Sharing the Knowledge is a community literacy learning system for implementation in the isolated regions of a developing nation. The project is a set of designed interactions that enables a collaborative social effort in creating and understanding educational materials, as means of compensation for the general lack of access to formal education and trained educators. The user-generated media is used for mobile learning applications and for creating social gaming incentives.

This project is comprised of three components: 1.Tagging the Village 2.Community Learning and 3.Family Anecdotes.

Tagging the Village involves taking a picture with your phone, labeling it with an appropriate term, and then sharing it with your learning group.

Community Learning takes the educational materials accrued from 'tagged' pictures, and uses interaction and play at a communal level in order to collaboratively learn the material.

Family Anecdotes involves recording a story, and then having it transcribed while playing the recording to the community learning group. Other user's learning material is highlighted when there is an overlapping term, to reinforce the shared connections.

Tagging the Village from inaxi on Vimeo.

Tagging the Village

One of the key components to the system is that all the learning material is self-generated. Participants in a local community network have the ability to tag their own picture messages with labels describing them, and then the ability to share them with everybody else. The materials generated are seamlessly reflective of and finds relevance with their everyday lives, and constitutes recurrent prompting from friends and family as means of supportive encouragement.

Community Learning from inaxi on Vimeo.

Making a Game of Community Learning

The resources compiled through Tagging the Village are utilized effectively in the context of community-supported learning. The same tagged picture messages are compiled into a database and turned into a game that encourages participation among every member in the room. Authors of the original tagged image act as mentor to every other learner, and the opportunity is given for supportive participation to lift the confidence and abilities of everyone involved.

This prototype demonstrates the essential community function that the game provides. Everyone’s cell phone is sent a picture message of a letter, and it is up to the group to correctly spell out the label given to the image on the screen. A webcam directed at the mobile phone is able to recognize a correct or incorrect answer.

Family Anecdotes from inaxi on Vimeo.

Family Anecdotes as Teaching Material

Looking forward, the logical progression of Sharing the Knowledge is to go from spelling words to reading stories. Family Anecdotes is where the storyteller becomes the de facto teacher, in the same space as where our Community Learning game takes place. As the story is replayed aloud to the group the computer displays the words, and if the reader says a word that is also a tag—like ‘flower’ or ‘beet’—the computer automatically displays other group member’s photos with that tag. This is a good way to involve the listeners by integrating the audience’s own diverse content, and readily demonstrates how one can place words they know within a greater story, thereby empowering participants to fill in the words they don’t yet know. Participants could further look to a story as creative inspiration, and so endeavor to add tagged images that consciously illustrates the story further.

Research

A real-life example of how a disadvantaged population can learn with scant educational resources is illustrated by the story of a young girl named Bharti Kumari. At the age of twelve, Bharti is the head teacher for her impoverished village located in the Bihar province of India, teaching Hindi, English, and math to some 50 children. She learned the subjects she teaches by also finding the time to attend a state school two miles away. The children she teaches would have no other access to education.

If viewing India as a use case on reducing illiteracy, the nation is home to 35% of the world’s total illiterate population (roomtoread.org). When factoring in technology for possible solutions, the number of internet users in India is only 7% of the population (actually falling slightly from the year before) (internetworldstats.com). However, India is home to one of the fastest growing mobile markets, and is predicted to surpass the one billion user mark within five years (indiatimes.com). The presence of inadequate literacy rates, and yet a continual rise of mobile phone ownership is common in many other developing countries worldwide. For instance, 2010 saw the total number of mobile phones eclipse the five billion mark (cbsnews.com). Sharing the Knowledge views these conversant communities as a profound and expedient resource for improving aptitude.

Mobile Learning

This project shares a lot in common with the growing trend of mobile learning, or m-learning as it is called. Research revealed to us that mobile phone companies like Nokia provide a service called Life Tools that text messages trivia to subscribers for things like learning English. The Indian state-owned telecom company BSNL also has a similar program, among others. Many providers see the future of m-learning in developing interactive games, waiting for the day when the common access to that level of technology can allow widespread implementation. Our system leverages the power of community participation rather than the reliance upon dynamic interactive software to bring learning to the far corners in the near future.

Mobile Learning Pedagogies

Prior research in mobile learning has demonstrated proven active learning methodologies that our project seeks to capitalize upon as well. One such method is socio-cognitive learning, characterized by developing knowledge through personally or collaboratively forming and re-forming concepts. Researchers user-testing m-learning games for the MOBIlearn project observed that socio-cognitive tactics built confidence and expressiveness in learners, which in turn fed a desire to learn more. Likewise, Kumar et al demonstrated in their word recognition experiments that participants were able to retain significantly more new words if using productive training (prompting users to verbalize the correct answer) over receptive training (selecting from multiple choice).

