The Protocols Don’t Build Pyramids inspired me to think about the amount of protocols that a city has that are badly designed at the very least and that are, above all, not fully leveraging their amazing potential to create more and better outcomes through them.
“protocols can be understood as infrastructure plus behavior” I loved this idea and it made me think on how to “hack” some existing protocols to propose a change in behavior to better use such infrastructure and make people living in those cities a tiny bit happier.
One such protocol is the way in which government interacts with its citizen, and this has historically being done by using PSA, or Public Service Announcements. Short announcements or poster posted in broadly consulted forums (public spaces, townhalls, or through tv networks, etc) that give the citizen a small piece of relevant information, usually related to how they should interact in a particular instance with their surroundings, suggesting or enforcing a certain behavior.
But historically this PSAs have only been used for emergencies or highly critical things, which turns them into a completely wasted opportunity as a protocol to encourage behaviors that could do simpler things, such as making their citizens happier.
My proposal is in creating a series of posters with officially looking PSAs from the city government that can be put in public spaces and that encourage citizens to do abnormal behaviors with the environment in which the poster is placed, that could lead to small moments of happiness.
One such example would be to make a poster that says “This is an scenic spot. If the moon is out, kiss your special one for a movie like moment” and place it in an scenic part of the city where a movie scene could have been filmed for the kiss scene.
Or “Hum singing in the rain while jumping to this street light”
Or “This street shoe cleaner is open for compliments from 10 to 5pm”
This posters could then be printed and put in different cities.