Week 6 Log – Sketching – NUTC

Log Week 6

Sketching

This week we began to pull all of our ideas together into sketches and a final storyboard for our choice of project. We had a range of ideas between us, all inspired by our previous research into cycling projects in the past/present.

Our ideas

Some of our ideas were the likes of using barometers to collect data of cyclists going by, animated signposts in which a thumbs up/down could be registered by the sign to see if people were to find it interesting or not, resulting in either more facts on the post or a link to a website/ twitter page in which people can leave positive feedback. We also came up with simpler ideas like bluetoothing/ airdropping people facts on their phones at certain points on the road so they are able to see benefits of the potential project, or even simple posters put up around Heaton to catch people’s attention or on buses.

Our Feedback From our Mid-term Presentation

Along with our seminar work we also completed our midterm presentation this week. We felt like this went okay and we got a lot of helpful feedback. From this feedback we realise we should do some more research into all aspects of our project, including other projects like ours from which we can get more inspiration, bus timetables and routes so we can supply the knowledge of other alternative transport methods to driving and needing to park along Heaton Road. We want to include more pictures from our site visit and our meeting with Julie and Mark, this wasn’t asked of us but came from our own personal reflection on the presentation. One final point given to us was to think about where we will display our signs.

SIA Week 5 Log

This week we researched further into digital solutions for public engagement and we found some examples which deal primarily with engaging public opinion on a local level. From our seminar work we found the example ‘Viewpoint’, which is a digital interface that allows residents to vote and submit their opinion on local matters. The original Viewpoint technology was developed as part of the Bespoke project and it allowed local councillors and community organisers to ask simple questions with binary answers. A concept like viewpoint would reduce the time needed to complete door-to-door surveys. It would also remove the unpredictability of uncertainty, as we found out, door-to-door are not always successful. Cons of the product however, include the loss of the personal face to face conversation that community thrives on, the lack of explanation or elaboration of peoples’ opinion.

The Viewpoint example can be seen at: https://blackboard.ncl.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3867159-dt-content-rid-13421720_1/courses/K1819-TCP2031/Reflections%20on%20Deploying%20Distributed%20Consultation%20Technologies%20with%20Community%20Organisations.pdf

We hope to continue looking for more examples in the following days.

We also finalised our user research tasks and performed door-to-door surveys around the streets of Wingrove with one of our project partners, Katrina, the Greening Wingrove CIC Community Organiser. Whilst surveying local residents we also took this opportunity to interview Katrina about her personal thoughts on the area and the aims for the Arthurs Hill building. She spoke passionately about the need of more activities for the youth, ranging from toddlers to teenagers, and about the interconnection and potential link the building could have with other community facilities within the area, such as Nunsmore park.

From our door to door survey we obtained 20 responses. Of the people who answered the door their opinions seemed to echo Katrina’s in their vision for a thriving youth programme within the area. Below are the questions we asked and the most common responses we received:

What activities or events usually take place in this area? This question received various responses including Greening Wingrove events, Nunsmore litter picking, community groups and parties. However, of the 20 responses, 10 said that they did not know of any.

What are the changes Arthur Hill should make to become more socially environmental? The most common response was creating or finding things for the youth to do, such as having kid’s clubs. There was also mention of waste management, a community centre and a social media platform for communication.

How do you feel about interaction within the area? (Ranked 1-5, 1 = poor, 5 = good) Out of the 20 responses, the average response given was 2.7, which is a fairly poor response. Not a single person gave a 5 response and 1 was given four times.

How close are you with your neighbours? (Ranked 1-5, 1 = poor, 5 = good) Out of the 20 responses, the average response given was 2.6, which is also a poor response. From this question and the one before it is clear that there is room for improving social interaction in the area.

Do you wish to improve your interaction with your neighbours? (Yes or No) 13 respondents said that they would want to improve interaction with their neighbours.

Do you think a digital platform would help with this? (Yes or No) 15 respondents said that they believed a digital platform would help with improving interaction in the area.

What is your experience of using local facilities? (Ranked 1-5, 1 = poor, 5 = good) The average response received here was 2.9, so just below a satisfied response. Again this proves there is room for improvement.

What local facilities do you often use? This question received a wide range of responses including restaurants, church, cafes, Time Centre, transport, shops and supermarkets. However, the most frequent response was green spaces and parks.

