Log 1: Affordance-filled chat

A chatroom that only affords positive vibes ❤︎

For this exercise, I created a chatroom that only affords positive vibes.
When my partner and I used to do long-distance, a lot of extra friction and strain was added to the relationship, leading us to say things we don't mean. To prevent that, I made my phone auto-correct hurtful words to silly ones. By completely removing the possibiity of saying hurtful things made much healthier and productive conversations.
Inspired by this, I altered the code of the chatroom to create one that redacts hurtful words. I had done so simply by making the background color and the color of the font the same. On the flip side hand, the chat highlights positive words, like apologies and expressions of affection, by increasing the font size and giving them extra color.
Essentially, it does not afford swearing and, by extention, affords building positive and consrtuctive conversations after a conflict.
What I find perticularly interesting about my experince is that as my behaviour is now limited in certain ways within this space, it consequently alters the way I feel about a certain situation (less heated), and makes an impact on my relationship with another individual. It illustrates how the affordance of an environment, or the lack of in this case, can greatly shape not just our physical behaviours, but even our psychological and social selves.

Final Project

The intersection of computation and the built environment is, in many ways, very new. The tools, techniques, and theories available to us are very new: a few decades, years, or in some cases, only months old.
We’ll be answering questions that have no definitive answer, such as:

• What might an ideal future city look like?
• How will the built environment be shaped by computation?
• What will spatial or technological practice look like, in the future?
• How will we (our societies, communities, relationships, selves) be changed by this all?

By the end of the colloquium, we might not be any more certain of the answers, but we will be more informed, perhaps more opinionated, on what the questions are.
The colloquium will culminate in a “artifact essay”: a mix of a prototype artifact and written position that combines technological experimentation and critical pondering.

• Recommended format: A web-based essay, with websites, iframes, or videos embedded into it, at least 1500 words.
  Many other formats are possible, as long as they are viewable on the web: a video essay, an interactive experience, an audio piece, etc.
  
• The prototype artifact is a prototype that illustrates a project. This could be a functional prototype as a piece of software, material; it can also be a design proposal, a mockup, a visualization.
  
• The goal of the artifact essay is for you to articulate your personal understanding of computation and the built environment, and to stake a unique and/or specific position or a claim. Perhaps your essay asks questions, shares a provocation, presents a series of examples. We ask that you be opinionated, thoughtful, and contemplative. (Videos can also be embedded; this is an example. On a YouTube page, Click on the 'Share' link under the video to get the embed code!)

Idea 1: Open Source Designing | Half a Technology

For more wholesome and healthier smart cities

There is a dialectic relationship between us and our environemt. That is to say that while we shape our environments, they in turn shape us to.
Like any relationship, it is important to foster a healthy one. Incremental deisgns that allow for participation can inspire a sense of ownership and belonging to an environment.
The same could be said about our technologies. By turning users to creators too can foster healtheir communities around technology.
While historically, technologies have an open-source bottom-up culture, there has been a growing trend of more totalling and controlling systems as they grow in scale.
Can we create a model for bottom-up, open-source, smart-cities that leaves space for citizen participation to meaningfully shape the structures/goals of its design.

• Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual
• Half a House
• Open Source Architecture
• Issues of Trust
• Richter et al., "Who Are the End User(s) of Smart Cities?"

Idea 2: "The Extended Mind" by Andy Clark and David Chalmers

As we off-load more of our cognition to our built environments, what are the implications, opportunities and pitfalls?
With this framework in mind, what are new ethical considerations and deisgn opportunities? Prototype: Rooms turn into a particular setting based on who you are and what type of mindset you are in.

Log 2: Fun Parks

Fun park tool that dynamically changes based on relationship with neighbor elements.

Log Project Developmen

Neighborhoods have long defined