a project by Suse Miessner

Urban Alphabets is my Master Thesis Project at Media Lab Helsinki. My main interest is in how using the Urban Alphabets App changes the user's perception of the spaces around them. My interest focusses in how the users experience the space around them while using the app but I also want to find out how long the effect lasts after using the Urban Alphabets app.

As a second main topic I am interested in the graphical differences between different cities, neighborhoods and even countries or continents. Out of the alphabets made using the app, can one see patterns of similar graphical appearances or are the alphabets random? Connected to this is also the subtle difference between alphabets in the different latin-based languages. Although we commonly think we all use the same alphabet there are difference between the Finnish/Swedish, Danish/Norwegian, English, German and Spanish alphabet.

To investigate these topics I run workshops in different cities and interview the participants. These workshops usually consist of three parts: First we walk through the city and the participants make their own Urban Alphabets using the app. Then we discuss the experiences and results with the whole group and finally I interview some of the participants individually. During the walks through the city I also take some video footage that is used as a way to observe the participants' behavior during the workshop. About 2 weeks after the workshops I send an online survey to the participants to investigate if the experiences made during the workshop still influence people's perception of and behavior in public space.