How often do you use existing local facilities in a week? From the responses, the average response was 2.4 times a week. The most common response was once a week.

Do you use existing social platforms (such as Facebook groups) regularly? (Yes or No) Only 10 of the 20 respondents said they use existing social platforms regularly.

What do you use these social platforms for? Of those that said they used the social platforms, entertainment and news were the most common response. Arranging meetings and reporting issues were the other responses given.

Whilst surveying door-to-door, we did come to the realisation that this method is not as successful as pre-arranged interviews or meetings, it is a long process with little outcome. We felt that for the most part, a digital solution could be a highly effective potential going forward, taking inspiration from the Viewpoint boxes, which we found in our example search. From this, our digital design could be focused on gaining a broad and ranged opinion from a digital polling system. Whether this could perhaps be an interface inside/outside the building or in local shops/cafes is something we would have to discuss further.

Another idea that came from the user research was potentially creating a digital interface for the youth of the area to connect with the building, and the area, as we learnt of the hardships of many of the families within the area. It could potentially be worth-while to create an interface for the youth of the area, as many come from disenfranchised homes, some even being crammed into a house with 5 or 6 families, as we learnt from Katrina.

Our next steps for the project is to begin mapping out and sketching our digital interaction solution. Bringing together both our example search and user research to create the best solution for public engagement and interaction within the Wingrove area.

SIA Week 4 Log

Week 4 Log

This is the week 4 log for SIA. This week we carried out part of our user research, meeting with various project partners and also began searching for examples of products/services/devices that serve as state of the art in our project.

User Research:

As part of our user research we went to the Greening Wingrove Annual Meeting on the 16^th February. We felt as though this meeting would give us a huge opportunity to meet some of our project partners and potentially even meet some local residents in the area. The event was also useful as it took place at 250 Philip Street, Arthur’s Hill (the building that part of our project is based on) and so we got a much better idea of the actual building we were working with.

At the meeting, we spoke with David Webb, who is a local resident and the Secretary of Greening Wingrove CIC as well as one of our key stakeholders in the project. Below are the most important and valuable points we obtained from the interview with David:

Currently local residents communicate through WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages. The WhatsApp groups are used to contribute ideas and thoughts, but are rarely used, with David mentioning that ‘messages are transferred maybe once every two weeks’. The Facebook groups are slightly more active. However, the problem is that there are many different pages and so trying to organise larger events or communicate on a large scale is difficult.
The main issue David said we would have with our project is that not everyone will use one form of social network, which on one of the reasons multiple platforms are currently used.
David’s vision for the building involved using it for multiple purposes. Ideas included a post office, renting out the top rooms for storage, use of the already in place music studio and events for the youth including youth clubs and weekly activities.

We also managed to speak with other members of Greening Wingrove with the main points from them being:

Not enough is available for younger generations to do, with many just roaming and playing on the streets.
There is a difficulty in getting all the locals involved in the area. This is primarily due to language barriers and people not knowing what events are out there.

We aim to continue with our user research in the following weeks with our door to door surveys. We are also hoping to organise an interview with Katrina Jordison, the Greening Wingrove CIC Community Organiser, as we were not able to speak to her for too long at the annual meeting.

Week 6, team 2

This week, as a group we went to Front Street Primary school to carry out a workshop with a year 5 class. The workshop was split into 4 tasks- Firstly, to get the students to draw the park from memory. Secondly, to label their favourite parts of the park and why- by using stickers and post-it notes. Thirdly, in their opinion what they feel could be improved within the park and finally, how do they tell people about the park. They were split into groups of 4 and were able to write and draw their ideas. As a group we found the whole experience useful as our brief is aimed at their age range. When it came to the positives about the park some areas were clear favourites e.g.- windmill, play area and workout space to name a few. Many of the children felt a negative aspect of the park was the way some teenagers use it (drinking, smoking and being loud) and the amount of rubbish, many felt if these issues were tackled it would improve the park. Another improvement the children suggested was that events at the park were more publicly known about, as some felt they would miss out due to the lack of advertising prior to the event. When we asked the children how they would tell people about the park, the majority said through posters or a website. For the website to work they said it would need to be kept up to date and should include future events as well as links that allowed people to find out more information about the park.

