Wednesday, August 25, 2010

"Eagle eye" and " Echelon conspiracy"

Hi guys,

I'm just reminded of 2 films when thinking of the intelligent system. Did you guys watch "Eagle eye" and " Echelon conspiracy"? They are quite similarly about "super computer" that change traffic light, calculating possibility rate, etc....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy

I think there are similar ideas of the "intelligent" machine or system with our project, although they end up to urges not using supercomputer and some privacy issue is cited.......

well, just think of these movie suddenly (although not that related to our research)

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Hi guys


I have been looking for information in regard to streets regulation to see if is possible or allow to close streets any day without any particular event such as Melbourne coup or national day, like queen birthday or any other. Or just because the system recognize that its going to be a beautiful day or just because there’s no footy game and people want to go walk in one particular street.

The other think is we can cover in the research areas such as a street vendors, I have found an article about vendors in New York, if this happens people can just go and have a small places and sell.

The other thing could be security cameras, increase the number of police officers, even details like street photographers.

See u tonight

Re: research ideas

I m not sure about if we can find literature reviews or not on this topic. But i think that we may just need one or two literature review research as a background supportive information, right?
Because it is a quite "new" and intelligent system design project idea, i think it is a good idea to investigate about user behavior, experience and response on different urban design toward different road system. So focus group, culture probe, user testing and interview would produce useful information to our topic.
I think case study on the interactive technique and similar project in different countries would not be bad for us to understand how to "enable" our idea. And it should help us to back up our system on the later design stage.
I believe practical research is better than therical one in this project, um...right?

Monday, August 23, 2010

Other resources...

Hey guys,

In my opinion we should cover some points in our research, they are:

Methods:

Literature review
Melbourne statistics
Focus group (fins specific information - people thought)
Interviews or Survey (Opinion of new system, suggestions, agreements and disagreements)


For research:

-Demographic characteristics
- Consumer behaviour (depends on the area)
- Melbourne Urban planning
- Density areas (pedestrian paths, use of public space - commercial and residential)
- Media communication (interactive and phisical)
- Population trends
- Melbourne 2030


Some links:

http://udf.org.au/udf-quarterly/udfq-72-december-2005/article/melbourne-s-urban-transformation-into-a-place-for-people/

http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/Parking-roads-and-transport/

http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/Parking-roads-and-transport/Traffic/

http://udf.org.au/udf-quarterly/udfq-72-december-2005/article/melbourne-cbd-and-pedestrian-traffic-study/

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/melbourne2030online/content/implementation_plans/03a_about.html

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenpl.nsf/LinkView/1352EB2F109044AFCA2575120016BE8B25FA24FDEB7476BACA25761E001FDF4D

See you in class!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Share

Hi guys,I saw some "road design"?! for slowing down cars/ remind them to drive slowly. One of them is using the stone that i rmb that John hv mentioned before?! (not the whole road). So i just took them as some example/ reference......^^

Chloe

Friday, August 20, 2010

Research Ideas

Hi guys,

I think we have an awesome topic and hopefully one we can work on together through to the end. With the blend of skills in our team I think we will arrive at a much better outcome if we all add our own skills into the project.

Please think about research methods and research areas we can use to help us build up information to support our project.

Some methodologies I can think of that might be helpful are:

  • Literature review
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Cultural probe (how do people organise their travel and/or social life)
  • Focus group
  • User Testing

Some research areas I have thought of are:

  • Intelligent systems, algorithms that can manage complex interactions of variables
  • Democratisation of space, urban futures to 2020, what ideas exist that empower people to control the functioning of their cities or towns (e.g. flash mobs, http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/guerilla-games-thousands-to-hit-ikea-for-game-of-hide-and-seek-20100819-12ljq.html)
  • The assessment of Sustainability innovations (to ensure our ideas can be justified)
  • City movement monitoring and analysis, can people be tracked to capture their movements and preferences? (Arup are already doing this)
  • Traffic management systems and their integration into Public transport and other systems

Please write back with your own ideas, there are many angles we can take in this project, working out the best ones will be difficult, so the more we have the better off we will be.

John

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Local SD Article

Hi guys,

Here is a really interesting article on the topic of system design.

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/the_strategic_arc_of_interaction_design_moving_towards_holistic_system_design_by_steve_baty__17064.asp

John

Topic Time!

Hi guys,

Hi Felipe, I hope you are feeling better!

To get us all on the same page I have summarised our topics below, have a think about each and bring your ideas Thursday night.

I think by the end of class we want to have a topic chosen and some research directions.

1) Service Service (complaintbook)
  • A service that allows people to leave feedback relating to customer service they have experienced
  • It provides information to companies who want to improve their customer service
  • It provides information to consumers as to which companies to choose
  • Similar to Choice http://www.choice.com.au/

2) Affordable Housing for Remote Communities
  • A system that utilises advances in construction technology to provide affordable housing to remote communities
  • Possibly using free labour, i.e. volunteers
  • The idea of "Pop-up Factories" to make houses in the city where the labour and resources are and deliver them to remote communities
  • Scalable to any region, whether remote or just across town

3) Living Streets
  • A system that builds intelligence into city streets, manipulating traffic and accessibility to optimise the use of space
  • An intelligent system that can analyse a number of variables such as weather, events, seasons, sales, etc to change the status of streets
  • This allows for pedestrianised streets with increased public transport when the number of visitors is high, or allows cars when the number of pedestrians is low.
  • Linked to a database that informs visitors, businesses, transport, cleaners, security etc.
  • Have a look at this presentation, I haven't watched it all yet but it sounds interesting. http://www.ixda.org/resources/dan-hill-new-soft-city
Time to have a think about a direction and decide on a topic that will allow us to get the most out of this subject.

John

Thursday, August 12, 2010

HDG609-610 Design As Service

Hi there,

This blog is a record of the activities of Carolina, Felipe, Chloe and John as they chart a course through Design As Service at Swinburne University, Semester 2, 2010.

This blog is for collecting and sharing useful information as our project progresses.

Keep checking back for more research and updates on how our project is progressing!

John