Research Citizen Science —

Bodies (as Sensors) in Cities

Augmenting Design Research Methods (Part I) & Body Responses to City Infrastructure (Part II)

Problem Space —

Research₀₁ *

Based on Local Law 11, every five years, every building in NYC must submit a documentation regarding the conditions of its facade to the Department of Buildings. If regarded as unsafe, landlords are required to put up a sidewalk shed. This law, however, does not state when landlords are required to remove these sheds which often leads to an indefinite existence of these sheds.

Scaffolds are part of our everyday built environment and our built environment affects and shapes the way we think, feel, and behave.

Identifying Opportunity —

Approach₀₂ *

Part 1 Augmenting Design Research Methods

PROBLEM
A variety of parameters attempt to capture characteristics of places, yet, these elements do not depict the qualitative aspects that constitute the real experiential character of built environments.

APPROACH
By focusing on effects of scaffolds on our emotions as a case study, I combined objective quantification (analysis) with subjective perception (experience) to research the way we experience the built environment and to explore the role of digital tools in understanding urban qualities.

Part 2 Augmenting Body Responses to Cities

APPROACH
After analyzing the results of the first experiment, I propose an augmented tool that aims to reverse the negative effects of scaffolds by triggering people's faces to smile every time they are under one.

REFLECTION
The approach is satirical and imagines a world where it is easier to augment humans than to fix the urban environment. The goal aim is also to ultimately improve the daily lives of citizens in ways beyond the efficiency and optimization-driven approaches widely employed by technology’s advocates.  

01

How does the built environment impact our state of mind?

01

How can technology improve our human experience in a city and enhance our relationship with the built environments we are in?

02

How might we augment design research methods to better understand the impact of the built environment on our inner states?

02

What if the built environment was able to recognize our emotions and respond to us in real-time?

Augmenting Design Research Methods —

Part 1₀₃ *

02 Physiological Parameters & Sensors

The sensors chosen are based on Edward T. Hall’s proxemics theory that identify 4 main spaces around the human body: the intimate space, the personal space, the social space and the public space. For each space, I use a sensor that  can sense a characteristic of this space.

Through this approach, I aim to study the relationship between the inner state of the body and its, gradually increasing, wider urban context. 

03 Augmented Design Research Tool

The tool takes the form of a “hacked” common everyday object: a hat.

04 The Path

Based on data from NYC Sidewalk Sheds map, I designed a path that goes through the most amount of scaffolds while crossing through some of the city’s “multiple personalities”:

• It starts at 34th street - a central transportation hub,
• goes through Hudson Yards - referred to as “the smart city experiment”
• through Chelsea - a bourgeois neighborhood
• finishes on 16th Street, Greenwich Village.

06 Results

After collecting the data, I visualized it using Grasshopper.

The result reveals my journey as a visual track on a map:

• height of bars indicate my heart rate and my muscle tension at a particular moment,
• the circles reveal the proximity of people around me at certain moments in time. 

Results from Sensors (Saved to CSV file in SD Card)

Augmenting Experiences —

Part 2₀₄ *

Future of Cities-Citizen Relationship

Today's technologies will allow spaces of tomorrow to be formed from interconnected and intelligent components that are aware of human presence and able to communicate, assess and act.

Citizens are also rapidly adopting new wearable technologies that are more intimate than previous technologies.

01 The Form

The design takes the form of an accessory that can be wrapped around the waist. It is reminiscent of the walkman devices people used to carry around in 1980-2000s.

Electrode wires come out of the device and are placed on the face, similar to the way earphones and headphones came out of these earlier devices. 

03 Tool Components

1. TENS Unit (a device that delivers small electrical impulses through electrodes)
2. Electrodes
3. Muscle Sensor
4. GPS Module

04 How it Works

The purpose is to reverse and trick the mind to be in a positive state and “re-balance” a person’s inner state.

07 Results

The result reveals my journey as a visual track on a map:

• height indicates my muscle tension at a particular moment in time in a specific location.

Thoughts & People's Reactions —

Reflection₀₅ *

This project acts as an example of a larger domain area of human-space interactions, human-data interaction and space-data interactions.

I believe that such experiments open up an opportunity and possibility to start designing such relationships to foster and enhance the relationship of humans with their cities, buildings and built environments.