Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Sometimes some of the best surprises come after-the-fact. In this case, after the pilot project was over, the words were sent down stream to the pickup location. Video by Miguel Ortiz. Photos by Gus Pantell. Editing by Alberto Rigau.
All photos by Gus Pantell.
The early part of the XXth century witnessed the construction of an extensive web of irrigation channels to distribute water to homes and farmlands in Puerto Rico along more than 35 kms. Still in operation to this day, throughout time different individuals and groups have acknowledged the scenic value of these channels; however, to most they remain unknown.
Conceived by the architectural firm, Jorge Rigau FAIA, Architects, the pilot project was designed to garner support from government officials, institutions, and the general public for the development of Isabela’s irrigation channels as a key ecotourism attraction in Puerto Rico. The “canales” travel across plains, mountains, and forests of varying microclimate, flora, fauna, and views. Maintenance paths that run continuously next to them could today be refashioned as nature trails accessible to the general public, children, senior citizens, and handicapped people alike. This pilot project set out to prove the feasibility of this initiative.
After public access to these facilities had been denied for eighty years, one kilometer of channels was opened up for two days, attracting an audience of over 3,000 registered people, including key decision-makers like the Island’s Interim Governor. Environmental leaders and university professors joined the long lines of visitors from all over the Island.Advocacy is often linked to demonstrations, more than often committed to stop something from happening. In our case, we chose to demonstrate otherwise: How something can, in fact, happen. Letters of support have started to come and decision makers – already engaged – have invited us to sit and dialogue. This is what we planned for.
I am getting a bit nervous. The calendar dates keep progressing and my making seems to be resting stagnantly. Nonetheless, major progress was achieved this morning through the discussion and appreciation of smaller details. These procedural wireframes have begun to seriously integrate much of the research, expressing itself through a series of functionalities.
As it can be anticipated, my system has already changed again, but here I present what I showed in the meeting today.
Read the rest of this entry »
I think that the secret for the behavioral success of this project lies in articulating the difference of needs and wants to the users.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Last semester, before I got interested in consumer behaviors and their repercussions, I explored gesture based interfaces as a possibility for my final project. Today, while organizing my current archive, I found this old copy of the HP Touch Smart ad. It is still impressive.
After the most recent discussion about the progress of the final project, I decided to stir things a bit… and materialize the sketching. I’ve devised a usable paper-prototype that allows me to explore the possibilities for the interface and its contents.
Read the rest of this entry »
The view, looking east from the command center.
As you can imagine, as the oral defense presentation gets closer, the perception of the world around me is slowly shifting. The apartment is no longer home-base, my chair is my best friend, and my desk the center of all of the world’s operations… again, of all of the world’s operations…!
So… I have proven that I have time to bother other classmates while they do their work, I can make stop-animation movies, and I can spy on what others are doing… but what have I been up to? Where am I in my process?
Read the rest of this entry »
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Visual exploration by Robert Ruehlman
Why is it that this moment always comes?
You know… When you wish you were doing everybody else’s project but your own? Don’t get me wrong. I am immersed and excited over what I am working on, but there is always that little instance when you just become extremely jealous of the inspiring work your classmates make. I mean, how can I not be?
Marty Maxwell Lane is doing these amazing explorations that still have me speechless. Rebecca Tegtmeyer has created these gorgeous compositions that provide structural cues to her content. Robert Ruehlman works on animated typographic explorations (like the one at the top of this post) aiming directly at my past with Spirographs… and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, the cyber-hippie who sits in the back, would not even share her super-secret thesis blog… which kills my curiosity now.
The body of work of these individuals serves to remind me of the right choice I made in coming to this particular program.
A few days ago Rebecca Tegtmeyer sent a few friends an email with a challenge to do something like this. It was not until today that I was able to see the link, and to be honest, I just found it too fun to ignore. Since last night I did not get to sleep much, my productivity today was very low, so I decided to give this a shot.
