#yourtopia

Reflective means after the date of submission - a reflection of the entire process.

I had taken the position of project manager at the start of the semester with the job of setting up what methodologies we are using to keep track and planning accordingly. I have to admit I did not do a good job this semester for this role. I kept putting off creating a board of tasks and it got out of hand pretty quick. 

When I finally got round to setting up our workspace I decided to run with Microsoft teams. There are a few reasons as to why I chose this. Firstly, it seemed to be a cool platform to explore. Secondly, it integrated well with the university. 

We could have conversations, store files and create tabs of external information all on the one page.

I think my favorite feature was the tabs and having the ability to project manage directly from them. This is extremely handy especially for the fact that I don’t need to remember 20 different websites for everything - it can be linked all in one place.

For me, the two classes really lined up together very well. In Design Thinking Processes, we had the semester to go through each stage of the design process and utilize many tools to see where they can and cannot work. 

Timetabling worked in my favor this semester with DESN in the morning and Studio in the afternoon. This allowed me to practice what we learned in DESN through Studio by implementing many of the tools and stages we had just learned that morning. 

Using some of the tools that I hadn’t used before both improved my own knowledge of how and when to use these tools while also improving on our Studio idea and outcomes. 

An example of some of the design thinking tools I utilized in Studio were:

Knowledge gathering, case studies and market research  - This was EXTREMELY important in developing our final concept. Especially case studies on Snapchat and Eventbrite. 

Empathy mapping for our users - How would they feel when using this app. What key points are we missing and what insights can we gain from this? We found many holes in the application originally which needed defining such as what is the reason people would want to use this compared to another app. What do we provide - this is where Memories was born. 

Personas/POV - Creating possible users from all different backgrounds allowed us to determine where they could possibly lose interest or how one design decision targeted at one demographic could affect the rest of them in positive or negative ways and further, how we can manage this. 

Unmet needs - What are our user's unmet needs. These were finding something to do right now, sharing experiences in real time (inviting friends to join them), automatic memories of what they have attended.

Throughout the semester we had two walls setup to keep references on a few things.

Most importantly:

- The current market

- Design trends 

- Similar products

- Inspiration

- The pepsi brand guide (Our inspiration for a design book)

Each part of the wall was extremely important over the semester as it was fluid and always changing. We used string to draw our conclusions and make notes of things such as themes, things we like etc. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t take many pictures during this process as it was always up in studio throughout the semester and so I cannot show a to-from of where it started to where it ended. However, I can talk about some key use cases and how it helped us make our decisions. 

When we started out, Murphy already had an idea set in his mind. He wanted to create this event app and that was final. I took on the role of devil's advocate and questioned every assumption he made when it came to the application and the current market. This is what inspired me to create a “criminal” board - using string to track clues. 

The biggest explorative point was that there were already apps that do things extremely similar to what we were trying to achieve - most notably Eventbrite. Drawing conclusions of a big physical wall were extremely beneficial as it was a constant reminder in the physical space and also it’s just more fun to deal with it hands-on as opposed to a virtual whiteboard. 

Finding out just how similar so many services are we found ourselves hesitant to continue (basing it on) if we went to market we didn't have the users, the experience or the infrastructure. 

Using this information and the board I had set up we pivoted the focus for our idea slightly - and also our approach. We were further refining our idea to sit within the context of social more clearly and less focus on future event finding and more focus on current event finding. Events that are happening right now - not in two days time.

To blend the social features of Snapchat, the ease of use of Uber and the event design layout of Eventbrite. 

Yourtopia now has a solid framework and clear goals, we were aiming to blend social content creation in both digital and physical ways.

Our final outcome was also influenced by our setup - we decided to put up the Pepsi rebrand document onto the wall as an inspiration of one of our outcomes, creating a book. This book was going to have a few key ideas within it. Who we are, what our app is, how/why it was designed this way, the features of the app and where we plan to take this exploration next. 

This idea was set from that point on and part of our submission was to have a cool little booklet of some sort showcasing this information.

The singularity is a term that was adopted and appropriated by Vernor Vinge to describe the point where technology reaches a point of such exponential growth that we can no longer use previous models of prediction to map the next steps/leaps in technology. (Vinge, Vernor, 1993). 

Ray Kurzweil uses the term ‘the singularity’ in explaining the coming urgency to consider the effects of exponential changes in Artificial Intelligence, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. (Ray Kurzweil, 2005).

To me, and my project this semester the singularity is about when that change takes over, what will the future of content sharing and social media look like. When we have finally overcome the limitations of the current digital-only ways of sharing will we blend the two together. Creating phygital, a term Laurent explores in his recent paper “Beyond mobile AR, MR and VR, shall we start investigating about the phygital, a combination of physical and digital?” (Antonczak, L. 2017)

Semi-Permanent gave @bctadventure and I the chance to speak to some amazing influential people during the after party over some nibbles and drinks.

