The document summarizes Team 4's work on a project called "Smart in Public" focusing on the NDSM area in Amsterdam. The team includes an architect, industrial designer, and game designer. They are interested in enhancing participation and interaction at NDSM through tools that allow inhabitants to make the space their own. The document describes ideas around physical and digital identification methods, including bracelets, profiles, and apps, to connect the various communities that occupy NDSM's spaces.

1. The Internet of Things
Workshop II: Builders at Play
September 2-4
Waag Society
Amsterdam
Smart in Public - Team 4

2. Team 4
Jose Subero [participated in initial brainstorm phase]
field: architect
involved in: existing conditions and possibilities for transformation
interested in: to see what could happen at a complex site like NDSM, creating new
scenarios for existing mutual spaces
Tony Michiels
field: industrial designer
involved in: ideation in product & communication design
interested in: looking beyond technical possibilities: no mere gadgets, but to create
something that is modest and has true value
Karel Millenaar [participated in initial brainstorm phase]
field: game designer
involved in: game design for public space to influence people’s experience
Interested in: how to create tools to master space. Tools should afford true access
to the environment so that inhabitants learn to make it their own
Smart in Public

3. NDSM Passe-partout

4. NDSM
Various levels of participation, of (co)ownership
Similar to nature, NDSM is in constant flux, of
shifting the balance between the different
participators of the space
A microcosm of
The NDSM holds
different needs,
companies, artist studio’s,
functions,
leisure activities like a
various
skatepark, tourist hotspot,
frequencies of
various events, etc
occupation

5. The diversity dilemma of the NDSM
How to enhance the perceived
relevance for active intermarriage
of permanent community hubs
and welcoming ad hoc participants?

6. Patterns of Participation:
NDSM owners permanent
NDSM friends irregular intervals
NDSM tourists (hotspot) singular

7. Visible community hub identities
conditions for ‘open end’ (co)ownership
no prescribed participation
opportunities for ambiguous interaction
iterate towards a playful NDSM

8. Diversity has a strong affordance for
intermarriage
Closely knitted communities paired with visibility
of (co)ownership stimulate open ended
resourceful participation.
Intercommunal exchange can be stimulated
through utilized situated mobile communication
and locative tools that don’t require continuous
attention

9. human scale activity fills the void with purpose

10. the void: traceless of past activity

11. cater for ambiguity and the unforeseen

12. Physical identification
bracelets, totem, flags
Digitized identification
hybrid community profile
social objects

13. identification of different groups of activity

14. personal identification of heritage

15. a key grands access, slowly becoming a ‘passe partout’

16. locative visibility of (co)ownership

17. After my first week of working for the Noorderlicht restaurant, my boss
gives me a token that he is wearing on his wrist too, it is a beautiful and
very nicely made object that I have seen with other coworkers as well. I am
really proud being part of this group of people and wear the token all the
time. It simply looks great and has a nice feel to it.
When my friends ask me about the token and where he can get one, I invite
him over to the restaurant because I know that dear friends and some
customers can get a similar token that is slightly different than the one I
have received. At their second visit, even though I was not working, my
friends get the best table and a complementary order because my
colleagues recognize their token.
Two weeks later, during the first big festival I notice a lot of people with
similar tokens to mine, we all have a festival token too that I got as an
entrance ticket. One of my friends is wearing his Noorderlicht and the
festival token in combination with another variation. He tells me that this
one belongs to the skatepark family and gives him a discount when he goes
skating.

18. awareness of others

19. hybrid ID

20. During the day I met somebody who has his own studio on the NDSM and
his token is the coolest one I have seen so far, it is a subscription for a
discount to all the events of the NDSM. He shows me a mobile application
that he could download when checkin in at his first festival via Foursquare
at one of the previous festivals. There are a lot of of photos in the app
stream and a few of them are posted by one most regular clients. I was
already wondering why this person did not wear a token, apparently some
people choose be part of our group only by digital means.
After installing the app I can only read the several group streams, but after
entering a combination puzzle of symbols that are on my token I am
allowed to comment and post my own media. I never thought these
symbols would have any use, the symbols are also part of a sculpture close
to the Noordelicht entrance,
There is a distinct Noordelicht icon on my profile that merged into another
shape after I join the festival group, again by solving a simple symbolic
puzzle. Now my uploads are also showing up in the other group, where one
of my pictures is commented on by a member, who is also participating in a
little yoga gathering that is located on the NDSM terrain, immediately I sign
up for their try out lessens.
After a couple of weeks the NDSM has shown me so many more
opportunities than I thought were around during my first visit and I start to
explore them more actively.

21. common grounds

22. 3 months later my profile icon is one of the most diverse of the several
communities and I get an invitation to a unfamiliar place on the NDSM to
pick up a present. I really have no idea what that could possibly be but am
really curious.
I come earlier to work the next day and try to find the place. There is this
no sign and the building is not very inviting but there are people inside that
hand me a little package after I show them the invitation. It is a token that I
have never seen before.
There is something really special about it even though it is the most
minimal and unimposing token compared to the others. Looking around I
see somebody who is sitting on a table littered with tools, working on the
finishing touches of a token.
From this point on I keep getting special invites and can simply walk into
any paid event on the NDSM.

23. revealing the ecosystem of appropriation
locative activity transition and participation spike
your personal baseline with communal activity

24. mobile application
identification
communication
interaction

25. networked environments
write and readable networked community hub
totems
reveal the configuration of the space and the
mood
participation only by opting in and making
yourself visible