Spacemaker: Design better cities with AI

VISO's aim is to provide a transformative solution accessible to a broad audience, bringing attention to how in-car technology could be harnessed to enhance focus, rather than serve as a distraction.

Midas is an accessible gaming controller which can turn any object or surface touched into a control interface. Designed to improve the gaming experience for people living with Muscular Dystrophy (MD), Midas acknowledges the lack of inclusive gaming hardware for people living with musculoskeletal disabilities. It challenges the idea of a traditional controller by proposing a solution which caters to an individual’s experience of MD, unique even within a similar diagnosis.

Street debating is a job to bridge social divides which also works as a social alternative to begging. Street debaters use a set of scales that makes public opinion visible with coins to evoke a discussion with the passerby. This job aims to promote empathy and tolerance in society by creating an opportunity for people to break out of their own social bubble to meet people with different opinions.

Plug-In-Play is an interactive installation consisting of an architectural scale projection and a series of networked input platforms representing a playful take on the future of the connected city. It was the central installation of the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, CA by the LAB at Rockwell Group.

Government websites have a wealth of information but are often hard for citizens to navigate to find the answer to their specific questions. As a citizen, when you visit a government website with a question in mind, chances are you want a quick answer and a simple explanation, so you can be on your way. Unfortunately, this is not how the experience usually goes. On most govt websites, a lot of the time, you run into things like bad navigation, broken links, old content, and information that's hard to understand. Basically, a website rich with information isn't useful if the information cannot be easily accessed. Hard to use govt websites are frustrating for both citizens and City Hall. Honolulu’s city staff spends a lot of time answering phone calls from frustrated citizens who find the city website so unmanageable that calling for the information is inevitably easier. Honolulu Answers (answers.honolulu.gov) is a new approach to make it easier for people to get quick answers to their questions about city information and services. It's an open-source website that is citizen-focused, question-driven, and simplifies the govt website experience with a clean, easy-to-navigate design.

Introducing Alvio, a breathing trainer that acts like a game controller. But instead of using your thumbs, you control the game with your breath. Alvio tracks your progress while you play. And because it’s fun, kids keep playing, and getting healthier. Inhaling and exhaling moves characters up and down to hit targets.

The U-Bot is a robot powered by ai behaviors and the aim is to make blind children aware of the space around them. The important phase of this project is been the research part focused on the available product on the market to help blind people have a better understanding of “orientation and mobility”.

Studio H is a high school design/build curriculum for rural community benefit. Launched in Bertie County, North Carolina, the program now resides at Realm Charter School in Berkeley, California. By learning through a design sensibility and “dirt-under-your-fingernails” construction skills, we’re developing creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, and capital to give students the skills they need to succeed, while building the assets the community needs to survive. Given the opportunity to engage within a public education system, we believe the next generation will be the greatest asset and untapped resource in rural communities’ futures. Studio H is a different kind of classroom. We design, build, and transform.

Local Projects worked with the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA to develop the BioDesign Studio which opened on March 18, 2016. The goal of the BioDesign Studio was to design interactive exhibits to demystify one of the least-understood and most controversial topics in modern science: synthetic biology. The client outlined the basic flow of the gallery, splitting exhibits into two groups. The first group familiarized visitors with the fundamentals of biology, and the second group of exhibits builds on these foundations to introduce visitors to more complex concepts from synthetic biology.

DOLL-SITTER is a toy set of pop-up smart books and application for sex education for children aged 5-8, using dolls which play the role of body organs and children played as their protectors. Through the interaction of dolls and smart pop-up books, children can learn about sex education, establish life scenes, and discuss with their parents the sex education issues in the “difficult to speak” life. Parents use APP and cards for parent-child interaction, complete the task of protecting the doll together, talk about sensitive topics, and answer children’s doubts about the body through the elf. It aims to cultivate long-term Comprehensive Sexuality Education, stimulate children’s curiosity about sexual knowledge, and weaken the embarrassment of traditional parents in front of sexual knowledge.