THE DRONE POSTBOX

The drone postbox is the basic unit of a speculative design of a distributed delivery network operated by drones in the Swedish countryside. The system has been designed in response to certain properties of existing logistic networks and last-mile delivery problems in an area that is currently poorly served by existing services. Despite its ability to ideally better respond to local needs, this little red hut does not represent a ‘solution’. But it is  just one part of a set of materializations developed to support the staging of participatory processes and service rehearsals  — in the studio and in the field — aimed a questioning possible future solutions together with local communities and stakeholders. 

The case offer an example of an experience prototyping approach for the modelling and attuning of automated and interactive systems to their contexts of use aimed anticipating consequences and mediations of an envisioned solution. In particular, it offers a description of what a strategic design practice to initiate and curate the transition of industrial infrastructures toward more responsive, distributed and citizen-centred service configurations can be. This experimental process and research framework is built on two main activities.

  1. Making the infra-structural available as material for design.

  2. Prototyping and staging of futures concepts.

 
A scene from the service concept rehearsal in the field

A scene from the service concept rehearsal in the field

 

FOR MORE INFOrMATION ABOUT THE PRoJECT AND THE PROCESS: