As usual, we decided to combine the two and create a “Flying Z” a la the famed flying v style of guitar. Carrie, our main Computer-Aided-Designer went off to work on what I now know is a time-consuming, and at times tedious, job of meticulously designing the product on the computer, so that the lasers can then cut the acrylic.

On Thursday, Carrie shared her CAD model with the group, but it didn’t look like what some of us were expecting. Turns out, we didn’t come up with the flying Z. It already exists, so when Carrie googled it, she found one after which she modeled hers:

When she checked in with the group (phew!) we recognized our original miscommunication and set ourselves to righting it with much clearer, more defined language and agreements. We exchanged a few more ideas:

And finally agreed on Design #4, which we ALL expressly agreed upon. Carrie remade the CAD model (props to Carrie!) and rendered this pretty amazing final design:

While Ashwin and Courtney were gathering paint supplies and facilitating another design workshop with the ZUMIX Radio youth DJs, Carrie and Qian spent much of Monday laser cutting acrylic to make the rendering you see above real. We’re still in the process of designing and constructing a base for the guitar-radio to rest on, so we’ve ordered more acrylic and will have some more cutting to do. Onward!

Meeting with Zumix Radio Youth on Dec 2nd

We had our last design meeting with the Zumix youth today. Eight young people attended, seven of who had been in attendance for the previous design meetings. In our Nov 4th meeting, we had a design workshop with the youth to develop a design for the shape and functions of the radio. The final design is in the shape of a “Flying-Z” guitar. The goal of the meeting today was for the youth to generate and draw ideas for painting and decorating the radio, and to come to consensus on a final design iteration for the casing’s exterior.
At the beginning of the meeting, Lucia brought up the CAD model of the “Flying Z” on a laptop and passed it around for the youth to look at. They had questions about the size and stability of the radio, and how they will be able to paint on it. They also had ideas for additional parts for the radio casing, such as a slot for suggestions, which we will try and incorporate into the final product.

After the youth commented on the CAD model, we introduced the young people to the materials that will be used to make the casing, such as acrylic panels, acrylic paints, and sandpaper. They youth passed around the materials and got a sense for how the final product will feel, and what kind of surface they will be painting and decorating on. They also sanded the panel to understand how to make the paint hold onto the surface.
We then transitioned to drawing out design ideas for how to paint/decorate the casing. The youth worked on their drawings for about 25-30mins using crayons and paper. During this time, they also came up with more ideas for functions. After the drawing session, the youth presented their ideas to the whole group. Here are some of the ideas they came up with:

• Decorate the neck of the guitar with Zumix radio guitar pics
• Create slots on the sides of the casing for flyers and information about radio shows
• Decorate the sides with mirrors
• Make the radio’s base look like an amp
• Have a slot in the amp for people to drop suggestions for Zumix Radio DJs such as song preferences
• Have a slot for people to leave photos or notes that reflect what they love about Zumix
• Design the sides of the guitar casing with piano keys
• Decorate the exterior with a collage of photos of Zumix radio youth doing their thing
• Decorate the exterior with stickers you would find on the street outside of Zumix
• Paint the basecoat with the Zumix colors – Yellow and Blue!

After the presentation session, we transitioned into discussion about what ideas the group likes the most, and how we could tie different ideas together in a final design. The final design will likely include the Zumix colors as the basecoat, a suggestion box, the base painted as an amplifier, a collage of Zumix photos, the Zumix Dalmatian mascot, and Zumix guitar pics.

We will have our final meeting next Monday (Dec. 9th) to paint, decorate, and finalize the construction of the acrylic. In the mean time, the youth are working on some drawings they want to paint/paste onto the final casing. We will have the laser-cut acrylic “Flying-Z” ready for the next meeting. We are going to sand the acrylic before the meeting and apply the basecoats so that it will be ready for the youth to decorate. Check out some of the photos from our workshop:

Stay tuned for the final project next week!

This week on Monday night, the Zumix Team conducted a design/brainstorm workshop with the youth DJs at their monthly meeting. We felt that this workshop was very important as part of the collaborative process because we wanted the DJs to be able to give input on the potential projects since they are the ones most involved with the radio program at Zumix. We hoped to use this opportunity to not only to brainstorm but also to engage the DJs so that they will be more excited about the project.

