Design for urban green space

About the project

This service design and human-computer interaction research project explored how to maintain urban green spaces, expand them, and promote their use. Sponsored by Intel Research and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.

City Centered: A festival of locative media and urban community

city centered postcard

In 2010, I co-organized City Centered, a free, three-day festival of locative media and urban community in San Francisco. The event included demonstrations and installations in the Tenderloin district, a symposium in the Mission district and community training workshops. The art festival, which I co-curated, included contributions from MIT’s Senseable Cities Lab and Stamen Design.

Over two weekends, it engaged artists, educators, civic organizations and community members of all ages in exploring how how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression.

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Familiar Strangers

About the project

As humans we come to understand the places around us using a myriad of observable cues, such as public-private, large-small, daytime-nighttime, loud-quiet, and crowded-empty. Unsurprisingly, it is the people with which we share such spaces that often dominate our perception of place. Sometimes these people are friends, family and colleagues. More often, and particularly in urban public spaces, the individuals who affect us are ones that we repeatedly observe and yet do not directly interact with – our Familiar Strangers.

This research project explored the often ignored yet very meaningful relationships with Familiar Strangers. Several experiments and studies led to a design for a personal, body-worn, wireless device that extends the Familiar Stranger relationship while respecting the delicate, yet important, constraints of our feelings and relationships with strangers in public places. Sponsored by Intel Research from 2003–4, with Eric Paulos.

More complete information on the Familiar Strangers project