Interview with Kristen Aguirre-Ford from Dustin York on Vimeo.

Researched Methods for Teaching Reading and Writing

The other side to the project research was in learning the correct methods in teaching literacy. For that, we interviewed an educator with over twenty years of experience in doing just that, Kristen Aguirre-Ford. Our discussion with her was very fruitful, revealing to us basic tenets of literacy education that informed and drove new directions for this project. We learned from her that at the very root of learning, having support from others is integral in driving an interest in literacy. She also told us that it is important that the student knows why they are learning what they are learning, and to recognize the importance of using methods of auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning in concert to help all students learn in the best manner for them. And one of the most important strategies she taught us was that the student should not be initially limited by the words they know, instead they should be inspired by the imaginations they possess. All of this went into how we formed our strategies in self-directed education.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Philip van Allen and Kristen Aguirre-Ford for their expert advisement during the course of this project. We would also like to thank Julian Bleecker, Sean White, Hiroshi Horii, Shabnam Aggarwal, Steve Vosloo, and the UNICEF Innovation Team for sharing their knowledge.

During my DesignMatters Fellowship, UNICEF placed significant emphasis on figuring out how to learn from their own past projects and use that as important lessons to apply for new projects. Some of the most rigorous organization, iteration, and analysis was required in the conception of program frameworks (for initiatives in health, education, etc), because using the experience gained and documented becomes some of the pillars on which to identify proven techniques and strategies. The Innovation Team often tasked me with helping to bring these methods to work—and in addition to that the DesignMatters and UNICEF collaboration itself is a program which builds, where the predecessor has something to share with next year’s Fellow. This video is a reflection of the Innovation Team’s perpetual aim to improve upon past efforts, in that it was an attempt to make explicit my most significant experiences and takeaways. The hope is that this sheds some light on what I had learned, and perhaps others could learn from that as well.

I would like to thank DesignMatters representatives Mariana Amatullo and Elisa Ruffino, and my DesignMatters mentor Stephanie Sigg for their support and for making this all possible. Much gratitude also goes to the UNICEF Innovation Team, particularly team leaders Christopher Fabian and Erica Kochi for promoting such ambitious project goals. Thanks also goes to Jorge Just and Khairani Barokka, in addition to the many other individuals at UNICEF, for their collaborations.

One of my contributions to LIVE Singapore! was to focus on the visual form of the platform. This involved illustrating how to make this a tool for citizen developers to create applications and unique data streams, and also make the platform a useful forum for those seeking visualization tools and downloading applications. Basically, what was being described is the beginning of an all-in-one resource that embodies what LIVE Singapore! can represent for the island nation.

The LIVE Singapore! visual platform must address the different use-cases in one package, from developers looking to capitalize on the resource to end-users looking to use the posted tools for their own benefit.

The developer toolkit is a collection of data streams and mashups that developers could use for innovative applications. Developers would in turn share the mashups they have created, and add to the collective data recontextualization.

The visual platform is intended to enable a user-friendly quick overlay of data sets. This requires a visual language that allows for distinction from different layers of data.

The visualization toolkit concept can layer historical data with real-time data of nearly any combination, allowing for simple and user-friendly data analysis.

The platform allows for a forum from which to view new or popular visualizations that adds to the collective knowledge of and for the Singapore experience.

Part of the project was also to acknowledge the existing real-time urban infrastructure, to see what can grow from there.

One application for employing real-time data is a touch screen interface to be deployed at malls or transit hubs, telling the user about their transportation options and their respective time and cost expectations.

The user interface would involve selectivity in drawing a shape that delineates the origin & destination points. Singapore's road layout is fairly irregular, so this configuration allows the user to dictate where they are willing to go for transportation.

There are a myriad of mobile application possibilities that are opened up by the LIVE Singapore! project. One of these is a concept named Open Seats, which would allow the user to not only find their most timely bus option, but also the one with the greatest likelihood of finding a seat.