The workshop had a great turnout, with 10 people attending, not including the Zumix team. The DJs who attended ranged from 4th graders to high school juniors. After a few minutes of quick introductions, we presented the ideas that we had thought of prior: storytelling booth, old fashioned radio playhouse, general marketing/publicity things. After we presented, we opened it up to the kids to have them give input. They were generally favorable of the ideas and gave ideas for publicity schemes such as giving away free guitar picks or getting sponsors from the local network. After the ideation phase, we broke up everyone into groups of 3-4 and had each group draw what they want the project to look like. They came up with the following creative ideas!

Group 1:

This group combined the storybooth and old fashioned into one idea where there is a storybooth with a radio inside. They thought about putting the contraption in very visible places such as the state center or in front of the T station so that it can attract many people. People who come up to the booth would be able to share stories using the microphone. There could also be remote broadcast and music playing.

Group 2:

The second group came up with a bunch of ideas for marketing and publicity strategies for Zumix radio. These include putting Zumix in bigger news outlets such as the Boston Herald and in the local TV station in the community and having Zumix movie nights. They also came up with ideas for publicity materials such as passing out keychains and creating a promotional DVD to hand out to different organizations and networks.

Group 3:

The third group thought of a box of Zumix idea that, as one DJ put it, “kind of like a jack in the box but without the thing popping out.” It is a box shaped storytelling booth. When people go inside, they would be able to see their reflection, to emphasize that they are telling their own stories. They can also choose what song to listen to as they tell their story. The 4 outside walls of the box will be decorated with an artist statement, directions, mission statement, and hand prints. There can also be speakers outside for playing music to attract visitors.

At the end of the drawing activities, everyone was very excited to get started on the projects. There was talk to maybe combine the three main ideas into one project, but we would need to more research on how feasible that would be. A big concern that we have is portability. The next steps are to decide on a final project and make plans to implement it.

Our MOU is found here.

A student from the Zumix team in Codesign studio participates in a values-driven brainstorm workshop.

Project Updates

This week all the student teams visited their community partners.  We spent the first half of class sharing updates and providing feedback about the four collaborative project: Zumix, the Urbano Project, REV/ The Brazilian Immigrants Center (BIC), and City Life / Vida Urbana.

• The Zumix team is designing a brainstorm session for their project with young DJs in East Boston.
• The Urbano Project team will continue to discuss how they can extend the organization’s theme “Emancipated City” to a larger audience in Boston through an interactive medium.
• The REV/BIC team is building a phone system using VOIP Drupal that will explain domestic worker rights to those who call into the platform.
• The City Life / Vida Urbana team aims to overturn the dominant narrative that states the foreclosure crisis is over, and demonstrate that people are still losing their homes.

Reading Discussion

Next, the class discussed Futurelab’s report, Designing for Social Justice.   Futurelab is based in the United Kingdom and through research, school development, and workshops, is committed to developing creative and innovative approaches to education, teaching, and learning. This article begins by reviewing the frameworks of John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Friedrich Hayek, and Donald Schon to show how policy-makers and philosophers understand social justice.  From there, it discusses user-centered design processes and outcomes, and the implications for social justice.  Students shared their reflections about the reading.

“Design is not just a matter of producing a result, but reproducing certain values…and in the long term, the process and outcome are equally important,” said one student.  Another responded by describing his personal experience, “I have been in a lot of organizations where too much emphasis is on the process and people burn out and leave and there is no relevant product.  There’s a tension between social justice, design, and approaches that are more corporate and top-down.  There is something to learn from both sides.”  In general, there are two main arguments about why you make design processes participatory:

1. You get a better product when you engage the users and a large number of people. How else do you gather requirements and test usability?
2. The value-driven argument is that the knowledge of all people is important and the process is more egalitarian.

The professor urged students to think critically about the outcomes of participation in their own team projects. “Sometimes process and outcome are not related.” Really good processes can yield terrible products and sometimes closed, top-down processes can produce amazing products.  He explained that for the codesign studio, it is important for everyone to think about each stage of the design process and who is engaged at every step.  There are the staffs of the community organizations and then there’s the “community members” themselves.  What is the flow, process, and intention in each step of the process?

Values-Driven Brainstorm Workshop

After discussing the reading, teaching assistants Willow and Becky led an amazing workshop about values-driven design and showed the class how to uncover personal values. Everyone formed groups of two and followed the below directions.