Within our seminar this week, as a group we feel creating an app would be most appropriate. The app would consist of a video showcasing Chase Park, with different options- for example a few of the children mentioned that they would like to know more about the history of the park. By using the app, the children could scan a QR code in a particular area e.g. the Windmill and the app would pop up with information about the history of the windmill, this isn’t just applicable to the windmill. Another example would be an event time table- with pop up reminders. Children could either access the app through their own mobile phones (with parent permission) or done in a class environment- so the teacher could let them know what was going on, making sure it would be age appropriate.

Team 2- Workshop at Front Street Primary School

Team 2- Workshop Front Street Primary School ( what could be improved)

Week 5 – Chase Park – workshop design & example search

This week during the seminar session we met Jen, our mentor, and had the opportunity to explain in detail the research, progress and initial ideas we had for our project. We explained to Jen how our project had developed from the initial brief, as that is the only information she had of our project until that point. We discussed with Jen our user research and told her our plans to run a workshop for the year 5 children of Front Street Primary School. Jen helped us to develop a clear, structured plan for the workshop. We also decided on our main aim for our project, to encourage pride and stewardship of young people in Chase Park. Jen also helped us to prepare questions ready for our interview planned for week 6 with Holly, the youth worker, from ‘Kick the Dust’. Aspects we plan to interview Holly on include, the context she works in, whether the people she works with are connected to Chase Park and what ideas she thinks are most likely to encourage engagement from younger people.

Week 5 was when the majority of our research into other projects in digital civics took place. One project we researched was Jen’s, ‘Participatory Media: Creating Spaces for Storytelling in Neighbourhood Planning’. This was useful as the project also used a park, Kingston Park. The project was to develop an app where citizens would have a platform to share their own stories. This project involved running workshops as a research method which we are also using as our own research. Another app we researched was an app created for breastfeeding mothers called ‘Feed Finder’. This app is location based, it provides. platform where breastfeeding mothers can rate and review places they have found to breastfeed for the information of other breastfeeding mothers. This app is loosely related to our project as it brings together experience of citizens themselves to create a reliable information service on an issue of importance to that community. Chase Park is an issue of importance to their local community, to have a location based app for Chase Park where users can share experiences, photos, videos, events etc in the park we believe would encourage others to visit.

Our next steps include: running the workshop at Front street Primary School, interviewing Holly from ‘Kick the Dust’ and drawing together all of our previous research to have a clear journey for our project development, ready for the midterm presentation at the end of week 6.

Week 5 Log – NUTC

LOG WEEK 5

This week we met with one of the academic partners that mentors us, Tom Maskell (PhD student in Open Lab) who happens to have a background in walking and cycling connections for the community. He introduced us to the newcastle walking cycling routes website in which he participated in the creation of. This website was able to show us the main concerns by the general public and where these were located on a map. This is mainly coming from walking and cycling advocates – most comments are green so they believe it is very important, the red and yellow are less important. ( which suggests there are not many drivers as there aren’t many red and yellow.)

https://newcastlewalkingcyclingroutes.commonplace.is/comments/5beefcc45a173b000e05ac22

Our group discussion with our mentor led us to review our project aims as we currently didn’t have a main focus. Tom helped us to understand the best way to use our projects user research and the examples that inspired us to get to the point we are at. He also made us realise that we should do something interactive along Heaton Road that could be seen either by cyclists and pedestrians or drivers.

The Ladder of Participation

Tom reminded us of The Ladder of Participation which we had heard of before but had forgotten about. He explained to us it’s very important to think about our approach to the project and to use this ladder to determine if we wanted more of a manipulative method of making the public more accustomed to the cycle route or if we wanted to be more informing and consult the public more on what they wanted.

Our Best Approach

After an intense group discussion we figured that our best approach should be a more persuasive one, closer to the middle/bottom of the scale, in which we could try to persuade the people sat on the fence or were fully opposed to the cycle route. We came to the conclusion the project is at its final stages of being given the go ahead, with one big final consultation happening in early May and then just the legal processes to be completed, so collecting people’s opinions wouldn’t be as relevant to just trying to change those of the opposed, as the project is shortlisted and one of the councils favourites to happen.

Process

After deciding our main purpose we came up with many different questions of how to actually get across our aim to the public. These questions can be seen in the picture below in which some of our main questions were :

who’s trying to convince who? Us or the public?
Will we try to target individuals or groups?
Would we want to use data/prove, discussions or tell stories to convince people?