Another aspect of my research involved developing concepts and prototypes that real-time information enables for Singapore. One prototype that my project partner Darshan Santani and I developed addressed the need for a responsive bus system interface that provides the pertinent information that every rider could use in order to more easily navigate the urban landscape. This prototype allows for the selection of any one bus service route from among the city-wide system. The dots along the selected service line denotes a single bus, and it’s color from white (empty) to yellow (busy) indicates how full the bus is at the particular moment. The bar graph at the bottom compares real-time data with a simulated line of historical data, helping the user to see patterns and anticipate the variance of occupancy as each bus progresses along it’s route. We envisioned this interactive visual as a first step to demonstrating the value of a touch screen transportation interface strategically deployed in the public arena.

Singapore bus system Prototype from Dustin York on Vimeo. The visualization tool allows for the selection of individual bus services, and displays pertinent capacity and schedule-related real-time information.

The conversation we have begun through these explorations have generated further interest among data partners and helped to pave the way forward. I look forward to seeing the project’s continued growth.

As an aside, during much of my time in Singapore I maintained a blog formatted around my observations as a visitor (http://blognotnamed.tumblr.com/). I think of it as an introspective form of design research, informing in some ways how I approached the LIVE Singapore! project.

I created an accordion book that can be unfolded to reveal all thirteen days of data. This book records what took place in the shared digital space between us, highlighting the fact that while some may see technology as cold and distancing, it can also be used as a tool of convenience to aid communication and thus break down barriers, even among two people that know one another very little.

Butcher Paper as Archive

I embarked upon what could be termed incidental information gathering. What I wanted to capture was the individualistic yet commonplace moments in a person’s day-to-day existence. As both of us are design students it made sense to me that I attempt to archive the physical marks we make; the notes, doodles, and drawings. And so I covered both of our workspaces with carbon paper, and on top of that I placed butcher paper. What resulted was that the paper became an instant repository for the marks representing every project brainstorm and whimsical moment that occurs in the course of a rigorously creative life.

Shared Blog

I also set up a posterous blog that both of us could add content to with the utmost of convenience, by simply sending an email or text message the post becomes a piece of dialogue between us. It is a useful reflection of a person’s personality to see the conscious choices made to volunteer information that directs the conversation a certain way. I also used the blog to document the process of the project along every step of the way.

Webcam & Shared Screen

Both of our workspaces had a webcam pointed directly at it, creating a dataset in the form of timelapsed photographs. This is an objective representation of tangible activity, but to push that further I also utilized Skype screen sharing, enabling me to see the homework that Justin is working on at our apartment as I do my own work in my studio. I would then post a blog entry about what I see and initiate a real time blogged conversation, resulting in an explicit acknowledgement of respective work that is going on simultaneously in two different places.

Power Meter

Finally, a power meter was installed in the apartment to make clear the timeline of when Justin is at the apartment studying at his workspace. It also records the times when I come by to turn on or off the computer displaying the blog and the webcam image, appearing as periodic slight blips of power change.

Outcome

I wrestled with the nature of data collection, I felt the process to be very blunt and impenetrable in terms of revealing more specific human moments. I set about to find a way to use familiar tools for nontraditional means in a systematic manner, turning what I collect into data because of the way that I went about collecting it, and also because of what it revealed about both Justin and myself.

Justin Marking the Book from Dustin York on Vimeo.

The two of us were able to find a natural empathy and conversation about the projects that we both toil over, and both of us learned the most from one another in the interests that are revealed to dictate the directions our projects take. In the end, I made two identical books and Justin and I annotated the comments we had for one another. He got my marked book and I got his.

Looking forward, I believe I can use similar means of inquiry to learn about other people, about what drives them. I like the idea of relying upon what people are willing to volunteer about themselves, especially information revealed naturally and semi-unconsciously, with a minimum of consideration. I also enjoy the conversations that take place in a time-delayed and reflective atmosphere, and expect that I will explore similar themes dealing within a reflective and temporal context.

GO FISH! from Dustin York on Vimeo.

My project employs video, and my first endeavor when thinking about this project was to find some interaction where the presence of the knob itself is not noticeable when combined with a familiar object and its pre-accepted action. From there, I wanted to play off of and modify what that pre-learned behavior would produce. A fishing reel, for me, was the perfect solution.

I created a game involving hooking my fellow MDP studio mates with a rod and reel because it was an ideal way for me to blend a physical action with what one sees onscreen in a playful, humorous way. The video simply loops if left on it’s own, but by using the reel it allows the user to hook who they see onscreen. It’s basic appeal is as a game because the user has to reel the correct amount in order to be able to reel in their catch; if they reel too hard the line snaps, and if they reel too little the prey is able to break free on their own accord. Only through practice, trial-and-error, and maybe a little luck can the player bring in the big one! There is even a fish counter in the corner of the screen, letting the user know how many prize catches they have earned.

