Design without Boundaries workshops, Fall 2008

Instructors: William J. Mitchell, Federico Casalegno [Prerequisite: Permission of the instructors - Fall 2008, 12 units]

This class will provide opportunities to pursue real-world design projects that cross-traditional disciplinary boundaries, apply advanced technologies and address significant social issues. During the first meeting we will describe two design workshops that we will give within the Design without boundaries seminar: Smart Urban Mobility System in Paris and Rethinking the TV experience, and we will select students.

[1] Smart Urban Mobility System in Paris

Working in close collaboration with the French public transportation authority (RATP), we will examine the concept of smart urban mobility system in the city of Paris.
The goal of our class is to explore future scenarios on how to design smart urban mobility system that consider both the transportation and the communication dimension. During our seminar we will explore how new media and information technologies can be integrated into every level of a complex mobility system in order to help RATP to offer better mobility service to citizens.
Participants in the seminar will visit Paris in order to explore the public transportation system and the city. RATP collaborators from Paris will attend the workshop both in person and via videoconferencing. The goal of the course will be not only to generate exciting new ideas and technologies that could have a major impact on a smart urban mobility system, but also to generate specific design proposals during the term, suitable for consideration by RATP as well as for potential further development.

Course code
(MAS.551J, Architecture 4.556J)

Time and place:
Class will meet on Tue and Thu 4-5:30PM
Location: MIT Design Laboratory, NE18, 4th floor
(At One Cambridge Center, in Kendall Square)

[2] Rethinking the TV experience
How user-generated content and mobile media challenge broadcast TV

The MIT Mobile Experience Lab (MIT Design Laboratory) organizes in collaboration with RAI New Media - Italian Broadcast Television - a workshop that will guide the students to imagine future scenarios on the evolution of Broadcast TV according to the current innovations in technologies, communication trends and user-generated contents.
The workshop aims at creatively explore new and disruptive scenarios to define the evolution of broadcast TV in term of user experience, enabling technologies and industry involvements. Students will work in a multidisciplinary class, following a design process that will range from a preliminary research phase until the final concept development.
The mid-term results will be presented in Rome - Italy - to RAI New Media where students will also have the opportunity to conduct some fieldwork.

Course code
(MAS.551J, Architecture 4.556J)

Time and place
Time will be defined with students
Location: MIT Design Laboratory, NE18, 4th floor
(At One Cambridge Center, in Kendall Square)