Monthly Archives: February 2016
Information problems: Connectivity in Somalia
This week’s focus was on information problems in conflicts: How do actors establish ground truth and assess biases in sampling and among sources when there are competing narratives? Conflicts in Somalia and Hawaii served as case studies, although our solution is specific to Somalia. Slides after slide 12 demonstrate some of our thinking before further […]
Mapping political representation
Link to map. The democratic primary seems to have sparked a debate about who, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, is the more feminist candidate. Given the focus on the presidential election, I thought it apt to point out the dearth of women in political positions across the board. The percent of women in the national as […]
Designing a data collection form
For this week’s assignment I designed a form to collect data on people’s sense of personal control, their political leanings, and their faith in institutions. The idea occurred to me as I reflected on Ethan Zuckerman’s talk at ITP where he introduced us to an institutionalist vs. anti-institutionalist schema and discussed how to bring about change in […]
Mobile Counting
I created a mobile application version of my desktop counter. I created an initial version and tested with my co-worker. I envisioned a home screen that would include everything you are counting and icons that indicated accomplishment as well as status bars. Then you could enter each item to increment in the direction that you chose, […]
Maintaining autonomy in mobs
This week in class we analyzed the process through which crowds turn into mobs with the Iranian Green Revolution as our main case study. We developed a conceptual solution for a peaceful protester, whose main interest is safe political expression.
Maps: Troubleshooting
For this week’s assignment I added a layer of US State data to a Stamen base map and after a lot of compromising, simply added markers for landmarks I associate with voting and politics near my parent’s house. Even as I simplified my map goal, I kept running into issues. At 3am, maki markers don’t […]
Desktop Counting
This week’s assignment was to create a device that can sit on a desktop and account for single increments of change, counting either up or down. Our clients are people with desk jobs, who want a physical reminder of their progress. Having a full-time desk job, I am fully cognizant of the despair of an […]