Responsive, respectful urban screens, via PixelTrack with BERG

Much of our work at the Catapult (Ed. This was first published on 1st August 2014, when I was Chief Design Officer at Future Cities Catapult) is about making more holistic, integrated urban projects happen. While this can include governance and investment pieces, we’ve also been exploring technology at the street level.

For example our Sensing Cities project, which is deploying air quality sensors across Enfield, Brixton, Elephant & Castle and Hyde Park, and in further cities soon, building new evidence for policy-makers and organisations like the Royal Parks and Lend Lease, as well as conducting insights work understanding how citizens perceive air quality. (This in collaboration with Intel ICRI and others; great to be working with my old colleague Duncan Wilson again.)

See also Cities Unlocked, a collaboration with Microsoft Research, Guide Dogs for the Blind and others, exploring how technology can assist visually impaired people to navigate the city, and another of our design research prototypes, User Experiences for Bikes.

For me, the street is a fundamental focal point as it’s here that technology’s promise is revealed — or not. For too long, the ‘smart cities’ movement has not bothered to make its value clear to citizens, or to politicians, in tangible, meaningful form. This is probably why its development over the last decade has been patchy at best. So in the prototyping of new urban products and services, we develop tangible demonstrations of the value technologies may have in future cities.

For example, our collaborative research project with BERG, concerning the possibilities of dynamic, web-connected, more sustainable urban displays. Here’s the description of the project from the site we built to convey the research:

We’re interested in how our cities will feel and perform when objects, spaces, buildings, infrastructure and people are connected. As part of an ongoing design research project about the connected street, the Catapult collaborated with Berg, a UK-based technology company, to explore the possibilities of connected displays. Berg pursued the idea through making a prototype called Pixel Track. The Catapult pursued the idea through a series of interviews with those who commission, curate and manage signage.

Below, the BERG film, talking about and demonstrating their fully-working prototype, and in a few beguiling renders at the end, indicating how it could manifest itself in various public places.

The flip-dot display, dubbed Pixel Track, means the sign could use a fraction of the energy required by equivalent signs we see in cities — it uses power when it changes, but not to display. It also has an intrinsic value of old train station and airport departure display boards — the physically-generated click-clack when it changes. It clearly has physical design quality too, which is something we wanted to bring to a product category often bereft of that. It’s arguably a quieter, humbler, more respectful form of display than the average 40″ LED you find tacked onto walls across buildings and public spaces.

There are numerous other interesting aspects, described by BERG’s Jack Schulze in the film, such as the ability to update easily by administrators or automatically via data feeds, or its extensible form capable of snaking its way around a space, or the model of the intelligence in the cloud meaning minimal processing power and complexity is required in the sign itself, or simply the fact it exists as a physical element in a space rather than as an app. It’s typically thoughtful and skilful work by BERG, and you can read more about the development of Pixel Track in their case study and associated blog entry.

Yet it’s also immediately comprehensible and appealing — it’s a physical display with the Internet shoved in the back. We also conducted a series of interviews with people who commission, procure, curate and manage displays and signage. Finn Williams, of the Greater London Authority, is responsible for urban regeneration projects across London. He discusses the Mayor of London’s strategies to de-clutter the high street, whilst reinforcing local culture through signage. Corinna Gardner of the Victoria & Albert Museum is part of a new team curating this emerging product category. She also describes the museum’s need for a more dynamic form of display. Jon Hunter is Head of Design for Transport for London, and responsible for design across a wide variety of complex environments, requiring high standards of accessibility, resilience and consistency. Nigel McKay is Lend Lease’s head of innovation for the Elephant & Castle development in London, and is exploring how such products might enable new amenities and services for residents and visitors, as well as realising strategic ambitions around low-carbon living. You can hear from them in this film:

Much thanks to BERG — particularly Jack Schulze, Durrell Bishop and Timo Arnall — for their ingenuity and execution, and ability to communicate. And thanks to Finn, Corinna, Jon and Nigel for their insight. Thanks also to the Catapult team of Claire Mookerjee and Gynna Millan. We’re looking forward to seeing where this project goes next, as part of a broader set of projects exploring the idea of the connected street: for example, see also User Experiences for Bikes.

View at Medium.com

Ed. This article was originally published at cityofsound.com on 1 August 2014, when I was Chief Design Officer at the Future Cities Catapult.