• Share something you’ve worked on that you had some role in designing.  Ask each other the following questions:
• What did you envision as success for that project?
• Imagine that it WAS a success. What is happening in the world then? How are people living, what is the quality of life?
• Drill to one word.  That’s the value you were working from and the value you represent.

Below is a wordle of the values that our class embodies.

Then each student team and their community partners came together to think about the Inputs, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact of their proposed projects.  An input refers to what each team has such as people, materials, space, and assets and an output is the idea, concept, project, action or product that the team will create. An outcome is a momentary shift and impact is a lasting change.

The City Life / Vida Urbana team discusses inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact.

The result of the Urbano Project team’s brainstorm.

On Sunday, our team met at Piers Park in East Boston to check out the Move to the Beat 5K run, which ZUMIX has organized for the last four years to raise funds for its music and creative technology programming. Lucia, our ZUMIX point-person, estimated that somewhere between 300-400 people took part in the race and/or musical festivities that young people from ZUMIX performed for the crowd. The weather was great, the surroundings beautiful, and the atmosphere lively. People were laughing, snapping photos of each other in the costumes they wore for the race, enjoying the music, and showing love for ZUMIX and their neighbors and friends.

Lucia and Rayza, a 9th-grade ZUMIX Radio DJ, walked us up the street just a few blocks to the beautifully converted firehouse that ZUMIX calls home. There we were given a tour of the incredible facility within. ZUMIX has spaces for kids to learn and practice all kinds of musical instruments, from piano to drumline to horns to beats. They have a state-of-the-art production studio where program participants can record their music and learn to work the tech. The radio station is tucked away down in the basement, where there’s a board, a monitor, and a collection of mics for live interviews. On the walls of the classrooms and corridors, there are huge bright paintings of artists like Bob Dylan and Miles Davis. There are also group agreements from the music and production classes, written out in a young student’s handwriting. The space effuses their mission to build strong people and communities through art and creative expression.

After the tour, we sat down to discuss ideas, objectives, and potential projects for our co-design team. We’ll be focusing on the radio arm of ZUMIX’s operations; Lucia, the radio coordinator, has the following objectives:

• Get more young people involved in ZUMIX Radio

• Let folks in the East Boston community know about all of the local programming, produced by and for their neighbors, that ZUMIX Radio streams online daily

• Integrate ZUMIX Radio with the other activities and programming that happens at the larger ZUMIX organization (eg. students taking technical production courses could record students

These will serve as overarching, directional goals. Some ideas we came up with to help us achieve these objectives include:

• Portable old-fashioned radio

• Portable sound booth

The old-fashioned radio could serve as a physical reminder of ZUMIX Radio on the second floor (where a lot of the music and tech classes happen, the administrative folks have their desks, and there’s a common hangout and kitchen space). It would be hooked up to a laptop that streams ZUMIX Radio, but the volume and other features are controlled by old-timey knobs and dials. It should be interactive so that kids are attracted to it; the whole point is to get them interested in and excited about radio.

The Portable Sound Booth could be used to collect and share stories from East Boston with East Boston and beyond. Lucia explained that the neighborhood is changing: gentrification is setting in, the outcome of the casino debate will have serious ramifications, and the large immigrant population has unique concerns that need to be addressed. The sound booth might be a way for residents to share their stories about the past and their hopes for the future. We should also remember to make it FUN! Kids, families, whomever…people can be silly, creative…whatever they like! We discussed building on an existing relationship that ZUMIX Radio has with an East Boston High media class as a way to reach out to young people and bring the booth to them. There are also a number of community organizations, churches, and public squares and parks where we could bring the booth to people. As you can imagine, we want to make sure the booth is as portable, appealing, and useful as possible. It should be light, have both private and public spaces, be able to both record and play audio, and should be visually captivating.

Potentially, the old-fashioned radio and the story booth could be combined. We think we’ll be able to reach out the Media Lab and other MIT sources to find some of the tools we’ll need for both of these projects. But in order to move forward with these ideas in the immediate future, our next steps include:

• Asking Sasha about our budget!

• Doing research on what others have done around story booths (portability, hardware, software, etc)

If you have questions, suggestions, or ideas, please leave a comment!