DIY City 0.01a - Specialmoves
DIY City 0.01a
Specialmoves x Haque Design & Research
Across the studio we Specialmovers are really interested in interactive mass participation projects. So we took the bull by the horns and approached Usman Haque, the man behind great projects like Burble and Primal Source, to collaborate with us on a 2 week R&D experiment. The result? DIY City 0.01a.
Up front we agreed that our aim was to create a prototype which empowered people to redesign their city. We're so at the mercy of our often grimy and faceless urban surroundings; what could we do to give city dwellers a little more control over their habitat? We also agreed to mark the end of the 2 week hack sprint with an event to let friends play with what we'd created...although we had no idea what that would be.
Next we pulled together a crack team, created something to test and share within 24 hours and iterated from there. At our disposal were two developers, one UX'er, one concepter, three projectors, five laptops, one big idea, ten working days and one all-important screwdriver. And of course a free rein when it came to technology options. Bliss.
What we made was essentially a mobile interface that allowed people to create sprites that were projected onto the walls of our courtyard space here at Specialmoves HQ. People could not only design but manipulate their own creations. The night was really great fun and people told us they could see bags of potential for taking this prototype to the next level. After all, this was only version '0.01a' of a much larger idea.
Watch the video for the details and tweet us @specialmoves to let us know what city you think we should hijack. Thanks to our friends at onedotzero for supporting the project and to Dan Munslow at ADM for being mega generous and lending us some fab Epsom projectors.
Gavin Clark has written a LABS article about the project for those of you who would like more technical info.
