25 Questions for Cities – Melbourne Design Week 2020
An interactive installation that collects public opinions on urban issues through binary questions in city spaces.
Overview
“25 Questions for Cities” was a citizen engagement project designed to prompt reflection and interaction in both physical and digital space. Initially developed in the UK, it was selected by the NGV for inclusion in the 2020 Melbourne Design Week at Federation Square.
Responsibility
To support the project’s delivery, I re-engineered the hardware for local manufacturing in Melbourne, cutting costs and avoiding international logistics in shipping the devices from the UK, and led a small team to build 25 custom interaction devices. This included mentoring a graduate hardware engineer and a graduate data scientist, who developed real-time dashboards to visualise engagement data.
I also coordinated installation logistics with Federation Square staff, managing setup, maintenance planning, and decommissioning. I oversaw the full bump-in process ahead of launch, which was ultimately halted by the COVID-19 lockdown.
Outcome
Although the public installation was cancelled due to COVID lockdowns in March 2020, the project was swiftly repurposed and installed internally at Arup’s Melbourne office. The internal deployment successfully captured engagement data and demonstrated the project’s adaptability and value in different contexts.