By now, I have shared the video with a few friends which have pointed out many crucial missing moments like the photography from the Option Shift Control Symposium, from our class trip to DC, the Design Band, and others. With all the missing parts I might have to consider Meat Loaf for the soundtrack… hehehe. I will update the file, probably after the Final Project is done. But for now… I hope you enjoy…
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
At the end of last semester the graduate class came together to work on a calendar for 2009. The project, headed by Caroline Prietz, Liese Zahabi and Lauren Waugh, was hand letterpressed and distributed to our family and friends. Each of the months was divided among the participants. To show the process to the faculty, I made this short video which pretty much tells the story of that one particular weekend when thinner became our therapist and biscuits were king.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Two nights ago, while my friend Cady Bean-Smith was trying to work, I made it a point to let her know that I needed some attention… hahahaha. This projection was part of her Interface for Interfaces project that she designed and I decided to come play with.
Untitled (I shop therefore I am)
by Barbara Kruger
111″ by 113″
photographic silkscreen/vinyl
1987
Power-Hog is a power consumption metering piggy bank designed to sensitize kids to energy cost associated with running electronics devices. Plug the tail into the outlet and the device into the snout; feed a coin to meter 30 minutes of use.
Read the rest of this entry »
A maquette? The active verb of a process. A model? Just the passive object in the predicate of such steps.
‘And what do you mean to be?’
The kind old Bishop said
As he took the boy on his ample knee…
‘I want to be a Consumer,’
The bright-haired lad replied
As he gazed up into the Bishop’s face
In innocence open-eyed.
‘I’ve never had aims of a selfish sort,
For that, as I know is wrong,
I want to be a Consumer, Sir, And help the word along.
‘I want to be a Consumer
And work both night and day,
For that is the thing that’s needed most,
I’ve heard Economists say.
I won’t just be a Producer,
Like Bobby and James and John;
I want to be a Consumer, Sir,
And help the nation on.’
–Patrick Barrington
Punch, April 25 193, p. 467
Mitch Butler and Josh Landis examine the current crisis now facing credit card companies, who have faced recent difficulty trying to sell off consumer debt to investors.
Next month I will be presenting the progress of my final project at the NC State Graduate Research Symposium to be held in the McKimmon Center on Wednesday, March 18, 2009. What follows is the abstract of the submission, which is still highly speculative since visual making has only just begun.
—–
Alberto Rigau
Graphic Design Master’s Candidate
College of Design
Advisors: Meredith Davis / Martha Scotford
In what ways can design address consumption induced behaviors and provide a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities?
Credit cards have become an essential financial tool for individuals and families. In 2004, the Census Bureau reported that there were more than 1.4 billion credit cards for 164 million cardholders—an average of 8.5 cards per cardholder, out of which 115 million carry a balance at the end of the month. In the pre–credit card era, households used a pay–as–you–go accounting system. Today, if there is no cash to fill up the car, there is always the credit card. Such a reliance on this payment method generates experiential patterns, more than often translating into family debt. This investigation studies behaviors and patterns associated with credit card use to identify moments in which design intervention can bring about reflective thought about spending habits.
Yiannis Gabriel and Tim Lang, in The Unmanageable Consumer, argue that our actions and experiences as consumers cannot be detached from our actions and experiences as social, political and moral agents. They claim that the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary consumption are part of the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary living. It is not the case that at one moment we act as consumers and the next as workers or as citizens, as women or men or as members of ethnic groups. We are creative composites of simultaneous social categories, with histories, presents and futures. The authors see consumers as central characters of stories, many times exhibiting varied behaviors, such as those of explorers, choosers, communicators, identity-seekers, hedonists, victims, rebels, activists, or citizens.
This research focuses on evaluating some of the ways in which design can address these consumption induced behaviors and on proposing a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The final project is underway, and as such, visualizing is also in the process. This is the first stab at the “Rubix-Cube Metaphor” towards an ecological understanding. Let’s see where this takes me…
***Update: The strategic idea did not last the night. Already exploring other paths… ;)
Armando Rigau holds a degree in Philosophy from Georgetown University. Currently he studies at the M.Arch. 1 program at the School of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University.
Alberto Rigau recently completed his graduate studies in Design at the College of Design in NC State University. Currently he runs a multidisciplinary design studio in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
From Estudio Interlínea