Crossing the Line:
POTUS Narrates Entitled Parking
OVERVIEW
We’ve all witnessed poor parking. But what’s really going on here? I dug into this issue and developed this project, Crossing the Line: POTUS Narrates Entitled Parking. What I discovered was that the bigger and more expensive a vehicle is, the more likely it is to park poorly. Further, increasing the threat of citation for poor parking has little impact on the bad behavior of the most blatant offenders, as these actions come from a sense of entitlement and self-importance rather than a lack of awareness for the rules. This project offers a non-violent and non-destructive outlet for the frustration of other drivers when the encounter poor parking.
When you encounter poor parking, simply tag and post a picture of the infraction to social media. The image is pulled into the parking grid and uses artificial intelligence to assign a Donald Trump quote to the image. Anyone can visit the parking grids and click to see what each "parking lot" contains. The example below uses the public parking lots and structures in Santa Monica.
WALKTHROUGH AND PROCESS
Roland Barthes "signifier, signified, sign" provided the framework used in order to connect the dots behind the concept of this project which resulted in the system at play. See the image below for more detail. I will go a step further and say that this entitled and self-important behavior has become more prevalent under the divisive and vocal POTUS. The creates an unfortunate feedback loop where bad behavior fuels bad behavior.
On the Technical Side:
-This demo represents data from the last 24 hours
-Users can filter to display totals for day week, month, year
-The pictures are pulled from social media (FB, Twitter, Instagram) via keywords and hashtags
-The lot or structure location is determined by looking at EXIF (Exchangeable image file) data which is embedded in the image to find the GPS coordinates
-The Trump quote selection is determined by analyzing any text that may accompany the picture and by using AI to determine specific parking characteristics and potential violations
REFLECTION
Out of the prototype that I built for this project came two main insights.
Insight #1 - Getting Meta
Again, this is about poor parking resulting from a sense of entitlement and narcissism. The pairing of Trump quotes with these images combines two different mediums with this common theme. More than just a pairing, there is a meta theme at play. As mentioned earlier, I posit that the presidents well documented poor behavior is having a negative impact on parking by emboldening this sense of self-importance and contributing to societal selfishness in many people.
Insight #2 - Location Matters
People in smaller parking lots in busy places such as Mid-City and Main Street lots are more likely to document poor parking out of frustration. For the same reasons there is a higher incidence of poor parking in these lots.
-They might be late for an appointment
-Have limited time on a lunch break
-Might be hangry for dinner
In contrast, people in large parking lots, such as the beach lots, are more likely to document poor parking out of amusement as there is more opportunity to park creatively in these large lots.
-People are there more often to have fun and tend to be more relaxed
-They are there longer term so there is less vehicle turnover vs. smaller lots
-This longer term commitment to longer term parking also results in taking more time to park properly or find a space that is appropriate for your vehicle
Further, people in parking lots are more likely to document because you can see more from one perspective and they are likely to walk past more cars exiting a lot than on different floors of a structure. Also, public parking structures in Santa Monica have cameras at every space capturing license plate info which does discourage poor parking.
In Closing
I began this project using my past Parking Systems project as a base. This was a very detail and data driven project that I wanted to make interactive in some way. It was very helpful in housing the idea behind this project and prototyping. As a next step, I would like to detach the idea from the grid map and move it to a pure social media experience with the aid of something like a twitter bot.
Prototype Demo
Example outputs
MATERIALS AND TOOLS
Pen, pencil, paper (sketches and rapid prototyping)
iPhone 5S (field video capture)
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
InVision (digital prototyping)
Media projector
PROJECT BRIEF
This final project is a synthesis of Dev Projects, Creative Technology and Media Design and is an opportunity for refinement and integration of your ideas and making. The specific theme is yours to choose, but you should combine some of your concepts, methods, ideas, and/or designs from all three classes, and create a new, more refined project by moving these forward. Rather than designing something overly complex or completely new, we recommend that you create something more contained, but highly refined in it’s technical, formal, and conceptual aspects. This project is about creating a refined and nuanced project that utilizes what you’ve learned and the interests you’ve developed in the three classes.
CLASS
Independent Project (combining the classes: Dev Projects, Creative Technology and Media Design)
INSTRUCTORS
Phil van Allen
Anne Burdick
Kevin Wingate