Updated: And the win­ner is: NYFi!

Can some­thing as sim­ple as the pay­phone rev­o­lu­tion­ize com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trans­form the func­tion­al­ity of New York City?

For the last few months, the City of New York has paid heavy atten­tion to this idea, and has invited stu­dents, urban plan­ners, design­ers, tech­nol­o­gists and cre­ators of all types to build phys­i­cal and vir­tual pro­to­types of future pay­phones in the Rein­vent Pay­phones Design Chal­lenge. The designs were up for pop­u­lar vote on Face­book up until today, May 15th:

With the cur­rent pay­phone ven­dor agree­ments end­ing in 2014, the city probed think tanks and cre­ators to develop new ideas on mak­ing the city health­ier, greener, more acces­si­ble, safer,  and bet­ter informed. The group with the best, most effi­cient, and fea­si­ble design entry will receive the “Pop­u­lar Choice Award,” and there­fore a greater chance of being real­ized as a new part of the New York City infrastructure.

NYC cur­rently man­ages a net­work of 11,412 pub­lic pay­phones through­out the five bor­oughs. With the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity and acces­si­bil­ity of smart phones, pay­phone use has decreased sig­nif­i­cantly. Still, every day thou­sands of New York­ers place their coins in these some­what obso­lete pay­phones, espe­cially in times of emergency.

The real chal­lenge now for the par­tic­i­pat­ing design teams is how they can take the tech­nol­ogy of smart phones and pair them with the infra­struc­ture and acces­si­bil­ity of the pay­phone; in a way, the goal is trans­form­ing New York City into one enor­mous “genius phone.”

As of March 5th, a select panel of judges sin­gled out six designs based on atten­tive­ness to Con­nec­tiv­ity, Cre­ativ­ity, Visual Design, Func­tion­al­ity, and Com­mu­nity Impact. From then until March 15th, the City of New York sought pub­lic opin­ion on the final­ists via their Face­book page. New York­ers could then vote on which final­ist design they liked most. This “sur­vey” will deter­mine the win­ner of the Pop­u­lar Choice Award, to be revealed today. Below are the six final­ists with their respec­tive details, infor­ma­tion, and/or videos:

NYC I/O: The Respon­sive City

Bea­con

“Bea­con is New York City¹s next gen­er­a­tion open com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­form, con­nect­ing the city and its ser­vices with our com­mu­ni­ties, busi­nesses, res­i­dents, and vis­i­tors. Bea­con makes New York City more acces­si­ble, safer, health­ier, greener, and bet­ter informed in our best of times and our most challenging.

Bea­con was designed to con­nect New York City with New York­ers, busi­nesses and vis­i­tors. Bea­con takes every­thing chaotic, col­or­ful & loud about New York City and con­nects it back to us in an intel­li­gent, pur­pose­ful & famil­iar way.”

Watch full video here

Wind­chimes

“Wind­chimes are envi­ron­men­tal sen­sor sta­tions that talk through pay­phones.  They can plug directly into exist­ing tech­nolo­gies and com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture, mak­ing them low cost and imme­di­ately deploy­able. We imag­ined New York City’s exist­ing 11,000 pay­phones as a dis­trib­uted sen­sor net­work pro­vid­ing real-time and hyper-local records of the city’s rain lev­els, pol­lu­tion and other envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

Wind­chimes’ design takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the grow­ing avail­abil­ity of cheap, sim­ple sen­sors and inter­est in big data. Each payphone’s sen­sor kit will be cus­tomiz­able so that it can serve the spe­cific needs of the city and the com­mu­ni­ties within each neighborhood.”

Watch Wind­chimes video here

NYC Loop

“NYC Loop com­bines a beau­ti­ful, con­tem­po­rary pay­phone with a uniquely tai­lored pub­lic space that can be cho­sen to suit New York’s diverse com­mu­ni­ties. It pro­vides sound har­mo­niz­ing tech­nol­ogy as well as a smart screen for mak­ing calls and enhanc­ing per­sonal mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Piezo­elec­tric pres­sure plates con­vert kinetic energy into elec­tric energy to sup­ply the Loop with power.

The Loop also fea­tures a respon­sive pro­jec­tor that cre­ates an “infor­ma­tion pud­dle” on the side­walk with which any passerby can interact—an amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity for local artists or as a means of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue from adver­tis­ing space. The iconic design of NYC Loop and the rela­tion­ship of its pub­lic space to the city’s neigh­bor­hoods will become an inte­gral part of New York City’s urban identity.”

