Class of 2025
B.A. in Environmental Science and Policy, Minor in Visual Media Studies
This summer my Benenson Award was allocated to starting a design endeavor I have been ideating about since the start of the year that combine my passions for urban studies and visual design. Urban Interfaces and Urban Experiences is an interactive website that uses digital interfaces as an analog for urban landscapes.
In this project, users “walk” through the 6 principles of humane urbanism. The user scroll, touch, and drag with the web interface as if they are walking, running, and navigating through an urban landscape. Comparisons from long scrolls to large suburban neighborhood blocks and container less webpages to unplanned strip malls illustrate that design is universal. Good and human-centric design can be implemented online and in real life to improve the joy and ease of a city. These digital analogies help users grasp walkable and sustainable urban design in the same way we can feel, touch, and see well-designed user experiences on our devices.
Creating the project involved experimenting and learning how to use various new web builders and interaction softwares, I have not been exposed to before. As useful as these tools are they can be quite expensive to purchase a subscription for. Moreover, the sheer novelty of these tools also means there aren’t much tutorials nor an established online community. These two factors make learning without money difficult. Thus much of my time was dedicated to testing various web builders such as Webflow, Readymag, and more, as well as new interaction softwares, so I would not have to learn JavaScript.
The design is still underway, after I went through several iterative periods of design and testing. I plan to finally release the interactive web experience in the coming months and send the experience to relevant organizations to spread the word. I hope my efforts will help improve global to local efforts in citybuilding for communities not commerce.