Dan: Good discussion here, the project is in fact over the top so picking one area to focus on is a good strategy. In fact, I'd think about a particular audience as they navigate their daily life there. So you could start by trying to develop a scenario around say an American high school student forced to move there because of a parent's job. Slightly bitter about having to move but intrigued by the opportunity of living in such an advanced society, this student does 'x', 'y', and 'z'. everyday. Your role as designers could be to create spaces throughout this kid's life that are relevant, and offer opportunities for learning even if it is not school learning. Perhaps there are all kinds of opportunities to incorporate language and cultural lessons in the things this kid runs into every day.
Regarding who can afford to live there, great point and it is one that in my opinion the government/developers/planners just haven't or don't want to put that much thought into. Real estate in Seoul itself is similar to the Bay Area - insanely expensive for what you are actually getting.
Co Great thoughts everyone. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. all of your questions are great. A couple more thoughts I have are: 1. What is our focus going to be are we focusing on the schools? I don't think we should try to address too large of an audience in the time that we have. 2. If we are focusing on schools what is the structure of a typical korean school? both physically and academically. 3. who is our target audience? and what kind of techology will those people have? ie. if we are doing schools do students have cell phones PDAs etc. 4. If we are not focusing on the school where do we want to focus? A friend of mine suggested a shopping area because it has the largest audience.
I think most importantly we need to decide on a target audience because we can't design for everyone in less then a month. Maybe we should brainstorm this with the focus group.
Carline Anyway, as I was going through thew New Song Do web site, I am curious to know who would/could afford to live in the city. I spoke to another friend who had heard about new cities being built--according to him, a couple of them turned out disastrously because they were too expensive for the workers to live in--they had to commute (schools were also too expensive to send their kids to). I am also interested in knowing whether anyone in our focus group whether they have a sense of whether they would go back there to live or work in the new city--why or why not?
I would ask the group to give us the top three or four ways in which Koreans consume and communicate information--(I think this is in line with your question Nikki)
What/who was their most effective teacher (animate or inanimate!) and how was info effectively communicated to them?
Nicole Detavio, thanks for sending out this email. I had very similar thoughts to yours and agree with all of your ideas so far. I would also like to ask what kinds of cool "learning" things already happen in South Korea through things like cell phones, PDAs, etc. As I understand it Seoul is practically completely wired as well...
Detavio We have a focus group on Friday and I wanted to get the juices flowing-I figured email was a good start. I emailed our project connection but he has yet to get back to me, which means the only information we have to go on is a) the web site and b) what we’ve heard in class.
What I remember: Global community (only 10% Korean residences) Heterogeneous community Completely wired Our job is to put learning into every aspect of the community And that’s about it :(
Ways to think about approaching the project? Make a list of all tools that will be present in space to help us (computers, pdas, cell phones, etc) Make a list of what we want (content) people to learn Identify all learners
Ideas Given the heterogeneity of the community I think there are opportunities to make the community learn about each other (the cultures, histories, and ways of those who frequent the city), thus promoting understanding and acceptance in the space Given that Korea is the host company, maybe we should use Korean culture and Korean language as the foundation for the community/tools/web sites/etc, as the diverse community will most likely have to learn the most about the Korean culture Find a way to push news headlines about the companies in the local area to the inhabitants (create a web site/send messages to phones or pdas/etc), keeping all learners informed about the happenings of each other, thus promoting community Create those things that are like: “Text 5411” to get local headlines, “Text 5412” for the latest sales/bargains in the area, “Text 5413” for recent demographics of the area (it might be fun to keep tabs on the heterogeneous neighborhood as it changes and people move in)
Questions for focus group- What is the Korean word for community? If you only had 20 mins w/ someone, what type of information about Korea would you want them to know