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The Favella is dead...

The favella is dead,

The favella is a shanty village (in Brazil) but also more than that it is a community that pulls together to support its members and achieve more than individuals could. Our favella is not nurturing its members and thus we must disband it in its current form. So we must look to other means of achieving our goal.

The Tico EV studio has an objective of creating 4 vehicles for Costa Rica. We still have this objective but now our goal is closer and our progress is not at the point it should be.
We could look for blame at this point, but I will relieve the group and take responsibility. The favella requires a community and I have not inspired it to materialise. So now we are faced with the task but our community needs to rethink itself to become effective.

It has been said that the group is too large, and after witnessing the Interaction today I am inclined to believe that this group cannot function partially bcause of the amount of participants. This peer group is not capable of participating in group discussion and individuals are prevented from designing by the apparent complexity of the group interaction. It has been suggested that the favella reforms into 4 groups each will negotiate the requirements for a vehicle. I hope that this change will give clarity to the topic each sub-group is addressing.

This change in structure has not reduced the expectation for the remainder of the semester.
The entire group must still determine tasks to achieve the Studio goals and dates by which these tasks are to be completed.

Some New links

So we are concluding the initial stages of the research.
Our next stage is to create Requirments for the design of the Vehicle. So i have created some new links so you can look at design methodologies and resources.
S

User Centred Design

We are using User Centred Design or UCD to design this vehicle.

"There is an international standard that is the basis for many UCD methodologies. This standard (ISO 13407: Human-centred design process) defines a general process for including human-centered activities throughout a development life-cycle, but does not specify exact methods."
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/usability_resources/about_usability/what_is_ucd.html

Studio Poster

Getting to know Costa Rica

Ive not been fortunate enough to visit Costa Rica...Yet.
To understand this new location in my world I started looking through Google.
The best links ive found are.

The Information in wikipedia is limited compared to my China experiences. This site describes some of the historical and cultural info, relevent to our project.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica.
Wikipedia is also gret for EVs

The CIA world factbook is a heartless series of facts and figures. I use ther resource because i believe we can get some positive information form an otherwise questionable institution. The interesting Data is about Population, education on the people side and industries, infrastructure and transport networks that exist there.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cs.html

I havent delved into Lonely planet as yet, but theses guys have never let me down. The Issue here is I find that "Tourists consume tourist culture", travellers have slightly less pleasent experiences and very few people actually have home stays and work on the farms.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/central-america/costa-rica/

The American NGOs like costa rica so there are a bunch of sites where i found stories of great adventures with some community service involvment. Emailing some of these guys may get some first hand experiences, like exactly how hard it i to dragg a bogged car out of the mud...

Maps of Costa Rica

I went looking for some maps of Costa Rica,

The best maps I've found are put together by Columbia University with their
Gridded Population of the World and the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project.
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/country.jsp?iso=CRI

Some other maps are inlcuded on Lonely planet, Wikipedia and CIA world Factbook.

What is TICO?

Tico is a colloquial term for a native of Costa Rica.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tico)

Global Car manufacturers focus on luxury and performance vehicles. This perpetuates the economic isolation of un-wealthy communities.
In this studio we will design a rugged affordable vehicle to overcome transport needs for Costa Rican citizens
This studio will be concerned with sustainable addressing concerns of Equity and Environmental issues.