public, utility

In 1933, Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority to "electrify Appalachia." The public works project, a part of FDR's New Deal, remains the largest regional planning agency in America, and it's reverberations on the Tennessee economy, landscape, and public life. It employs thousands (including for a short time in the 1930's, my grandfather), and the TVA continues to route hydro-electric and nuclear power through the entire region. As a federal entity, the TVA also remains truly public, its priorities unencumbered by profit motives.

In Project 2, we considered KUB as a metaphor for designing and managing tools in our daily lives, considering the "private" constraints of our personalized utilities. In Project 3: Public, Utility, we'll base our work on an entity like the TVA — a public project that might intentionally help others. In this project, you have the option to modify your personal utility, or to create an entirely new utility, into a simple web-based (HTML) product that anyone with a computer can use.

In adapting our products from a personal to a public, i.e. shared and accessible, utility it will be important to think from others' perspectives while maintaining our own points of view. What are the boundaries between accessible and uninteresting? How do we infuse personality into a digital product without it feeling prohibitive? To try and answer these questions we will gather research via interviews.

One thing to keep in mind is the visual control we have over the web is much more complex and fraught than in design software. Compared to your prototypes, your designs may be a bit rough! Based on your research, ideation, and technical constraints, your project can change radically.

We will take these constraints as productive opportunities. Considering how much of our products are driven by investment backed startups and the grab for capital, we will embrace the freedom our low-tech products provide!