Week 1 Log (Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods):
Social Interactive Agency
Members: Sophia, Tham, Alex and Zhaodong
This is the week 1 blog done by Social Interactive Agency for the Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods project. Social Interactive Agency consists of Sophia, Tham, Alex and Zhaodong. Our group has a range of different skills and backgrounds, with the group having both urban planning and architecture and planning students. We also all bring different skills to the group such as creative visualisation, planning knowledge, research and analysis and collaboration. We feel as though these different backgrounds and skills will help with the project as we will have different ideas for tackling the issues and this will help produce the best outcome.
The project allows us to connect with a real neighbourhood and enables us to use what we have learnt whilst being at university in practice, such as designing for public engagement, planning to improve community organisation and improve environmental awareness as well as practicing sustainability. Being able to meet with clients and listen to their requirements needed in order to enhance the planning and organisation of the area is another aspect which will be invaluable experience for future client interaction and meeting client briefs.
The Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods project has the aim of enhancing neighbourly cohesion in order to create new public awareness of new developments happening in their locality and improving environmental and social sustainability locally. By creating a local social platform for users to post on and respond to, the project will not only expand the efficiency of data and information distribution, but also connect their area into an integrated and tight-knit group.
Neighbourhood activity and communication is a vital part of modern social life. Digital civics allows for easier and faster distribution of information, response to issues and a flourishing social hub of interaction.
We believe having Creative ideas is the key to the solution, and with technology we can fulfil the need of client directly. This project requires a lot of responsibility and time. This week we had a conversation relating to social interaction and we came up with an official group name. We want our project to be done professionally and expecting to further our career of this project in the future. We are confidently saying that Digital Civic is an important fraction in planning as now we have step into technological world. Therefore, we will be focusing toward the quality of the outcome by utilise our existing resource such as social platform for the best solution and importantly, it is free of charge. However, we must’ve considered minimising our budget in this project and ensure it is low-risk but high returns as in case this project require an extra money.
Initial questions:
• What are the current major downfalls of how they connect and share developments as a neighbourhood?
• How actively used is the current Facebook page for Sidney Grove and how many people currently use it?
• How would we initially promote our prototype so that locals know it is there?
• What can we do to ensure that only locals have access to the model?
• When would we carry out market research?
• How often do they have interaction with each other?
Hi team, good post and you have clearly thought about the project, your emerging roles in shaping it and the questions you will be asking yourself from this point forward. I particularly appreciate your optimism for Digital Civics and its potential in planning!
You draw heavily on business approaches (e.g. market research and returns), which is an interesting approach. I would like to see you articulate these further and I will be keeping an eye on how you apply these to the complex social context of Wingrove in the coming weeks. In reading Olivier and Wright 2015, you may have seen how DC is a research endeavour that seeks to distance itself from precisely such approaches (i.e. moving from transactional to relational forms of local government service delivery), so just keep this in your mind as you continue to shape the project. If this doesn’t make much sense yet, don’t worry – we can chat about it in the seminar.
To extend your thinking further, perhaps you could also ask yourself what the limitations and constraints of your work might be. For example, what can’t you achieve, and what might you not be able to solve? This will help you to bound and focus your project and better articulate its outcomes as you progress.
Hello team, thanks for the post and the introduction of the team. There is a good start. I would second Sean very much in his comments with regard to the uncritical approach you take towards ‘technology’. Try to avoid a suggestion that ‘technology’ automatically solves any problem. And also leave room to appreciate what your project partner needs. And ask yourself if “a local social platform for users to post on and respond to” is perhaps more your own assumption as to what is best rather than anything you have ‘validated’ with user research. Go back to the literature and reflect on the essence of Digital Civics around relational services which relates to Seans’ comments re market research and similar language. Onwards.