make some choices and assumptions about architecture and urbanism as well.

Working in pairs seems the most appropriate here, however you are free to work solo if you prefer. As a group we will need to position our various projects in such a way that some larger whole emerges from their respective contribution. This confederation of projects can be our take on a strategic problem now emerging in design thinking around this university.

Format:

Course meetings (and we have a backlog of a these to make up if we like), shall be devoted to project consultations. Sometimes this will be as a group, but for the most part they can be individual. A mid review will help us stay aware of one another's efforts, and will provide an impetus to maintain a steady pace of work. A final review with invited jurors will provide a chance to express our findings and propositions to an outside audience. A CD-ROM will provide an archive of stand-alone presentations. Some work from this project will be presented at the Doors of Perception conference in Amsterdam this November. Work will be evaluated on the basis of the following: Problem: urbanistic appropriateness of project Premise: imaginative, situation-creating design concept Process: documentation of research, inquiry, and development Product: resolution of proposed artifact or setting Presentation: concise articulation, live and with stand-alone document, of project assumptions, decisions, credibility, and intent. As a way of starting, you are asked to provide an 100-200 word abstract stating your problem and process.

Dates:

11 April: Project Issued
18 April: Abstracts due
27 April: Internal progress review
11 0r 12 May: Final presentation