Park Matrix

After we decided to implement a connectivity pavilion, we had to choose where in South Bend to prototype our design. We decided to focus our search on the South Bend areas that would help us realize our mission of bringing Wifi to a low-income neighborhood. We decided to prototype in the parks of South Bend because parks are generally well monitored by police, have existing structures, well lit, and have maintained sidewalks. These factors allow the children of the neighborhood to best utilize the pavilion. We narrowed our search to three parks: The Southeast Neighborhood Park, Kelly Park, and Howard Park. Our method for selecting a location involved creating a design matrix. We brainstormed various aspects which would be most important to our discernment. The table below outlines the most critical elements of our matrix and how each of the parks we considered compare.  

To most accurately analyze the scores, we normalized the data for each category. The numbers that we normalized for proximity and distances were originally in miles, and came from mapping different points of interest to each park in Google Maps. The numbers for income demographics came from the Median Household Incomes listed on the South Bend, Indiana City-Data database.  In this table, a higher score indicates an increased importance to bridging the digital divide.

	Southeast Neighborhood Park	Kelly Park	Howard Park
Proximity to internet providers	0.20	0.00	0.20
Proximity to schools / YMCA / YWCA	0.33	0.17	0.00
Distance to library / downtown South Bend	0.78	1.00	0.00
Income demographics	1.00	0.00	0.14
Total	2.31	1.17	0.34