Urban Togetherness: Cross-Medium Artifact Design for Urban Community Engagement - Einzelansicht

Urban communities are drivers for positive urban change and comfort of living: neighbours organise dinners together, green communities push forward sustainable initiatives, students co-organise exhibitions etc. In the post-pandemic world, however, such things became rarer and more complex to ignite due to the trend of distancing and remote problem-solving.

This project invites you to explore, how technology can be imbedded in the urban space to play a role of a community ”champion”: inviting people to interact, spend time together and bring to life the spirit of Urban Togetherness.

Within this project you work with one of the Weimar communities and design a solution fitting their main challenges. You are free to explore and experiment with how the solution can look like and function through physical prototyping. The resulting prototypes will be presented at the Summaery 2025.

You will learn more about Urban Technology and Community Engagement through research through design approach. Physical prototyping skills are desired but learnable within the project. Interest in academic research is a desired pre-requisite as well, since the first phase is dedicated to exploring the literature.

The project’s phase runs till the end of September (presence in Weimar is mandatory, break for exams is scheduled and personal vacations are possible with a prior notice and discussion) with an annotated portfolio report due the 1.10.2025.  Expected workload during semester time is approximately 2 working days per week for 12 ECTs and 3 working days for 18 ECTs. The research results could turn into a MuC Student Research Competition submission or form the base for your thesis research.

All students need to email Margarita with CV to check whether you qualify for the project. Feel free to reach out for more details or with questions or clarifications to be sure that this project is a good fit for you. margarita.osipova@uni-weimar.de mailto:margarita.osipova@uni-weimar.de 

Time and place will be announced at the project fair.

Students from HCI Masters and CS4DM and Bachelor (Medien)Informatik: have successfully completed at least one of the following courses by HCI chair: ”HCI Research Methods”, ”Ubiquitous Computing”, ”HCI Introduction”.

We further expect general interest in physical prototyping, desire to be creative, ability to contribute to conceptual work  and willingness to work in a team.

To avoid issues after the project selection algorithm, we require interested students to write an email to Margarita to confirm eligibility for participation in the project.

Students from non-Computing programs (Master Media Architecture, Product-Design (BA/MA), Media Arts/Design (BA/MA) : Creativity, practical experience with physical construction (e.g. 3D-printing, laser-cutting, woodwork etc.), ideally some prior experience with electronics and Arduino.

 Interested students from these non-Computing programs must apply and contact Margarita via email. Please apply until the end of the 31.03.2025 by E-Mail to margarita.osipova@uni-weimar.de  <mailto:margarita.osipova@uni-weimar.de>  (please include a description of your prior experience in relevant areas, with examples of prior work if applicable) !

B.Sc. Medieninformatik / Informatik

M.Sc. Computer Science and Media / Computer Science for Digital Media

M.Sc. Human-Computer Interaction