Cities as Organism

This a week intensive project is part of MA design management course in Lancaster University, which aims to develop a strategy to use design to make cities sustainable and equitable.

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Day 3) #.9 Summary of feedback

Use examples and evidences to support you ideas!

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Day 3) #8. Developing research strategies/methods (evidences & examples)

Q.   How to make connections?

- Different ways of making connections

- Using existing relationships or social media

- Available technologies

  2.   How to measure the value of intangible resources, particularly “time”?

- Social currency : the entirety of actual and potential resources which arise from the presence in social networks and communities, may they be digital or offline. It is about increasing one’s sense of community, granting access to information and knowledge, helping to form one’s identity, and providing status and recognition

- A book regarding measuring intangible values

- Scanning emotions

Q.  How to see the potential of the sharing culture?

- The landscape of current shared cultures / systems 

Skilio http://www.skilio.com/

Skilio lets you teach and learn via Live Webcam. Share skills and knowledge in their smart online classrooms.

Sharemystorage http://www.sharemystorage.com/

brings people together to provide a common sense self-storage solution – it’s cheaper, greener and local to you. 

- Drivers of shared economy / culture

- The potential of time sharing

- Getting started

Crowdfunding :  Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/                                                 Indiegogo http://www.indiegogo.com/

Causes : online campaigning platform around social issues  https://www.causes.com/ 

- The values of 'Couch Surfing' (perception)

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Day 3) #7. Developing research questions

Today, we started with a theme mapping we have done for last few days.

Our team started with four topics - "Time, Resources, People, Social Relationship". We explored the focus of the research at the macro level, before zooming into the specific interests of the diagram.

After identifying the key topics, we drew some research questions from the diagrams.

(hard working C!)

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Primary research question

Sharing Society : How can we make/have more time for each other?

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Secondary research question

1. How to make connections between people?

- technology / behaviour / meanings

2. How to measure the value of intangible resources, particularly "time"?

- amount / what other resources come together

- emotional benefits vs practical benefits

3. How to see the potential of the sharing culture?

- existing system / the 'past' / trends / limitations

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Day 2) #6. Prototyping "Time"

Second idea : Time Sharing

People are exchanging money for goods and services. But how much value should we put in time?

Time is intangible. So we often forget how much it is important and valuable. However, at the same time, time is finite. This means that time can be considered as a limited resource we own.

Given this, we started to think of how we can use a spare time more meaningful and valuable.

Can we share the time for our neighbourhoods who need for our time? And how can we measure this shared value?

This is much more challengeable then prototyping a community garden because firstly, time is abstract and intangible. And secondly, If we are paying people to share something, it starts to devalue the power of a share. Lastly, time does not exist by itself, which means when we exchange time we also exchange their other assets such as skills, tools, knowledge or even space.

Considering these complex matters. we started it from rough idea sketch.

Then we improve some main features.

Main Screen shows the list of available people based on the distance and activity rates.

Daily availability in time frame

Monthly availability : Different colours represent how busy he/she is)

Profile based Search : Users can search people

Location based Search : quick search option that user can find the closest available people

Community based sharing economy requires "trust" among people who use the system.

Also, when the excahge occurs without economic profit, we might need emotional triggers

How can we start/built them?

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Day 2) #5. Prototyping the "Community Garden"

After warming up, we made few more prototypes exploring ideas from yesterday.

First idea : Community Garden

The main notion of this concept is changing the focus from ownership to sharing.

Sharing community assets

We designed a system where people in the community share a community garden and common facilities. Everyone is owner and no one is and no one is excluded from using them.

Elimination sign values

Residential buildings are simple and standardised because we think that it is better to minimise the sign values in the community so people don't need to feel any social gap.

Eco-friendly

To secure enough sunlight to the green area, we decide to build low-rise resident blocks. Also the blue plants are generating energy from sunlight, and community cars are electronic.

Fractal city

We may be able to build a sustainable city by combining small or bigger scales of these modules, which is evolving and metabolic.

HELLO FOOOOOD! 

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Day 2) #4. Getting wrong is OK!!

Generally, prototyping is a cheap and fast method that helps us perceive the spatial/material/3D experience much more easily, rather than having to try to imagine it. Also, responding to errors and failures is critical to a practice of making, which is how we all learn and improve tactics.

  For this reason, we had a quick prototyping session at the start of the day two.

(materials for prototyping!)

The mission : Each team had to develop two prototypes chosen by lots within 15 minutes!

  (speed brainstorming)

Our team chose…

1.  Rung shape of a ladder

2.  Voice recorder featured background noise indicator

      1.     Rung shape of a ladder

To be very honest, we had no idea what the rung was until today....haha!

Anyway, we focused on the safety since a ladder rung usually has a narrow shape, which could make a user falling down while climbing.  

Focusing on the shape and the material, we made a full-scale prototype for user testing.

Final ver.

1. Deeper and wider foot step-on

2. Non-slip material 

2.     Voice recorder featured background noise indicator

Interface prototyping can be simply done without coding because we all can doodle! We use a straightforward design that everyone can clearly understand how it works.

“The more noise, the more bubbles“ with basic functions (time display and record/stop buttons). It was quite rough but we believe that the idea is clearly delivered.

One of main advantages of prototyping is that we can communicate with it and modify it very easily. We enjoyed this session very much..

MISSION CLEARED  :-D

Prototyping is awesome!

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Day 1) #3. Lifetime in the City

We developed a couple of ideas regarding the theme 'Lifetime in the City'.

1.Social pooling  

Description : connecting Isolated people will connect the resources they own/use ( focusing on individual level )

Methods

Community group

Using Web platform (e.i. airbnb, car share)

Open education (e.i. Open University, Coursera) 

Shared equity housing (e.i. 'Reshaping Care for Older People’ )

2. Barrier-Free

Description : changing the way of using resources from ownership to sharing  ( focusing on groups / community / organisations )

Methods

Time sharing (e.i. office share, house share)

Designing shared neighbourhood garden

Building community infrastructure (common goods)

3. Bridging the Gap

Description : minimise physical and emotional social gap

Methods

Equal accessibility, distribution (open system e.i. no intellectual property/patent )

Tax the rich for high consumption / high mobility  

Designing a new public-health service (e.i. Brazil)

Devaluation and destruction of sign value

Greening the ghetto

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Day 1) #2. Cities as Organisms

First step :  Understanding phenomenon

Our cities have experienced dramatic changes that have brought a negative effect on environmental and social lives. Considering cities as living organisms and developing systems might provide a vision for a sustainable life.

(city as living organism?)

As designers, we should pay attention to these issues and investigate how we can apply design, design management skills and knowledge to tackle problems in contemporary design.

We believe that we can mitigate the negative effects of the industrialised era on our cities and bring better life for ourselves as well as neighbourhoods.

  Second step :  Idea developing

We think that cities today have a tension between a growing population and limited resources. We think of space, energy and time as being finite and explore causes, alternatives and solutions.

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Day 1) #1. Hello World!

Hello, everyone! Thank you for finding us :-)

We are three master’s students in Design Management at Lancaster University. We are all very excited to be sharing our project with you. This blog will track our 1-week journey of exploring and developing ideas on 'Cities as an Organisms', which is the main project of the Imagination Lab.

We are considering the future city as a super-organism, and developing a strategy to use design to make them sustainable and equitable.

  Stay tuned for more updates and a look at the rewards coming your way!