Design Observation Blog - Bus Pushing

One private coach bus died and so to keep it moving another came and slowly pushed it down the street. When I knew I had to grab my camera is when I saw they were going to try a turn. The bus in the back gave a push and while it seemed a little iffy, the were successful. One thing we noticed is that in those buses the driver is usually at the very front of the coach, which makes the guy giving the push a great view of the impending back of the guy in the front. It would make me nervous. The main point I wondered about was, is there a better way? There has to be, since I believe most forms of transport contact is considered bad. Why didn't the guy wait for a tow? Or is it just as good of an option and the bus company or buses removed the unnecessary middle man of a tow? Do you have to design a tow truck differently for a bus than a car? Maybe my next interview should be bus drivers.

Design Observation Blog - Making Do.

Bonus: What do you do if you don't have cue chalk? Bust through the paint and use the gesso ceiling of course. Not obvious from the photo, but that ceiling has tons of little holes.

Design Observation Blog - BART Info

This a photo I took during my awesome intercept interviews I thought it was funny. Directly in front of a sign with all sorts of info written in small little type, there is a trashcan in the way. But since BART has the big signs to tell us when the next train is coming, maybe a trashcan is more important anyways.

Design Observation Blog - Marta!

Marta is one of the people I interviewed for our final projects and also one of my roommates. She comes from Santiago, Chile and during our interview, shared many stories about cultural differences between Chile and the United States. One of my favorites was about bread. In Chile, and other parts of Latin America from my experience, it's more common to buy fresh baked bread than bread from stores. Sliced bread would be sold in stores, but is more expensive so in Chile she thought of sliced bread as a rich people thing. Here it's the opposite, to buy fresh baked bread daily would be a "rich" thing and the cheapest bread varieties usually come sliced. I want fresh bread delivered daily. How can we make that happen?

Design Observation Blog - Electrical Inspiration

I don't know if this is an intentional design decision, but I thought it was pretty cool. At the PG&E in Emeryville, the lights are seemly inspired by the equipment they have within the fenced area. It's an interesting way to reflect what is the nature of the fenced area.

Design Observation Blog - Nature Remembered

On my walk to Home Depot I walked over a piece of public art that denotes where the Temescal Creek used to flow and now is below ground. A small reminder of what we build on top of to create streets and houses and stores, which in the case of Emeryville, is creeks and Indian graveyards. To what purpose though? It looks nice, but it's a reminder of what is gone and can't be reclaimed without the destruction of established city. But maybe a reminder is just what we need.

Design Observation Blog - Mobile Banking

The article on Jan Chipchase and his research for Nokia about the future of mobile technology discussed the potential for cell phones to help developing countries to solve problems with poverty. It discusses mobile banking solutions, both formal and makeshift, used around the globe which I thought was interesting. A few days after reading the article, I was checking my balance online and realized that Chase offers mobile banking, and has offered. I signed up and have more or less solved my overdraw issues that I used to have. Now when I want to know how much I can spend, I no longer guess. It's interesting to see how developing nations take advantage of their technology for development in what seems to be a more rapid fashion. I read an article that said that mobile phones have made serious headway in developing nations due to limited preexisting system of landline phones that had to be change. In the same way, nations with less resources seem to find the solutions that eventually are made common place in the US. People in Africa were mobile baking before I even knew it was an option. Weird, huh?

Design Observation Blog - Floating Islands

Our arrival to Reed Island (not the real name, I think it was Puma Island...) 

I don't know if it's cheating since I took this photo before the class, but it's kind of awesome, so this will be a bonus travel recall design blog. In Lake Titicaca there are the floating islands of Uros, man-made islands created out of reeds that float! This sounded bizarre to me so I went on a day boat tour of the islands with Taylor and Diana which was both interesting and rather uncomfortable. On the island they explained the construction of the islands which, to the best of my recollection, is as follows: They use totora reeds that grow in shallow water and have root systems which spread and hold the earth together. They cut the reeds off and then cut large chunks of the earth out which are non dense enough that they float. The floating pieces are tied together and reeds are piled on top and then reed houses are created. And until the introduction of motor boats they made reeds to travel from island to island, of course out of reeds too. Now the reed boats mostly carry tourists on short journeys to get to from one tourist trap island to the next. And the reeds are edible as well, but its not the most appealing flavor. But cool right? one plant that you can eat, make boats and houses and islands.

Positives of reed islands: they are so nice and soft that they don't wear shoes on them, you can float away from annoying neighbors, if you get hungry there is potentially food everywhere. negatives: the islands are small and have a lot of tourist traffic, but maybe you're into that. But in all seriousness, the islands may not be luxury, but use of material intrigued me. How many materials are in my house right now? I'm guessing probably none that I can eat.

oh yeah I mentioned something about awkward. well it seems like the tourist destination uros islands aren't exactly like the ones that people actually live on. From a distance we could see electric lights and solar panels and motor boats on other islands. The houses we could look into appeared completely empty in most cases which makes me skeptical that people live on these islands at all. The people there make a hard sell for their souvenirs, which fair enough, they need to make a living, but the amount of time dedicated to letting us "look around" a tiny island was clearly so that they adequate time to chase us down to try and sell mini boats. And I get it, people change society changes, not everyone is going to want to live on small reed islands, but there is something kinda sad about the recreation of traditional lifestyles for the benefit of tourists, it shouldn't be Disneyland. Overall, a place that was fun to visit, but I'll skip it next time.

Design Observation Blog - Stadium Opera

The draft feature on blogspot makes me lazy, this is one of a few I started and then left to age into irrelevance.

Some of my roommates and family friends attended the simulcast of Il Trovatore at ATT field September 19th. While being a bit cold, it was definitely my way to experience culture, in street clothes and eating garlic fries, and free to boot. The sheer number of people in attendance numbering, around 25,000 I believe, is a testament to the cultural involvement of San Francisco, that or there are lots of people with a love for overcrowded stadium events. or garlic fries. It was a lot of fun and made me think about multiple purpose spaces, how can spaces of gathering be used/ adjusted for events of very different intents. Food culture has changed even the offerings at baseball games, sushi is readily available along a with wine selection and "bistro" options. So isn't there already an intersection occurring? And as stadiums become more and more designed and lavish, where do we leave behind the gritty all american aspect of the game? but it makes me think if high culture is changing pop culture or the other way around.