Week 3 Futures: Dan Hill

By 'making the invisible, visible' citizens are able to interact with systems within their environment. Through 'Sensing the City', Hill developed a wifi network for the Brisband library environment. He spoke about this addition to the space and how it further developed the function of the library for users. Hill traced the wifi signals of the user sto make data patterns, to monitor where the users spent their time in the library and possible reasons why- example strong internet signal. 

My favourite line from the lecture was- 'Data is an important way the city manifests itself'. I agree with this because interconnectivity has developed everyday life by the way people interact with their environment.  

Hill showed us examples of moving bus shelter seats, talking traffic lights- and I found the projects thoroughly interesting. My favourite was his metro proposal- which consisted of real time location of the trains on a map of sydney. He explained how building interactive communications into the environment allows for both art and interface design- - both significant to our interactivation lab.

Group Work:

Our group came up with a variety of ideas, before we decided to do further research into the tourism area. We then spoke about the issues associated with tourism, and transport was considered a major issue. Bert told us to explore the idea of planned travel vs spontaneous travel. During the coming week our group is going to explore similar problem spaces, and the ways in which the community has solved the prevailing issues. Since then, we decided to develop our idea to not only benefit tourists but also locals who also face transport issues.

Therefore, we have chosen to combine urban Media with graffiti for our upcoming project. We have chosen to explore the area of Kings Cross because we all recognise there are transport issues associated with this area.

Below shows the issues and consequences assosicated with night time transport within Kings Cross.

Dan Hill spoke about his work with ARUP- an independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists offering a broad range of professional services.

He showed us examples of work hes done on web page design and interaction design which was extremely relevant to Bert's lab. His work mainly focuses on the interaction between buildings and spaces.

Hill outlined the 3 most important concepts when designing for the city- understanding, strategy and behaviour. The most intriguing part of the lecture was when Hill spoke about context and problem spaces when designing for the city. He commented that as designers we must understanding who and what we are designing for, how best to achieve this goal and how our design will expand the possibilities of the city.