Reflecting on our design going into the the prototyping stages, it is evident that we may have overestimated how technical we could make our website. Originally we were looking at having an interactive game where you can scroll around the North Tyneside area and play along with in game challenges – it is now clear that we will not be able to design and create such a complex website. From this we have learned that design isn’t just a good idea, but also being able to fulfil. Now we are focusing on keeping the core principles of our design but making it more feasible and less design heavy. By doing this we should be able to have a sharper end product with less hiccups which should in turn create a better output for the end user. One thing that we have decided to stick with however is the website, as we can link it through the school as previously stated. We believe that this gives us the best approach to creating the most convenient and suitable channel to reach the young people and build a clear point of reference for where our digital prototype may sit. For us as a group digital civics has allowed us to from a new mindset in terms of planning and how we can use platforms to make a change on a more modern level that engages with a younger generation – something that is currently fundamental as we see a lack in interest from younger people with regards to their community. In addition digital civics has given us an opportunity to engage with stakeholders which is something new to all of us, and has therefore given us a new insight into something that we will come across in our planning careers. If were were to have had more time during the process of our project I think it would’ve been very beneficial to meet up with the stakeholders on a more frequent basis. Although this may be difficult, we believe that this would have provided a larger insight into what exactly our stakeholders want and in turn improve our final design. Finally another possibility with additional time would’ve been a more complex final output, and even though we still have time to do this, with an additional few weeks (like anything) we could’ve provided something that perhaps tackled more environmental problems within the Tyneside areas.
Author: b4043408
4) Youth Council group – example search
Digital Civics blog
During last week’s session it became clear that we had one main design concept in mind – a website with an interactive tool to address litter as a social problem. Originally we were going to design our interactive tool in an app, however it became clear that it could be too costly and therefore decided to do it via a website. The website also fits in well with the feedback that we got from the youth council as they said it would be a good idea to put the website link on the school home page, which in turn should generate a larger user group as more young people will be coming across our page on a daily basis and get to a large young audience as we are targeting schools.
The design of the interactive tool itself revolves around being able to go through the North Tyneside area with your mouse on the computer screen. From here young people will be able to gain more of a perspective of where litter ends up i.e. landfill, the ocean etc. There will also be a game that almost takes inspiration off Pokémon go where you can collect points from barcodes off bins and in turn get rewards when you pick up rubbish (this is an minimally developed idea and we are looking into the logistics of it more). We are also hoping to design a ‘North Tyneside of the future’ which will give an outlook on how the area will look if we continue to litter at such a rate, and on the other hand how it would look if we were to become cleaner- we hope that this could encourage behavioural change that will change their outlook on how to treat their local area. Below are a couple of links to show the sort of style we want our website to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur9MqboHfhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v64KOxKVLVg
Although we have a relatively clear idea in mind, we are still yet to get much feedback off the client, and because of this we have been in contact to ask a range of question. Although we are still waiting on a reply we hope that once we get these answers we will be able to shape exactly the direction that our project is going. In addition to this we received feedback during our presentation that it would perhaps be in our interest to look at a wider range of environmental issues which prompted us to think of the possibility of a quiz on the same webpage that young people can fill out, this data can then be collected and returned to the schools – this can then get passed to the youth council who can use this information to benefit them when putting forward ideas to change the area and express young people’s point of view in a more professional manner.