My freshman year, I participated in a winter session study abroad program in Sao Paulo, Brazil where I worked with fellow Harvard students and Brazilian students to help find a solution to Sao Paulo’s transportation problem. Hosted by Sao Paulo Transit and MobiLab — a think-tank/incubator for “innovative” ideas as it relates to transportation to Sao Paulo, this was my first encounter with human-centered design and the design process — so I didn’t have the critical skills to critique the process, the work I was outputting nor the focus.

This is to say the winter session program wasn’t perfect — not based on what I know now of the design process and what my values are when it comes to entering and working with a community. However, this project still remains one of my proudest ones thus far and I think it is important for these two ideas to co-exist and continue to inform my future experiences.

The full scope of the problem as presented to us by Sao Paulo Transit and Mobilab was how might we utilize aerial images to  eliminate traffic jams and relieve congestion of the overall transportation system within Sao Paulo? Looking back on this experience, I still have mixed-opinions on the structure of the program. To begin, I do appreciate the fact that we were given a problem to solve as opposed to a group of Harvard students entering a community we have limited to no knowledge about and deciding how we frame the solution. Had we been given the reins to frame and choose the scope of the problem, I imagine we would have been very off-base as to what problems we truly needed to solve. Similarly, I appreciated that this program was a joint effort between Harvard and Brazilian students and the institution that works on transportation to create co-design environment. However, I think the problem presented to my six-person college team was far too large for our given time period of 15 days.

During this short period of time, my team and I worked to create an image processing website that identifies aerial road images by width to support up-to-date spatial planning for the provision of urban services in Sao Paulo specifically designed for the local metropolitan level. This project hasn’t created any terrible impacts in the area to my current understanding. The real issue with this solution was the impact in which it actually had and our ability to execute said solution. Our goal was to help identify road-widths such that traffic could possibly be re-routed to allow the number of cars a particular road can handle thus relieving congestion; to standardize street widths for accessibility of pedestrians and bikers; lastly, to alert the municipal government to what roads might be most critical for them to update from a spatial standpoint. However, we were not the ideal group to craft this solution. Of the 6 college students, only 2 had any sort of background in image processing and not enough to build a robust image processing website. 2 of the 6 had no experience coding until this winter session — I was one of them, so I could really only learn and help with front-end development. After we brought this idea to a proof of concept stage, this program ended, meaning there was no one to continue the development of the solution, so it can actually be used. We left the code open-sourced so others at MobiLab or future program participants can continue with it; however, 2016 was the one and only year in which this program ran. Lastly, we created a solution to the problem, but I don’t think it was the best solution. Even if we built out this site, the actual effectiveness of the site would have been questionable; similarly, would this solution have actually been used by Sao Paulo Transit? We framed our goal to be narrow in who we impact. While up-to-date spatial planning could be beneficial to the local metropolitan area, traffic congestion and those most impacted by it extend way past the local metropolitan boundary.

This project had the potential to become something impactful. What the project needed were people who specialized in image processing, people who understood how Sao Paulo Transit operated and what tool could actually be used in their work, people who could correctly identify the target audience and someone who could dedicate the time to bring this project to life. This project has given me a lot to think about and questions I am still pushing myself to answer such as: What does is look like to enter a community that is not your own and partner with them? How do I engage in critical issues and output solutions in a collaborative manner that will actually create positive impact? How do I extend the confines given to me in future projects to give a project more meaning than what can go on a resume? How do I ensure my work can continue on without me? These are questions I haven’t yet found the answer to, but I will continue to pursue.