Goals of NYC Loop:

• Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment in which the lat­est tech­nol­ogy is eas­ily acces­si­ble to the gen­eral pub­lic
  
• Facil­i­tate vibrant pub­lic space through­out the five boroughs
• Uti­lize untapped kinetic energy to develop a sus­tain­able power source

NYFi

“The NYFi is an inter­ac­tive por­tal to pub­lic infor­ma­tion, goods, and ser­vices, a hub for free wire­less inter­net access, and an open infra­struc­ture for future applications.

The NYFi fea­tures two inter­faces and a sim­ple touch acti­vates the height sen­si­tive inter­ac­tive zone on either face. Two mod­els of the NYFi are pro­posed: a ten foot model for com­mer­cial and man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­tricts and a smaller model for res­i­den­tial and his­toric dis­tricts where pay­phones have not tra­di­tion­ally been per­mit­ted.  When not in use, the default dis­play in com­mer­cial areas is inter­ac­tive adver­tis­ing and, in res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods, way-finding and local inter­est posts.  Its nar­row pro­file min­i­mizes side­walk obstruc­tion and improves safety and store­front visibility.

As an all-around com­mu­ni­ca­tions hub, the NYFi has every expand­ing uses due to an open soft­ware plat­form that takes advan­tage of apps already cre­ated for smart­phones and tablets. The com­bi­na­tion of NYFi’s mod­u­lar hard­ware and flex­i­ble soft­ware can replace the hodge­podge of single-function street appli­ances that cur­rently lit­ter the side­walk such as bus ticket machines, Muni Meters, Metro­Card machines, assis­tance kiosks, bicy­cle share sta­tions and of course, pay­phones. In this way, these nodes can be mod­i­fied and upgraded over time to adapt to the chang­ing needs of the city and take advan­tage of new tech­nolo­gies that will emerge.”

Smart Side­walks

“Smart Side­walks is dri­ven by two com­pet­ing aims: to pack as much func­tion into a sin­gle device as pos­si­ble and to reduce the phonebooth’s foot­print.  “Everything”–communication, sus­tain­abil­ity, and wayfind­ing is squeezed into “noth­ing” – a 6” wide inter­ac­tive strip that folds up from the sidewalk.

The design works within the exist­ing 5’ side­walk grid and has two main com­po­nents. The first lies flush with the ground, and intro­duces a com­bined sen­sor and dis­play with storm runoff stor­age below. The sec­ond stands ver­ti­cal and func­tions as a touch-screen, Wi-Fi hub, energy source, charg­ing sta­tion, and a range of other func­tions. In short, a loca­tion teth­ered smart-phone. The bent form is shaped by acces­si­bil­ity, view­ing angle, and opti­mal solar expo­sure.  A curb-cut bleeds storm water into stor­age cells dis­si­pat­ing it into exist­ing soil. Side­walk space is freed, putting to work the invis­i­ble space below.”

Watch Smart Side­walks video here

“The user inter­face is con­cen­trated on the front panel and includes touch screen, cam­era, and sound inputs. The screen ver­ti­cally scrolls accom­mo­dat­ing a range of user heights. On the side are a credit card swipe, speaker, and charger.  Built on the Android plat­form, exist­ing apps are white listed by NYC and new ones are devel­oped by third party ven­dors.  NYC’s urban spe­cific apps could be accessed by an increas­ingly diverse range of publics: think of it as a 21st cen­tury library with­out walls.

While Smart Side­walks can func­tion as a stand-alone device, it also net­works, charges, and aug­ments exist­ing mobile devices. The 6” wide ground strip both con­veys and gath­ers infor­ma­tion. Like a vehic­u­lar road counter, Smart Side­walks pas­sively tal­lies every wheel­chair, child, and jog­ger 24/7. This mas­sive nodal net­work senses wind speed, rain fall, tem­per­a­ture, and foot traf­fic with unprece­dented gran­u­lar­ity. In emergencies,Smart Side­walks guides cit­i­zens away from dan­ger to higher ground. Thin­fra­struc­ture is self-sustaining and can go off-grid when infra­struc­ture fails. As a pub­licly acces­si­ble data­base, infor­ma­tion gath­ered from street-sides of NY will stand to fun­da­men­tally reshape the city. With a sin­gle curb cut and a thin strip of tech­nol­ogy NYC pre­pares for a chang­ing cli­mate, gives max­i­mum func­tion­al­ity to the tech­no­log­i­cal savvy, and low­ers the dig­i­tal divide.”

… For more infor­ma­tion on each new pay­phone design, visit NYC Dig­i­tal, and check back here to see the win­ner of the contest.