One of the questions that we couldn’t help but ask was their opinion on the singularity and their insights surrounding emerging technologies such as Mixed Realities, Augmented Intelligence and the possibility of Artificial Intelligence in the future. 

Take a listen to a few of the answers we got during the event.

Afterwards, we had a one on one conversation with many of the speaker but the most notable were Sisel as she completely dismisses virtual reality (at least in its current state) however when asked about the singularity she had a few things to say.

She referred to Kaspero and how we are already in the midst of the singularity, granted we have a while to go, it has already begun.  see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJarxpYyoFI for more information on what this is about

She was overall mostly excited for what AI could do - but extremely not-excited for the highly likely event that humanity loses their own independence and don’t do things themselves. 

 Nicholas Kamuda: the sensory design director for Microsoft mixed realities has some really interesting views on the singularity. He is working towards allowing technology and physical spaces to exist at the same time. When asked about the singularity he refers to the AI singularity and mentioned how stupid AI is and how far away we would be from the singularity from that perspective.

Some of the questions we asked being answered during QnA with Nicholas: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwTwTb0EGf71THkyZEN4VDVySE0/view?usp=sharing

References:

Laurent Antonczak, Catherine Papett, Towards a Mobile Enhancement Of Glocal Heritage? (2017) 

Vinge, Vernor. (1993). The Coming Technological Singularity.

Even though our brand aims to stand out from the crowd - we also cannot ignore trendy designs because frankly, they work. This new idea is to put the most important information at the bottom of the screen. Now there are a few reasons as to why this is a good idea - the biggest being the ease of access.

Steven Hoober conducted a survey which shows that 49% of people rely on their thumb for most of the work they do on their phone. https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-really-hold-mobile-devices.php

Summary of how people hold and interact with mobile phones

A great case study is Youtube and their decision to have their main functionality available from the bottom of the screen as opposed to the top which we see typical of many apps.

I have also spoken to some of the guys in my team about it and they seem to also be interested in the new Apple cards design and the potential it brings. They are slightly concerned with how it is implemented however with them expressing concerns of how it can easily ruin a design as well.

Image of the new youtube design with the bottom navigation

I have started exploring how our design could implement this idea - and more importantly, would it benefit from it. Here are some rough sketches I have done to play around with the positioning of the components.

References:

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/the-golden-rules-of-mobile-navigation-design/

https://uxplanet.org/perfect-bottom-navigation-for-mobile-app-effabbb98c0f

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/30/youtubes-new-bottom-navigation-ui-official/

https://medium.com/tall-west/lets-ditch-the-nav-bar-3692cb17cc67

"Dutch studio SeARCH has created a dome-shaped pavilion covered in grass and filled with plants, as part of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam that opened to the public today."

http://notiziarioimmobiliare.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Progetto-Yourtopia-300x213.jpg

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Il nome ci indica che basta poco per vivere bene.

Il prototipo realizzato dallo studio architettonico olandese SeARCH relativo alla 9°edizione della Biennale di Architettura di Rotterdam conclusa lo scorso 29 maggio, è l’abbreviazione di ‘your utopia’. Si fa riferimento all’utopia: cioè, la possibilità di realizzare un’abitazione al tempo stesso lussuosa e semplice, sfruttando esclusivamente le risorse naturali.

L’ispirazione viene dai rifugi nomadi

Facendo riferimento alle tipiche costruzioni realizzate dalle popolazioni nomadi, come le asiatiche yurta, i tukul africani o i rifugi igloo, Yourtopia è una piccola casa scavata all’interno di una collinetta erbosa, sulla cima della quale viene adesso ricavata un’apertura circolare che permette l’ingresso di luce solare all’interno dei locali.

E’ stato previsto l’inserimento di una foresta al centro

Con una cupola realizzata in calcestruzzo prefabbricato e pannelli in acciaio che possono essere montati con grande facilità e che consentono un elevato grado di isolamento termico, posto all centro dell’abitazione, dove il colore bianco la fa da padrone, è stata realizzata una vera e propria foresta.

La vegetazione molto ricca raggiunge in altezza la bocca del lucernario, andando a filtrare luce ed aria e contribuendo ad ostruire la vista dei passanti, regalando la giusta privacy agli abitanti.

Progetto Yourtopia

L’idea è quella di divulgare una cultura architettonica alternativa alle mega costruzioni di lusso

Al momento la casa è stata arredata in maniera esclusiva con amache, ma è stata prevista anche l’aggiunta di un mobilio, sicuramente molto minimal e sostenibile, da qui a cinque mesi, il periodo in cui l’abitazione era rimasta aperta ai visitatori della Biennale.

La struttura sarà successivamente smontata e sicuramente rimontata altrove, giacchè l’obiettivo degli architetti è quello di diffondere una cultura architettonica alternativa a quella delle mega costruzioni di lusso, che va a ridurre il divario tra ricchi e poveri e sopratutto che sta a dimostrare come “si possa raggiungere il livello più alto della qualità della vita con il minimo indispensabile.”