Project brief

Collaborators

The SAT

For my thesis project—and beyond, I hope—, my partner will be Montréal’s Society for Arts and Technology (SAT). The SAT is, according to this statement on their website,

a transdisciplinary center dedicated to research and creation, production, education, and the dissemination of digital culture. As a meeting place, the SAT brings researchers and creative communities together via its productions, prototypes, research programs, publications, educational programs and public exchanges. The center strongly encourages creation, scientific advancement, and the transfer of knowledge.

A great many things excite me about the SAT. They have some of the most thoughtful, thought-provoking and forward thinking artists, developers and strategists in Montréal (and North America). Also, the SAT closed its doors about a year ago so that their building could undergo extensive renovations—what used to be a somewhat functional two-story building is now a three-story, state-of-the-art building, topped with an immense dome that’ll be available for artists, designers, architects and engineers to experiment visuals and sound in a completely immersive and new way. Further, January 17th marked the official launch of Pixiness, which is a massive 9 × 3,6 meter interactive light installation. All this to say that their new and still forming building is ripe with (already) ‘networked’ elements.

Also worth pointing out is the SAT’s physical location in the city: it’s situated in the middle of Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles (red-light district and cultural epicenter of the city), the most eclectic and diverse neighbourhood in the city. (I recommend reading this article—it represents quite well the SAT’s socio-geographical stance in Montréal.)

I have already had a few meetings at the SAT with Monique Savoie, it’s president, and with the research and development team. After familiarizing myself with their ongoing and future projects—and considering my personal interests and goals with my thesis project—, we’ve agreed that I should work on my own research and development project for and with the SAT.

Simply put, I’ll be working on a more exploratory type of project that will (hopefully) be aligned both with the SAT’s shorter and longer term future.

IDEO

Though not an ‘official’ partner per se, I’ll be involving a (yet undetermined) number of people from IDEO’s Boston studio. Two people have already expressed their interest in supporting me: Gian Pangaro, design director and interaction design lead, and Matt Brown, designer and UID alumnus.

They’ll make sure that my process makes sense, that what I do makes sense, and that what I do is as creative as can be.

Design opportunities

The SAT, with their newly renovated building, is very interested in the ‘digital fabric’ of their building, and through various technologies such as computer vision (CV), urban sensors and augmented reality (AR), SAT-goers and passers-by could leave their virtual imprint in/on it. This premise—which is already exciting as it is—is ever so slightly too narrow for what I’d like to focus on. For the duration of my thesis project, I aspire to work on the SAT’s building—inside, outside, and ‘everything in between’—as well as it’s immediate surroundings (the four streets, the park, other buildings and businesses). This, to see if there’s anything to be uncovered by examining the immediate environment. I’d like to investigate/evidence if I could use the city as a valid interaction platform for people to communicate with the SAT, each other, and the city itself.

I would like to think about what is, what means and what it could mean to have a place like the SAT in Montréal, but also how could the idea of the SAT be transplanted into another city and how these two seemingly similar but geographically, physically and culturally different places could truly be networked.

The real opportunity here is that if ever my collaborators and I come up with a gem of a project, one that is truly interesting, human-centered and centric, promising and generative, it could become not only an R&D project, but an eventual reality in years to come. It would also mean that I could potentially have the privilege to stay deeply involved with the SAT’s future activities and developments, which is for me, one of the most exciting things about this project.

Methodology

Background

I intend to read some literature mainly regarding ‘smart’ and ‘networked’ cities, but also on interaction design at large, branding, as well as more technical topic, such as programming. Also, a lot of great work is being done on the topic of smart cities by people of diverse backgrounds and professions. Online talks—especially ones filmed at ‘serious’ conferences—are also a really interesting way to learn about subjects, but also a great resource for being inspired and finding related materials.

Though I will try to go to libraries, the web is bursting with content about smart cities, so my reading will most likely consist of articles and PDF documents found online. I’ll make an effort to dig through conference proceedings, commissioned articles, corporate articles and graduate student work.

(I’ll be documenting my readings and tribulations in the Thinking section of this blog.)

User studies

I plan to have in-depth conversations with SAT employees about what the SAT is, what they’d like it to be, and how and with who we could collaborate to get there. I also intend to interview as many SAT-goers as I can—both people I know and don’t know—in order to identify future opportunities, create (perhaps fictional) scenarios, and see how the urban and built environment fabric could be used in both near-term and long-term futures.

Though time is running fast and it’s unlikely that it’s going to happen in a truly impactful way, I’d like to interview people from the neighbourhood as well—the business people, street workers, bums, whores, transvestites and what not.

User testing

Depending on the budget that the SAT is able to allot me, I would ideally go on a short trip back to Montréal to test my prototypes in situ, with actual users. If ever I do not have this luxury, I’ll have to do what I can with the resources at hand in Umeå.

That said, I still have no idea which form my prototypes will have. I have the feeling some of them might by best showcased in an installation-like setting, but that’s still a guess, not a certainty by any means.

Prototyping

I would like to start prototyping right away. As an exercise, because it’s fun, because it’s useful to me, because it sparks more ideas. I also don’t want there to be a prototyping ‘phase’. I think prototyping should happen throughout. By this I also imply that I’d like to prototype in many different ways, for example: at scale physical mock-ups, familiarizing myself with CV (using either webcams, normal cameras, or devices like the Kinect), illustrations, stop-motion animations, photography, film, etc. Anything to prototype the future, really.

Moreover, as I sometimes tend to write and theorize in loops, my objective is to discover what my project will be through the aid of prototyping. As Matt Cottam would put it, I’d like to uncover my project through ‘evidencing’ it, by sketching early and often, by making stuff to help me focus my thinking.

It’s also a personal goal of mine to get a richer sketching vocabulary, to be able to use code, for example, fairly freely as a sketching tool, similar to my actual use of photography as a sketching technique.

(I’ll be documenting my experiments and explorations in the Making section of this blog.)

Communication

I wish to pay a lot of attention to the communication design of my project—whether it’s visual/graphic, the language used or the overall story-telling of it.

Timeline

Coming shortly…