This past week I had several very insightful exchanges within the Transdisciplinary lab, and I feel like I have received some invaluable guidance. On Wednesday evening, I visited the Arsenal in Central Park for the City Parks Foundation Catalyst Dialogues. I was invited to attend by the labs Partnership for Parks group, where Nelesi, Emily, and Isabella felt that I would benefit from meeting people there who may be able to help me with certain aspects of my project.
Emily suggested I should touch base with Carlos who had done work in the South Bronx. He and I discussed my project and agreed to talk more specifically in the future in terms of where I could go, and who I could talk to. Carlos suggested I look into contacting The Point Community Development Corporation, Per Scholas, Senior Centers and Libraries, and the Bronx Museum. He shared with me some insight based on his experiences organizing within this specific community as it related to technology. He told me that a technology gap does exist, but it exists in ways that you may not expect, including the fact that community members have access to and utilize social media more than they have access to home based computing, including home based internet connections. Additionally, he said based on his experience that city infrastructure, many times, utilized technology that was so out dated that it made working within the community more difficult and inefficient.
On Thursday, I was very fortunate to spend time discussing my project with Hefen Wong and Kit Lykketoft, each of whom were visiting class for Kit’s discussion on Prototyping and Evaluation. I found Kit’s presentation and class exercise to be enormously helpful in my articulating my project’s goal, while also talking through my perspective in terms of formulating research questions and attaining quality data. I appreciated very much Kit discussing certain aspects of collecting and analyzing data, including the fact that data could be interpreted in many different ways (that data is subjective), and that in general, people tend to shy away from and not engage data represented in large numbers.
In conversation with Hefen, she suggested that my project seek to identify opportunities and potential for collaboration between Microsoft Civic Tech and the South Bronx, and that my project should culminate in key recommendations from the perspective of the South Bronx based on “what bothers them the most”. She encouraged me to consider how my project would be impactful, and suggested that I work to locate the perspective between Microsoft and the South Bronx.
Kit was very interested in discussing further my research question prototype and suggested that I reconsider my current line of questioning to include those with a logical, memory based (asking questions that require articulating senses, like what does a new computer smell like, or what color does such and such look like), as well as questions that address heart or feel (for example, how did it feel when I saw such and such). She felt it essential to attempt to articulate emotions because she understands that there are feelings bound in using technology (I COULD NOT AGREE WITH THIS MORE). Kit also encouraged me to position the results of my project to where Microsoft could see themselves in a type of solution in collaboration with the community. She also recommended that in my articulating my data that I avoid showing numbers, to work to describe my findings in a way that is more graphical, and to attempt to interview my subjects as well as observe them.
Overall, extremely valuable and energizing week for me.
pushing forward