Credit must be given to Professor Phil van Allen and Zhengxin Xi for their generous help and collaboration on the Actionscript coding. Also, many thanks to the stars of my project and excellent fish impersonators: Austin Lee, Hoon Oh and Zhengxin Xi.

The Go Fish! prototype from Dustin York on Vimeo. This initial test video, shot with Scott Liao as my fish, provided the springboard for a fully realized interactive project.

The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is one of Singapore’s most revered cultural institutions. LIVE Singapore! was thrilled to be a part of the 2011 Singapore Biennale, hosted by SAM.

The exhibition space was originally a 19th century church, making for an interesting juxtaposition between old and new.

Creating some general plan layouts helped the group to discuss the flow of the space and placement of the work.

Mockup designs were also a part of finalizing the layout of the space.

Mockup designs were also a part of finalizing the layout of the space.

Shown here are some pictures of the exhibition's opening, significant because the group was able to unveil it's research to the same public audience that the visualizations represent.

Shown here are some pictures of the exhibition's opening, significant because the group was able to unveil it's research to the same public audience that the visualizations represent.

Shown here are some pictures of the exhibition's opening, significant because the group was able to unveil it's research to the same public audience that the visualizations represent.

Shown here are some pictures of the exhibition's opening, significant because the group was able to unveil it's research to the same public audience that the visualizations represent.

This project description visual added a little style to the traditional project statement, and was intended to complement the rest of the show’s work.

This video is Senseable City Lab’s promotional piece about the work featured in the SAM exhibition by the LIVE Singapore! team.

The design directions I had chosen were done for mostly practical reasons. The guide was sized to letter-sized paper, so anyone in any UNICEF field office can simply print out and use. The icons that delineate each section have their own pattern so that when printed out in grayscale, it is easy to differentiate one from the other. The varying levels of information are meant to be clear, accessible, numbered, and non-hierarchical, so users can skip to whatever section is useful for them and keep track of the different references. I also posted a CFT video on a UNICEF Innovation blog, asking for greater input in order to fill out the framework from people with experience in a corresponding field. My hope is that the project will be able to become a valuable resource that can be useful and guide ICT for Education deployments on a long-term basis.

Child Friendly Technology is separated into three areas. The first is intended to be a tool to facilitate discourse, the next layer is a detailing of educational resources, and lastly elaborated are the ways to leverage the expertise of others.

Child Friendly Technology is headed with a section called Local Environment. There is no perfect formula for every educational technology deployment, for this reason, Local Environment is essentially a tool for productive dialogue, to help individuals sit down together and identify their own barriers in education and in introducing technology.

Shown here is a detail of the Local Environment section. Each circle is intended to be a subtopic with an underlying worksheet. Our research led us to create several prototypical topics for every section, however topics can and should be removed or added as the need becomes realized.

As Local Environment is a tool for discussion, there is an interactive component. Every team member that is seeking to launch an ICT for Education project can fill out their own form and rate the potential problems they currently face with the coming project. Identifying a concensus on barriers to be overcome often leads to a better sense of the solutions to take.

Above is a detail for the Devices & Mediums section. This section falls under the umbrella of a resource for education. Worksheets in this section would deal largely with outlining the appropriate uses and drawbacks for each enumerated type of hardware.

Each circle corresponds to an underlying worksheet. Users of the framework can check off or mark a worksheet that they anticipate will be particularly useful for them.

The worksheets are resources that interested parties can turn to in order to make more educated decisions with their own ICT for Education projects.

This is a detail for the Solar Energy worksheet, users may reference this in order to calculate their own need for power generation.

This is a detail for the Content Development section. Content Development details sound practices in diagnosing educational needs and in using proven methods to form appropriate educational material to address them.

Above is a detail of the Teaching with Technology section. Teaching with Technology gives examples of successes and failures when implementing different types of methods and tools into education, and provides background for the factors and planning that led to different outcomes.

This is a detail for the Partners section. Partners describes the roles and recommended modes of interactions with various partners that can help aid educational initiatives, from the global to the local level.

Above is the Processes & Strategies section. This section examines the overall strategies and processes that can lead to a project achieving its goals. Some examples include strategies to elevate equity, ensure proper oversight, and to engage your community.

