October 2011 archive

Readings: Public Places

I found the sitting space reading to be the most interesting because I can relate to it the most. When I was working 4 to 5 days a week I would try to go out of my work environment to get away from the chaos during my lunch breaks. When looking for a place to …

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Reading Response

Cultural Probes This is a good way to learn social behavior and gather information about target people and their activities. However, I think this kind of activity require some funds to support providing equipment and collecting data. It can still be cheap and easy to conduct like using notepaper but one has to consider the …

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Plazas and Cultural Probes

1. “The Social Life of Urban Spaces” William Whyte William Whyte writes about the importance and interaction public spaces in New York City. Collecting data from time lapsed cameras, he compares various plazas around the city, and denotes the flow of people as well as the usability of the space. In the first chapter he …

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Commentary on “Cultural Probes”

Johan Huizinga, Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history has advocated the importance of “play” element of culture and society. In the foreword of his 1938 book titled “Homo Ludens” or “Man the Player” he suggests that “play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation …

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Reading October 10

The readings this week were nothing new to me.  Coming from a landscape architecture background, the issues brought up in these readings were prominent ones that we had to deal with extensively.  In order to be able to design a public space the first thing would always be to dissect and understand peoples interactions within …

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Biggest drawing in the world.

So I had this idea, to provide a participant or multiple participants with GPS transmitters, and assign them to a certain route to make a drawing, statement or a mark on the map, in large scale. As I was looking for precedence, I stumbled upon a march much larger scale of the same idea carried …

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Reading Commentary #6: The Social Life of Small Spaces Chapters 1, 2 & 5

What I understood from this… Was the interaction people have with space, which was pretty interesting to read. The prime example featured is the Plaza.  And Plaza by definition is “A public square, marketplace, or similar open space in a built-up area.”  This was invented as such since the greco-roman era as a place where …

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Reading Commentary #6: Cultural Probes

A very interesting read on how things are approached in order to receive accurate data. I was impressed by what they’ve done, in terms of process.  By not building an intrusive package and in it materials that didn’t seem daunting to that particular receiver. I really liked this comment: “Instead of designing solutions for user, …

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Readings 10.10

Reading #1: The Social Life of Urban Spaces, William H. Whyte  The Social Life of Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte explores the findings of The Street Life Project, a three-year study that looked at the usability of New York City public spaces such as city parks, plazas, sidewalks and playgrounds. Whyte wanted to pin point …

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Readings for 10-10

Cultural Probes: The article relating to the elderly people was very interesting and insightful in its approach to user based research. I found it interesting the scenarios/tasks that they created which really gave a more organic and I would argue clear understanding of how these people felt about a specific subject, which sometimes direct questions …

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