Urbanflow Helsinki is a concept and a piece of design fiction on an interactive, situated service for urban screens and connected devices. The project also worked as a testbed for a larger set of ideas how to make a system like this reality in Helsinki and other cities around the world.
How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury? Due to time differences, I actually had marked the event on my calendar. Then I kind of forgot it all—it's full blown summer holiday season—and checked Twitter while having a BBQ with family friends. Very nice surprise, and more of a reason to celebrate an afternoon in the sun.
What's the latest news or development with your project? Basically since last year's launch we've been spending time on communicating the story, both with our client the City and outside as well. We're now working on how to make this happen for real, as well as integrating mobile and the web to this. The feedback has been superb—the people at Helsinki love this, and there's been significant interest outside Finland as well. But as we're working with cities and infrastructure, gaining sufficient momentum takes time.
What is one quick anecdote about your project? When our designers Tia and Kate did the initial observations and research with the current screens on the streets of Helsinki, it was a bright winter day and a especially cold season of temperature around and below -20°C. While wrapping up the work it was a hot hot summer—we really got to see the extremes of such services from the user's point of view as well.
What was an "a-ha" moment from this project? Probably somewhere around when we decided to drop all other interfaces apart the urban screens from the story. We spent some time working ourselves around it until we realized the urban, situated environment is a whole world on its own. That made the story leapfrog to near-final form quite fast as well.
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