Our e-reader has developed a system of layered relationships between the user and the content, resulting in a platform that provides a good mix of both user-controlled and open-ended content. Visually, the reader is divided into two sections, a personal section (entitled My World) and a community section (called Shared World). Together, they provide the opportunity for the user to oversee their own content preferences while also having the benefit of being exposed to new content from the members in their communities with interests adjacent to their own.

Small world_Flash prototype from Yoo Kyoung Noh on Vimeo.

Small World user interaction demo from Hye Mi Kim on Vimeo.

For more detail on this e-reader, you can find our project website here.

The Senseable City Lab’s AIDA website goes into further detail about the overall project. It is a fruitful research direction, and we will be seeing prototypes on the roads in the near future.

VANISHING POINT allows access to real-time urban activity for both driver and passenger. The manner of display communicates easily the nature of the source, direction, and approximate distance. The amount and variety of display interfaces converts the vehicle into a machine that fully interacts with the city, helping the people in it to feel completely connected.

CELESTIAL CITY is a participatory gestural interface representing one’s urban landscape as a living constellation of activity. Any member of the vehicle may interact with this display, scrolling, zooming and selecting with intuitive gestures. This manner of representing real-time information is entertaining, and connective of the members in the vehicle to their urban environment.

WINDOW TO THE WORLD utilizes the benefits of an augmented display and incorporates a digital display to work in concert, adding a visual input while retaining and augmenting a traditional vehicle feature. This creates an assemblage that informs without separating the driver’s attention, and helps the driver to navigate their environment and find the best destinations with ease.

PULSE uses a wave motion to sense location and context specific recommendation sources. The pulse activates when the vehicle comes to a stop, and the sources appear frozen for a short amount of time before disappearing, giving time to peruse the selections. The driver or passenger can select a source by pointing at it. This singles out that source, which remains in view and shifts according to the vehicle’s present orientation.

Zhengxin (Ina) Xi and myself presenting at CHI. Photo credit: Stephen Brewster

Ina during one of our presentations to the SDC judges. Photo credit: Stephen Brewster

Ina and myself during one of our presentations to the SDC judges. Photo credit: Stephen Brewster

The posters were displayed in the conference foyer alongside the rest of the conference posters.

This is an illustration of the alphabetic interface that makes it easier for remedial level spellers to 'tag' pictures, over the conventional phone texting method.

Trying the Tagging the Village prototype while at the conference.

The Vancouver Convention Center was a pretty impressive venue, and during the conference we were exposed to a lot of different research areas within the HCI field.

Presenting the project at CHI necessitated refining and clarifying several aspects. In addition to updating and modifying the concept demonstration videos for the three discreet sections of the project, we endeavored to resolve some of the details and create an interactive prototype for the Tagging the Village component. Tagging the Village is the part of the project that describes individuals using a camera-enabled mobile phone to take pictures of their everyday environment, then ‘tagging’ those images with a descriptive word, and messaging it to everyone else in their network. In order to create a more intuitive and accessible way to spell out words for an individual still developing their literacy skills, we created an interface concept that displayed the full alphabet when ‘tagging’ a picture, but laid the letters out in the most user-friendly way possible when using a regular mobile phone’s directional keypad. In addition to that, we created an interactive prototype that simulates the experience of ‘tagging’ one of your pictures, sending it out to your group, and then receiving ‘tagged’ images in response. Feel free to try it out for yourself, by holding your smartphone up to the QR code (code reader software required).

Trying out Tagging from Dustin York on Vimeo.

Of course, we also needed to create a poster that presented the overall project for the competition. The poster was displayed alongside eleven other teams, and the competition portion involved two sets of judges going from team to team and listening to our five-minute project presentation, with an additional two minutes for questions. The posters were displayed publicly at the conference, and there was a scheduled Q&A session for the attendees that were interested in coming by and talking to the SDC participants. It’s fair to say our project stood out from the group, in that our design solutions were presenting fairly unconventional ideas and applications to pretty basic and familiar technologies and tools. Although we never had the opportunity to field test our system and advance the project in that way, presenting afforded us the chance to speak to people about our research approach, and describe our design method when developing the proposed interventions. Unfortunately, our project wasn’t selected to be among the four to present in a second SDC session, but we received a lot of good feedback and discussion, and we benefited greatly from the experience and from seeing what other researchers were working on.

The poster presented at CHI.

A detail of the CHI poster.

A detail of the CHI poster.

A detail of the CHI poster.

A detail of the CHI poster.

The Theatre of Press and Politics from Dustin York on Vimeo.

