The Making of “The Most Advanced Sign on Earth”

What it takes to move “Points” from a clever idea to a real feature of the urban landscape.

Credit: BREAKFAST

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This summer, the six-person Brooklyn urban design shop BREAKFAST floated the idea of a street sign that looked like other street signs, except that it would feature an Internet-connected display capable of rotating to point, precisely, toward whatever attraction it highlights. The project, called Points, was, BREAKFAST co-founder and creative director Andrew Zolty said, a reaction against the digital directories now seen in some cities.

The signs, Zolty said, were envisioned as a way of “moving into the future with a proper alternative to being stuck behind a horrible touchscreen that doesn’t work, and that only reaches one person at a time when it does work.”

The public reaction to Points was positive, with a wide range of tech blog coverage. But then came time for BREAKFAST to figure out how to actually get the six-foot, nine-inch aluminum unit out into the world. I checked in with Zolty this week to see how a project like Points goes from a clever demo unit — “the most advanced sign on Earth,” they call it — to a fixture in real-live cities.

One challenge has been convincing people that Points isn’t just a neat concept, but also a legitimately useful piece of urban equipment. Beyond the initial excitement, Zotly said, “a lot of the response was, ‘I have my phone, why bother?’”

The answer? “You have to remember that people only really discover new things by searching for them,” Zolty said. “It’s on you to figure out what you want to do, and then go find it. But you might not even know you’re in the mood for a concert. If Points is on the corner, it can tell you, ‘This band is playing two blocks away.’” Call it a nudge towards urban serendipity. “A city can provide something that your phone can’t, necessarily, because a city is that very hyperlocal network.”

But figuring out what, exactly, a Points sign will say has been another detail to mull over these last few months.

Early on, the thinking went that it might be fed with a blend of basic geographic information and social media: Tweets, Foursquare updates, RSS news feeds. The focus now has moved to opening up the sign to local businesses, organizations and events. A city or venue might recoup the cost of a Points unit — sub-$20,000, according to Zolty — by allowing paying participants to post notices to Points signs, advertising everything from parades to when a neighborhood bakery decides, “This is when I need to get rid of all of my croissants for the rest of the day.”

“We want to allow a city to actually communicate with its people, highlighting the little things and the big things,” Zolty said. “And the hope is that this becomes something that costs nothing to a city.”

But how, then, do you avoid a Points display becoming the digital equivalent of “$3.99 I ♡ NY t-shirts here!” signs plastered all over a street corner? “The software has been the big thing lately,” Zolty said, as in designing an online platform that would allow people to claim space on a Points sign but that would, through an algorithm, figure out which notices to display when so as not to degrade the experience for everyone. Zolty said he expects that the software will improve as it gets tested in the field. “Over time,” he said, “it will be able to suggest other ways of writing” to get more people to attend your parade or eat your leftover croissants.

Manufacturing Points, Zolty said, is mostly well in hand, though BREAKFAST still has work to do in shoring the display, casing and internal motor to withstand everything from vandalism to the elements. The design has already been tweaked to be a bit bulkier than the demo version. A manufacturer is lined up, though Zolty declined to give a name.

Done right, Zolty said, Points is “attention-getting but informational, elegant but it brings out the kid in people.” Now the trick is to get one of the “endless list” of cities and venues to actually take the leap of installing Points. “We’re chasing Grand Central from every angle we can.”

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Nancy Scola is a Washington, DC-based journalist whose work tends to focus on the intersections of technology, politics, and public policy. Shortly after returning from Havana she started as a tech reporter at POLITICO.

Tags: urban designshared citycivic techbrooklyn

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