![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.mayonissen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/genius_400.jpg\" "\\"genius_400\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
So, onto the thesis. We’re on our own now. And, no pressure: this is, we are told, the project where we get to define ourselves.
No pressure? eek!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We had our midterm exams, where we had the opportunity to reflect on the year, project, work, and learnings so far, and to start a conversation about where we were thinking of taking the thesis, and get feedback from the CIID faculty and also from external advisors, Gitte and Niels, both ex-IDEO and now in Copenhagen at ReD and Designit, respectively.<\/p>\n
And so, onto my thesis, or final project, at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Here goes!<\/p>\n
As a basic starting point, I’m interested in exploring the overlap between the emergence of ubiquitous computing, and the city and urban environment, and the opportunities for taking a design lens at the opportunities for services that evolve out of that combination. There are huge bodies of work on both areas – ubicomp from a technological and computer science perspective over the last 20\/30 years (with some more social-science work more recently, as it has moved out of research labs into the world), while urbanism has been a field of study for most of the 20th century, primarily from architectural and sociology angles. Urban computing as a field of study fits in there somewhere, too.<\/p>\n
I’m not completely sure of how it all crystalises into a design project yet, but I’m working on it. I’m hoping to combine the more systemic thinking inherent in service design with some aspect of craft and tangibility, drawing from my background in industrial design. Micro and macro, if you will.<\/p>\n
Rather than write long descriptions of my thoughts, or try to make any structured sense of it all at this early stage, I’m just going to make a list of the things I’ve been thinking and reading about in the first week of the project. What I have as a start is broad – almost infinately so – and I know that my first major challenge will be to define some constraints and find that one little seed from which the rest of my project can grow. But for now, I’m trying to soak up as much as I can, to give myself a general understanding of what has been done, and fill some of the gaps my more haphazard reading over the last couple of years has left.<\/p>\n
If nothing else, this should give a feel for the mess in my brain at the moment – with overlaps, repetitions, gaps, and tangents all part of the deal.<\/p>\n
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING & THINKING ABOUT:<\/strong><\/p>\n ubiquitous computing,\u00a0ubicomp,\u00a0internet of things,\u00a0pervasive computing,\u00a0everyware<\/p>\n mobile computing<\/p>\n infrastructure – digital, physical, static, dynamic<\/p>\n the points where infrastructure is exposed.<\/p>\n Mujicomp<\/p>\n Mujicompfrastructure<\/p>\n tangible<\/p>\n touchpoints<\/p>\n networking, networked objects<\/p>\n nearlynet, permanet<\/p>\n system failure<\/p>\n touch, RFID<\/p>\n the city<\/p>\n city as platform<\/p>\n urbanism<\/p>\n urban planning<\/p>\n urban sociology<\/p>\n communities<\/p>\n security,\u00a0privacy<\/p>\n payment<\/p>\n data – open data, APIs<\/p>\n homogeneity,\u00a0heterogeneity,\u00a0difference<\/p>\n transport, mobility, systems,<\/p>\n the mundane<\/p>\n designed vs not designed objects<\/p>\n maps and territories<\/p>\n barriers, borders, edges<\/p>\n industrial design in an urban context<\/p>\n combining service design with tangible product\/industrial design<\/p>\n focusing on something small and exploring the consequences<\/p>\n and more…<\/p>\n
![\""Get](\"http:\/\/www.mayonissen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/MN-3-2656.jpg\" "\\"Keep")
<\/a><\/p>\n