Cities and Technologies is a 30 hours graduate course from the Urban Management program from PUCPR. The course was delivered by professors Rodrigo Firmino, Fabio Duarte, Rodrigo Gonzatto, and Frederick van Amstel. After reading and discussing various articles from the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), the students engaged in three workshops led by Frederick van Amstel.
The first workshop asked them to bring in photos with behavior-change designs found in the streets of Curitiba. We used the Design with Intent card deck to frame and to organize the findings.
The designs were criticized and discussed according to the readings from the STS field. The students collected both examples of conformance and subversion to the designs, what provided a rich discussion on the limits of determinism in urban management.
The second workshop aimed at designing urban technology with a critical mindset. The Design with Intent deck was used again, this time as an inspiration for the design. The new technologies were prototyped using improvised videos with Lego models. The limitations of these technologies were discussed after their presentation, in a design critique form.
The final workshop dug into the political challenge of transforming urban technologies. The interaction design theater was used to experiment design interventions and the reactions of the multiple urban actors. The workshop resulted in raising awareness among students about the complex entanglement which gives rise or hinders new urban technology, as well as the ethical dilemmas of urban technology management.
