The role of architecture in providing physical & social wellbeing for the youth: a proposed youth centre in Wentworth Durban.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Youth Centres have been proven to promote physical and social wellbeing amongst modern youth. Previous research has proven the importance of architecture in community empowerment as mediator between user and surrounding environment. Offering great potential in economic, cognitive, physical and social development for disadvantaged youth. This research will explore the potential of a youth centre in the Wentworth Township. Situated in the industrious back of port South Durban Basin. The lush natural environment, thriving petro-chemical industry, lack of basic health amenities and excessive crime rates present interesting and challenging discussions for research. The overburdened low-income youth are challenged with great social deterrents however offer unwavering potential in their local interests. Limited government aided skills development and youth facilities have resulted in current negative socio-economic activities amongst Wentworth youth. The research to follow will engage scarce youth spaces and related popular peripheries. Exploring existing local and international literature for proposing the design of a youth centre that pro-actively participates in the lives of the youth. Stimulating local youth culture, economic empowerment and holistic development through architectural design. Limited local research carried out in South African youth centre typologies present potential for development of a local framework for inspired and appropriate youth spaces. Dealing with the specifics of the township and greater South African context. Engaging unemployment, hopelessness, scarce basic amenities, skills development, substance abuse and other related social dilemmas that exist because of poverty. The research to follow will analyse the social and built environment within a context specific theoretical and conceptual framework. Determining the role of architecture in youth wellbeing by establishing specific architectural design principles, for designing youth spaces in Wentworth. Place, culture and empowerment theories form a framework for analysing the local urban and social fabric. Concepts of youth culture, proactive design strategy and dreamscaping will orientate methods of response to potentials, and challenges established based on relevant case studies. Incorporating qualitative analysis of both primary and secondary data for the support of outcomes

Data Analytics Platforms: Value Propositions and Adoption Challenges for Small Hospitality Businesses

Managers increasingly seek ways to explore insights from data for business improvements and innovation. Data Analytics (DA) platforms hold promise for businesses, especially small businesses that cannot afford tailor-made proprietary analytics services. DA platforms offer generic analytics features to a pool of businesses, saving costs and enabling benchmarking. This paper explores value propositions and adoption challenges for small businesses regarding DA. The paper offers practical insights from designing and launching a DA platform targeting small businesses in the hospitality sector. The findings of our paper show that data analytics is potentially valuable for small businesses through insights into market and customer trends. Small businesses can leverage such insights to refine their offerings. Trust and privacy concerns in sharing data are key challenges holding back adoption. We proposed measures, especially privacy-preserving technologies, to mitigate the risk of tracing a specific enterprise's data shared on the DA platform. These measures assure businesses that data shared or analyzed through the DA platform is not used to harm their competitive advantage

Corporeal Meeting Place

The modernist movement was able, through the industrial revolution, to eliminate the role of facade as load bearing member, fetishizing transparency. However, this new preeminence of visuality was not applicable to the suburban home, with its predisposition toward the creation and control of privacy. What separate the suburban condition from the urban, in addition to the role of the single-family home as purchasable symbol representing an ideal, is the front yard. Instead of a simple A-B division across a singular surface, the yard creates a deep facade, a series of layered spaces serving as filtration\u27 sidewalks, fences, plantings, yards, and porches all serving to enhance our control of privacy... Borrowing this model, we can establish new comfort with our public body. Through the generation of an active communal spine, flowing between neighborhoods varying in class, race, and density, we can break down the isolation that is facilitated by both technological advancements like the car and the de-facto segregation of exclusionary zoning, building a community that is predicated on exchange with one another, built through a sharing of visual knowledge, and staged through spatial layering..

The Soft Power of Ephemeral Communities a Short History of Las Vegas Technology Conventions, 1959-2019

This article presents an overview of the large Las Vegas–based technology conventions: Comdex, CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), and NAB (the NationalAssociation of Broadcasters trade show)

Entrepreneurial design of a digital health business

Software startups are an important source of innovation and wealth creation. Startups must develop and release software quickly to gain early cash flow and legitimacy for firm survival. They must search and identify a suitable market in a tight time frame. A ambiguity in the quality of the novel software designed can further intensify uncertainty for startups. Also, the entrepreneur-investor relationship is a critical conduit for financial and social resources, yet the investors’ influence on software design is understudied. This leads to the following research question: How does the entrepreneurial context in which the startup operates affect software design process and product in the early years? Given the exploratory nature of the research question, I drew on an eighteen-month, participant-observation case study of a three-year-old, digital healthcare startup, HealthCom. HealthCom designed a software to facilitate knowledge transfer between nurses and patients. I leveraged the attention-based view (ABV) as an organizing framework for analysis. By looking at how the environmental context influences the designers’ attention and actions, researchers can begin to understand the rationale behind design decisions. The findings illustrate how the attention of the designers were directed by financial-focused and quality-focused attention drivers. Financial-focused attention drivers originated from players (e.g. clients and investors) that intensified pressures for funding and led to the reframing of software as an enabler of funding. This contradicted quality-focused design alternatives grounded in user requirements and software design rules. It underlined the move from attention to designs that accommodated user requirements towards those that captured emerging business opportunities. Designers had to balance the tensions between financial and quality-focused design decisions that could lead to inhibition of future growth, compromises in quality or over-optimization of quality. Designers simplified and coupled requirements throughout the design process and postponed investments of design resources to meet client-imposed deadlines. The design product became disposable, quick to build, limited in adaptability, spartan, and vulnerable, and it enabled the startup to capture the business opportunities amidst time constraints, financial pressures, and high uncertainty.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM