{"id":475,"date":"2015-02-11T16:09:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T16:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neovita.com\/thoughts\/?p=475"},"modified":"2016-01-17T06:34:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T06:34:54","slug":"plazas-and-digital-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/plazas-and-digital-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Plazas and digital places"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I recently found <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/SmallUrbanSpaces\">the video The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1988) by William H. Whyte<\/a> that I just have to share. The hour long movie is about what makes a successful plaza but I can see clear parallels with how we can create successful digital artefacts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I and others such as <a href=\"http:\/\/malinstroman.com\/2015\/01\/03\/att-bygga-platser-istallet-for-containers\/\">Malin Str\u00f6man<\/a> think a lot about how we can use concepts from architecture and city planning to create web sites and apps that feel personal and create a sense of community. Oh, not only <em>concepts<\/em> BTW, from architecture we also borrow many methods such as pattern languages, design studios and my misfits-method (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/misfits-are-my-new-best-friends\/\">Misfits are my best friends<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/the-misfits-method-might-create-innovative-patterns-but-thats-not-important\/\">Innovation is not important<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In the video a plethora of findings are revealed and some of the ones I think I and others can use when trying to enable digital <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pps.org\/reference\/what_is_placemaking\/\">placemaking<\/a> are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People looking at people is a foundation for a successful plaza.<\/li>\n<li>People are mostly on plazas in pairs or groups of three.<\/li>\n<li>Showing off ones (romantic) relationship is a thing to do on a plaza.<\/li>\n<li>People sit where there are places to sit. (best quote ever, right!)<\/li>\n<li>Capacity is self levelling.<\/li>\n<li>People move chairs that are not bolted to the ground \u2013 sometimes despite movement having no physical effect on sitting quality. However, generally bolted down chairs are not\u00a0 good \u2013 some movement affect sitting quality a lot!<\/li>\n<li>Action on a plaza is along the street \u2013 the connection between the plaza and the street is of utmost importance because it encourages taking possession of the plaza but the plaza is also used, like a theater, from the street itself.<\/li>\n<li>Plazas need to have an open connection to the street, not be fenced off with just a few entrances.<\/li>\n<li>Plazas often have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adlibris.com\/se\/bok\/de-ovanliga-manniskor-som-gar-mot-strommen-9789185581009\">unique individuals<\/a> and they can be very valuable.<\/li>\n<li>A plaza need a mayor of sorts.<\/li>\n<li>A &#8220;cave like&#8221; feeling is good, but a very airy cave :)<\/li>\n<li>Food and other &#8220;light entertainment&#8221; is good because it gives people something enjoyable to do except for the obvious sitting, talking to friends and such.<\/li>\n<li>A successful plaza can not start out empty \u2013 there has to be something there to begin with \u2013 a catalyst.<\/li>\n<li>Compression can be good \u2013 the size and features of the plaza need to be proportionate to the surrounding structures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jeepers, the list above gives me chills! So many cool theories come to my mind. I want to build prototypes and test them out now. Do you have a project that can benefit from an innovative and thoughtful UX consultant? Get in contact \u2013 I am available for interesting projects!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently found the video The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1988) by William H. Whyte that I just have to share. The hour long movie is about what makes a successful plaza but I can see clear parallells with how we can create successful digital artefacts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16,19,9,20],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-behavior","category-inclusion","category-interaction-design","category-process","category-structure"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/social-life-of-small-urban-places.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}