The idea behind this project is that it is a disjointed political conversation that the reader has the ability to interact with and reveal on their own terms. There is a strong symbolic and metaphorical component embedded in the construction of this piece, the outside content from news and political sources needs to be unraveled to reveal the crush of information shouting nearly identical refrains. Doing so interrupts and overshadows the surface content, and in the process muddles the linear sequence apparent at first glance. The reader can discover relationships between different articles, and also relationships to the original text that were never intended by the original authors. The inclusion of quoted content from within the intervening article excerpts gives the user the ability shape an unexpected conversation between what would otherwise be isolated and predictably-scripted sound bites.

The material included is edited down from its original form to emphasize certain aspects, but is laid out in the correct sequence. There are different colors of text to communicate the different natures of the text. The rationale for which excerpts of the original speech were included are hinted at by color. Gray is simply an indicator of who is speaking. Blue is text from the speech repeated either throughout the course of the speech (the word ‘now’ was repeated 32 times) or a repeated word or conceit present at that particular moment in the speech, occupying the theme of that instant. In this case, any reference to an untruth or a lie was included in blue. Green is text that represents live audience reactions to the speech. Finally, examples of black text are the statements that constitute Obama’s reaction to a specific event. In this case, the President’s statement is intended to directly contradict information circulated in regard to health care for illegal immigrants. The schema for what is included from outside internet and media sources is that the article title, included date of publication, and any reference to a specific person within the article is printed in red. Orange is always quotations included within the article.

This project could very effectively expand to apply to multiple instances of political speeches in how it reveals the intimate relation of the political climate to the media environment. It is a way to hold in your hand these trivial instances that get blown out of proportion and to craft one’s own conclusions with the raw materials that the individual characters provide. If this particular method of interpretation and examination of a political speech and its surrounding influences were to apply to multiple speeches over the course of time it would reveal snapshots of shifting cultural attitudes both in regards to the content and the interpreter. It would also chronicle the careers of prominent politicians and their influence over the national landscape as it rises and falls in due course.

Pairing a series of tangible pieces, like the constructed instance shown, with digital pieces chronicling the same event and the same information would reveal different strengths and truths afforded to each medium. While digital materials would be effective in displaying a vast breadth of text and one could craft a much more structured pacing and narrative, the strength of the physically constructed piece is that there are opportunities to break free from a tendency for passive interaction and allow for more tangibly-generated symbolic meaning. If there were a series of instances using both mediums, and even where the physical interaction informed the behavior of the digital interface, it would reveal a lot of opportunities for creating a unique, multi-faceted, and productive user experience.

For further examples on how the project got to this point, visit the process page.

The project brief states that we are to “design a project that assumes a massively networked and sensored world. But take an ironic perspective on this future world, and design a project that either makes fun of it, comments on the dangers, is a humorous take, or is otherwise a useless application.”

Indoor Outdoors from Dustin York on Vimeo.

With that in mind, I came up with a product I call the Indoor Outdoors. In my tongue-in-cheek future world I envision a very unpleasant place that is sterile, walled-off, isolated, and cold. Due to the degradation of the environment and a society that has reverted to survival mode, every futuristic person lives in a dreary, window-less room and there is little outside interaction. To fill the emotional void left from such persistent claustrophobia, I invented a portable window frame that the consumer can use to situate as they please in the middle of their featureless abode.

The promoted benefits of Indoor Outdoors is that through its use the participant will be able to recall precious memories and be able to imagine breathing fresh air, all while remaining in the safe confines of home. In the future however, people will only be able to recall memories of looking out the window at urban wasteland; things like industrial factories, concrete walls, and electrical grids. In the future this will constitute what the ideas of “fresh air” and “sentimental views” has come to mean.

Opening the window frame automatically prompts a static video with an accompanying urban sound (sirens, traffic, drunken brawling, etc.). Opening the window again triggers a different static video to play. Little to nothing of action happens in these videos, in this way the video can loop again and again, and the user would barely notice the persistent repetition as it echoes their own action-less existence. The window also comes with a “daytime mode,” triggered by another sensor attached to a different student’s project (Scott Liao). Daytime mode is an overhead light that shines on the window and paradoxically drowns out the projected image; meant to poorly mimic sunshine pouring through the window. And, of course, there is also a “nighttime mode,” representing when Indoor Outdoors is turned off.

I hope this project be deemed successful in that it represents an ironically humorous scenario through a seemingly useless item. In this world, the future citizen will be destined to hold as precious instances of visible decay—as this will come to represent what was once good in their lives—rather than regard the images as signifiers leading to their current situation.