Hasta La Ideas

pimg alt=”sva_highline_lead.jpg” src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/sva_highline_lead.jpg” width=”468″ height=”263″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pemGuest post by a href=”http://twitter.com/StrangeNative”Russ Maschmeyer/a/em/p

pThe High Line, once an abandoned, elevated train platform, has quickly become one of New York’s most celebrated public parks. It opened in June 2009, but I hadn’t seen it for myself until this February when I climbed the stairs at Gansevoort Street for a class project. I know it’s difficult#151;now that we’re in a great rush of spring warmth and all#151;but try and remember what it was like only a few short weeks ago. It was cold. Painfully cold. An elevated, wind-scraped platform was the last place you wanted to be that day. But scholastic duty called, so my fellow SVA Interaction Design MFA students and I trudged out, ready to jump-start the research for our five week emDesign for Public Spaces/em class project./p

pOur instructor, Jill Nussbaum (Executive Creative Director, R/GA), had tasked each of five teams with examining the rise of ubiquitous technology and how it might alter our everyday experiences with and relationships to place. Each team would spend the next few weeks imagining some variety of technological/ wearable/ networked/ immersive/ social experience for the High Line, to augment its already impeccably carved public architecture. Her brief insisted “interaction designers are critical to crafting these location-aware experiences.” /p

pOur projects moved swiftly: from research synthesis to ideation, through user journey roughs to final presentations with esteemed (and cold-sweat inducing) guests Peter Mullan (VP of Planning and Design, Friends of the High Line), Ian Spaltar (Executive Creative Director of Mobile and Emerging Media, R/GA), and Margot Jacobs (Interaction Design Researcher, MA Student, UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning), not to mention our very own department chair, Liz Danzico. Five weeks seemed to vaporize as we poured through storyboards, concept ideas, interface iterations, and#151;for some#151;Arduino based prototypes./p

pHere are the results, re-presented in the same arbitrary order in which they were delivered just a few weeks ago. (Descriptions, photos and videos provided by their respective teams.)/p

pbStory View/bbr /
Jeff Kirsch, Colleen Miller, Evinn Quinn,/p

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pBorrowing a nostalgic and easily recognizable form, Story View updates the idea of a traditional coin operated binocular viewer to provide visitors access to short spoken-word stories and historical facts about the High Line and the surrounding city as they look through the viewfinder. As a visitor pans and tilts the viewer, they are able to listen to snippets of audio (either programmed by the High Line or left by other visitors) about the places and things the viewer is pointed at. By aiming the viewer at a location and holding down the record button, the visitor is also able to leave a story tied to that place for others to discover./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/sva_graduate_interaction_design_students_eye_the_high_line_16367.asp”(more…)/a
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