In the end we decided our main target would be finding the correct data to answer the question ‘how can people benefit?’ as this would motivate them to change their opinions. We think people would be led by the reduction in costs, health benefits, the advancement in helping the planet (Carbon Footprint reduction), making Heaton a safer environment and if they knew other transport methods were available and easier to use they may be swayed by that.

Conclusion

We have been trying to come up with as many ideas as possible ready for next week in which we are to begin sketching our final project ideas. We still like the idea of a form of an interactive decision map or signs along Heaton Road with phases that show people the benefits of cycling, and we also like the sound of the Cycle Barometers in which Tom introduced us to.

Although the last one may be too much of an expensive method and more focused on the cyclists and not the people who are opposed who’s minds we are trying to change. We are hoping to have made our mind up on this ready for our next lecture.

Week 4 – Chase Park

This week we progressed further on our workshop we are doing with the children at Front Street Primary School Whickham. We have drawn up an outline plan of the activities we will complete with the children at the school. The current plan needs some tweaking and we discussed how an additional activity of how they would show other people about the park which we have added to the original plan. Hopefully we will get some creative ideas on how they would use video/technology to help them to this.

So far our plan is:

(0 min) Introduce ourselves and why we are there.

(5 min): Starter:

Get the teachers to organise children into groups of around 4-6, depending on class size.

Each group of children are to draw the outline of chase park, giving them A3 sheets with colouring pens and pencils.

* Use photographs as visual stimuli

* Ask them – what can you remember about the park? What is there? Where do you like going in the park? What do you like to do there?

* Remind them – Doesn’t have to be a work of art or very accurate etc

(20 min) Activity 2: Groups to decide between themselves what places in the park are the best to them, giving them stickers such as golden stars to stick on their drawings.

* Use star stickers, emoji stickers (Sean can bring these)

* Can also layer the map with post it notes, pens and stickers (Sean can bring these)

(30 min) (Class discussion)

Going around each group and getting them to say one of the places they highlighted and why.

(35 min) Activity 3: Giving them another set of colours, get them to draw on where and what they would want in their park. What would make them use it more.

* Describe how you would make the park better for people to come and visit

* Bring your ideas to life!

Write down possible ideas for activities that could be done in the park too.

(1hr 0 min) (Class discussion)

What were the best ideas of each group when they thought about improving or adding something new to the park.

* Write on flipchart paper

(1 hr 05 min) Activity 4:

How would they show / tell other people about the park? How would you get the message out about the great things that are in the park? Work in groups to come up with some ideas.

* Posters?

* Technology?

* Videos?

* News reports?

(1 hr 25 min) Class discussion and feedback.

(1 hr 30 min) Finish.

It still requires a bit more attention to detail before we deliver the workshop at the school but the general activities and timings are in place. Unlike a normal school activity, we want the workshop to provide us with information from the children rather than the other way around. We hope that the children will really enjoy having the opportunity to share their ideas to us, however creative or crazy they might be.

We are also currently organising a convenient time to meet Holly from ‘Kick the Dust’ and preparing some questions for her. Jen suggested we look to ask similar questions to what we will ask the children but phrase them in a more suitable way.

We have done some example searches, one of which was BlockBuilders (https://blockbuilders.co.uk). BlockBuilders use Minecraft to engage with younger children in planning and designing places. One positive would be that whilst children are engaging in planning and design of their communities they feel as though they are just playing, and it is made to be fun. If it is fun they are more like to enjoy it and be engaged with the product for longer. This was a good example as it specifically focuses on young people. A criticism for BlockBuilders is that it is only accessible via a Workshop from Brighton with limited spaces, and therefore it is currently inaccessible for most young children.

We recognise we have not completed enough useful example searches and are still doing research on example searches to help us develop our own concept.

Week 4 Log – NUTC – Example search

Log week 4

This week we followed up on our idea of taking a site visit to Heaton Road here we managed to talk to a few of the locals and gather some ideas of how they felt about the project. Most of them seemed to be happy with the idea of a cycle lane although these people claimed to be cyclists themselves so it coincides with the data we found on the website ‘streets for people’ (51% wanted segregated cycle lanes). A couple of the people we spoke to said they were drivers of cars and would struggle with the addition of a cycle lane, due to the lack of parking spaces that would become a reality once the lane was installed.

