The Social LIfe of Urban Spaces (chp.1-5)  by William White

This article really concludes a lot of information we observed from our public space project. It is really amazing that he can analyze so many different behaviors people have in public spaces. With the changes of the space, people react differently. As so called “intervention” of the public spaces, we truly did something that influence how people act. Moreover, we might have done something that left influences to the space itself. There are also a lot of factors that draw people to do things, and they don’t realize that they are actually affecting themselves by on to another as well. Which is called “public effect” in Psychology. As long as one person stands up and react to one event, the next persons follows. It was a really fascinating experience to witness all of these and see materials we read come to life.

Cultural Probes by Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, and Elena Pacenti

The method mentioned in the paper definitely demonstrates how we should treat with our project at the starting point. I think their using a very systematic way of thinking and doing to collect data from the crowd and truly face all different feedbacks. In my opinion, this is an extremely important step for us to do before project begins. In our project, we did observe union square, which was our main target space, several times. But we didn’t really pay too much attention to the behaviors happening there. According to the author, that is a research shouldn’t be ignored. Also, after our presentation Melanie suggested we all should have users’ feedbacks in our documentary, which is also implying that what might have been missing in our methodology of working.

Experience Protoyping by Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri

To be honest, what mentioned in this article is not that easy for me do execute. However, this is all this paper about. It talks about how designers face their audiences and se through the experiences of them and pick what might be the most related concept for his  work piece. Being a graphic designer, I used to do things on computer myself and then hand out my work without going through the same process. But I definitely don’t think that is the best way to execute our ideas. Especially after I started to do my projects in Parsons, I found out that it is too subjective that we always think people will react to our thins as we pre-expected, which is not true. There are also cultural differences happening here. So many reasons make us different and that’s why we see things in various ways and so many good ideas are born. If we do research as what is told in this paper, then we will truly get something out of our expectations, which might be a new inspiration to perfection.

Cardboard Computers by Pelle Ehn and Morton Kyng

We spent a lot of time talking about prototypes and then practice making them. What I have learned so far that is the most influential is the usage of a prototype. Taking our bumbot as an example. A screen based 3d model can be a prototype, and a cardboard made boxy style can be another. Which is more efficient and meaningful? The answer is the one that functions. Due to the reason that we want to observe people’s reaction to our object, a cardboard box is much better than a screen based model. Because it comes to life physically. Cardboard is so easy as a material to build products even for kids. Everyone should have the experience of building things out of cardboard in their childhood. It’s the same idea, just enhancing it’s interfacial fidelity. If we can fulfill our original need of this product by prototyping, then we are so close to succeed.