Re-Imagining The Smart City

While exploring the Smart City concept we started asking each other questions about the city; What it is? Why do we need them? What is it trying to achieve? What does it look like? etc.

This week I saw an interesting movie named, Upgrade. This movie really made me think about the future through a different lens. I won’t be exaggerating if I say I’m quite afraid of what the world would look like if technology starts controlling all aspects of our lives in the future.

Smart city is not just a concept or dream of the future, but it is a city that uses innovative technology to provide services, improve social and economic quality and address growing urbanisation challenges. In simpler words it solves urban problems using technology. A liveable city that can think for itself.

This week we used the ‘what if’ statements to initiate discussion and debate which proved useful as it helped us generate ideas and allowed us to think on a broader level.

This week I read a very interesting article suggested by Alex called ‘Visual Research Methods In An Expanded Field: What Next For Visual Research Methods?’ By Gillian Rose. In this article Rose talks about the importance of visual research methods; a qualitative research methodology that relies on the use of artistic mediums to produce and represent knowledge or information what has the ability of capturing reality. These artistic mediums include photography, collage, drawings, mapping, film, diagrams, paintings, and sculptures. As a Visual Artist, I believe I have almost always used such mediums to represent information to either inform my design process or during the research phase to understand the idea or concept better – makes me think about the concept/idea from many different perspectives. I have made collages using found images, my own photographs and hand drawn sketches and illustrations to inform my work throughout this journey.

Restrictive measures enforced around the world due to Covid-19 multiplied with additional pressures including social isolation, poor housing, unemployment and poverty, have led to increased levels of anxiety, stress, loneliness and have had a negative effect on many people's mental health. This has also raised concerns about the potential impact on suicide rates due to zero social interaction. Since this is a serious issue which desperately needs to be addressed, all of us in the group agreed to discuss and focus on the realm of mental health/wellbeing from the next session. We did some brainstorming and came up with different ideas to address the issue.

The only thing that has always helped me get through difficult times like these is making art – mostly self-portraits. It’s hard for me to express my emotions and feelings in words and so drawing has always helped me in letting my feelings out. It allows me to look at the world in a more holistic picture which intern helps me in diverting my mind towards the positive things around me. It helps in keeping my anxiety levels down and I always find myself drawing something or the other in my journals - scribbling, doodling, drawing, just doing something to release the pressure. Or I would keep thinking about how the effects of COVID-19 would never leave this planet and that we’ll always live like this.

We often see people playing games while on public transport and I thought to myself, could we encourage interaction this way? Introducing games in trains and other public spaces to initiate conversation and social interaction. Playing a game with a stranger is far easier than having to start a conversation out of the blue – this will help initiate conversation and social interaction between them. Playing games have also proven to act as a stress and anger reliever. This will help them relax and make their day a little better. All of us shared different design ideas in the next session and we decided that any idea should ultimately encourage social interaction as well as promote fun, humour and/or enjoyment.

After our mid-term crit with Alex and the rest of the class, we found ourselves in a difficult position. After hearing the feedback we received from everyone to came to an understanding that not a lot of people like interacting with others on trains and also that we are trying to think too quickly about the design or a solution to our problem. To be honest, we were unsure of what to do next after hearing this. So we decided to take a few days off to cool down and think about the project separately.

Sometimes just saying hi to a person while you’re walking in a park would be enough to start a conversation. I decided to take John’s idea of the virtual pet a step further by coming up with a toy game that would encourage such actions. In order to keep your pet alive in the game the user will have to do at least one good deed a day. Once you do a good deed (e.g., telling someone they look beautiful to make their day), you add that to your game which will act as a feed for your pet to keep it alive. It keeps growing as you keep feeding it with your good deeds.