FairFutures

The first of many future talks and todays class focussed on distributed design and how we can design with values. We had an open conversation of the values we associated with distributed design and then did an exercise reflecting on our past work using a new tool.

Understanding the problem

The first step of the problem was to better understand the future problem "Unavoidable heat experience in near future for a lot of population centres." For us this problem could best be divided in 3 main points.

Rising consumption of energy and its effects on the environment
Communities not being aware of what is going on or not be incentified to change
Lack of clear and transparent information on various issues related to homebuilding and sustainability.

Developing our solution

The development of the project from this course took place over various workshops throughout the week. We brainstormed over the potential solutions to the problem over rising temperatures in urban environments, thought of some community rules and then thought of a LLM. After this though we pivoted from our original idea of creating something for architects/builders to a solution that focussed on the communities effect and how to empower them.

The Idea

The final idea was a platform and community using blockchain and coins to create a community in where energy efficient efforts were rewarded through coins. These coins could then be used to gain discounts or incentives for community planned activities. The idea really was to shift the focus from the architects to the people and finding ways to make the incentive for social change large enough that hopefully more and more people will join. The video gives further explanation of our solution.

The proposed app

Within the field of design we created a prototype of the app that we could potentially see being used within this solution. In the app there would be the possibility to vote and view activities, see your communities effort and even chat with others on the same message. Next to this, there is a library of resources that can be added to by others to ensure an open sourced community where the sharing of information is encouraged.

Reflecting on Fair Futures

The past week collaborating with both the DAFNE+ team and SODA in Manchester was an interesting combination as it allowed for a deeper understanding of topics such as blockchain, NFTs and DAOs. All of this was relatively new for me and I feel that through the combination of workshops and lectures I was really able to get a better understanding of the terms.

Looking back I feel that the way this week long event was planned was well structured and while the workshops weren’t all directly linked there was a sense of cohesion. This for me meant that I felt the project we ended up making organically grew throughout the week and as a group we were able to quickly prototype possible solutions to each area or problem.

Overall this week was fun and interesting, especially to see how you can take this quite capitalistic understood topics and use them to initiate social change at a community level. I feel that the DAFNE+ platform that creates an open sourced and collaborative marketplace for these initiatives and other NFTs. For me this week was really eye-opening into new potential uses for the technologies that I have never used before.

Fair Futures Event