Yesterday at the annual conference of the Design Research Society Bas presented the paper he co-wrote with Wendy march of Intel’s People and Practices Research Group in Portland, OR. The paper discusses how research and design can merge into one iterative effort that shifts gradually from understanding situations to developing interventions.
A Royal College of Art project on the Smart Street in 2006, with 8 MA students provided the case-study for the paper. We looked for three weeks at Gloucester Road in London’s South Kensington. A typical London street that feels a bit like a village.¬†
The students developed relationships with the shopkeepers and involved them in experimental research that was designed to let them speculate about the future of their own street. Bringing fiction into our ethnography proved to be very successful. You can find the publication and the presentation at Undisciplined! in our publications section. (Photo: Wendy March)
Wow it is great to see that the Smart Street project is still alive and doing the rounds. I really enjoyed being involved in that project and it was the first time i went out onto the street and spoke to strangers about their ideas of value and trade (eg. the swapbox).