51 The notion of the smart city refers to the integration of digital technologies with, and within urban spaces and environments. While these smart urban technologies have the capacity to improve service delivery and urban living, if deployed in an unconsidered manner, they also have the potential to detrimentally affect urban communities. Responding to this tension, interaction design honours students from the Department of Multimedia embarked on a seven-week project in which they applied a projective research method to develop a series of design fiction scenarios suggesting how smart urban technologies could meet the needs of community of Westbury. Westbury is a densely populated, resource-scarce neighbourhood situated approximately 4 km west of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. While Westbury has a broad variety of residents, it is characterised by problematic social conditions such as high youth unemployment, gang-related activities, and urban neglect. For the duration of the project, Student Design teamed with Mr Ashley Bailey, an artist and youth educator from Westbury. Mr Bailey’s role was to ensure that the design teams’ thinking and solutioning remained relevant to the broader Westbury community. For the first activity of the project, the student design teams engaged with secondary research that focused on the Westbury community’s historical, current, and future concerns for their neighbourhood environment. Thereafter, the teams led by Mr Bailey went on a sit visit to Westbury where they did a walking tour, met several residents, and visited neighbourhood sites, such as the Westbury Youth Centre, Library, and the Community Centre. Drawing on knowledge gained from the first two activities, the design teams applied an anticipatory mindset to speculate on how smart urban technology could contribute to a future Westbury that reflected the preferences of residents for their suburb. Over the next few weeks, the group’s concepts were refined in consultation with the Mr Bailey and lecturing staff. Concepts were ultimately developed into visual projective scenarios that articulated the groups integration of smart urban technologies with the real needs and requirements of the community. Anticipating the smart futures of Westbury The ‘Westbury Wellness District’ (Image 2), an example of one of the student projects, suggests that with the integration of smart technology and the community’s involvement, Westbury could transform from a community with major drug related problems to one focused on providing drug rehabilitation and wellness services to broader society. While this transformation would begin with technology designed to assist addicts to access sterile needles and alternatives (such as methadone) to hard drugs, it would also include training community members to work in rehabilitation and creating wellness facilities across the neighbourhood. The Westbury Wellness District scenario displays the hallmark of projective research in that it not only offers an ideal future state worth working towards but also suggests a range of tactical factors that could lead to the realisation of this preferred future. From a design perspective, projects such as this one are important as they provide a local perspective on how digital technology can enhance the urban experiences of citizens of Africa’s cities. From an educational perspective, they have much value as they expose students to longer-term strategical and systemic thinking as well as to the experience of working on community-centred design projects. In August, all the teams’ projects were displayed in FADA at the Honours Project Day, with a final presentation to be held in Westbury nearer the end of the year. Honours group with Ashley Bailey during the site visit to Westbury
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