Our Inspirations

This research was inspired by a project we found in the Netherlands about How to turn a Car city into a Cycling city*. As most of the cities (both in this project and in general) were planned and designed for the car, the first thing that had to be done was “appeasing the motorists instead of encouraging cyclists”. As we have written before, Heaton Road is very “car-occupied”, which makes this reference project very relevant to our own project. It has inspired us to do more further research into their ideas and how ours could relate seen as they were successful.

We also found this article** useful which was suggested to us by Sean. After reading through it we understood more about the concept of a “smart city” and how GPS, as well as other GIS tools, could be used to track the main cycle routes within an area. We were then also able to recognise the divide between the East and West were the West had hardly any cycle routes in comparison potentially down to the development of transportation and wealth of the area.

We spoke during the lecture about how negative comments would impact us and the project, and we have decided that negative comments would be our main target and we would focus on understanding them more and persuading the people to change their opinion. This is now one of our main project goals, alongside meeting the needs of the briefing given by Ali and creating a interactive/inclusive platform.

Our Concept

We also began to come up with a concept for our project although we feel that we will be able to adapt this more after talking to the other project partners (Mark and Julie). One of the concepts was the idea of getting cyclists to map their ideal route and recording this information, then putting it into a map of sorts to show how useful the cycle route would be by connecting Heaton Road to other/ smaller cycle paths. The other concept was a interactive Decision Tree, we would make several questions which would have multiple answers provided already to choose from, leading to more questions, eventually ending up with one final answer, which would be an end goal of the cycle route being the best option for all users. This would be an online concept but we would also be able to make it as an interactive poster for people without access to the internet.

This is an example of the format of a Decision Tree, although we believe ours would be larger. The “leaf nodes” would be one final answer for the participants.

Next week we are planning to visit Heaton Road again and to interview some of the stakeholders to get a wider range of views on the project and hopefully to begin to build upon our concept idea. We are also meeting the project mentor so hopefully we will gain some insight into their thoughts on the project and some much needed experience in the area. We also have our meeting with Mark and Julie arranged although due to unforeseen circumstances this has been set back slightly.

References

*Link to reference project: https://nextcity.org/features/view/how-to-turn-a-car-town-into-a-cycling-city?fbclid=IwAR1ckGS1GZ-tyq5lrf_wh3yy4qd2owdLhLYOgG5topXSbMKYfzJ3AWH0ZMY [Online: Accessed 19-02-2019]

**Link to article:

https://ledantec.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Le-Dantec-Planning-with-Crowdsourced-Data-CSCW15.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3FHHvqkw5f5ue3geihm0nwpHWlHdQmQyg-B_AhsobTz_BtbLac7kzeLQg [Online: Accessed 19-02-2019]

Week 3- Team 2- Chase Park

In this week’s seminar we have been deciding on what research methods would be best to use when thinking about our project on Chase Park. Using our current stakeholders we would like to do an interview with Alan on behalf of Friends of Chase Park to see what they want to get out of it, also an interview with Holly from Kick the Dust to get an understanding of how the secondary school students use the park and finally we want to do an activity with the children of Front Street Primary School to get their ideas on paper instead of making them sit through questions that they may be too shy to answer.

The activity with Front Street Primary School will be split up into smaller groups of around 4-6, with the activity lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. For a starter activity we want the children to draw the rough guidelines of the park, maybe noting down where they spend most of their time or what parts they miss out and forget about. After outlining the park, using stickers and colouring pens we want them to identify their favourite parts of the park. Having discussions after to engage the class and other ideas, writing these reasons why it’s their favourite area on post it notes. Then we want the children to use their imagination and scribble down ideas of how they want the park to improve or things they may want added, potentially incorporating activities they could do in the park as Friends of Chase Park seemed to be keen on the idea of having activities for the kids.

SIA week 3 Log

Log 3

This is the week 3 log for SIA. This week we have been working on user research for our stakeholders including Nigel Todd, David Webb, Jude Murphy, Katrina Jordison and the local residents of the Wingrove area. The two methods we chose to use to collect our user research are door to door surveys and interviews with local residents and the project partners.

Door to door survey: We have chosen to survey the local residents as surveys generate quick statistical data about our chosen sample. Surveys can be very useful in this sense as they will help us understand the big picture and provide us with statistics that can help to inform the direction of our project. Since we are obtaining this data in a door to door format, it is critical that the survey is short and questions are concise to ensure we capture the main opinions we are after.

Interviews with project partners: For the project partners (Nigel Todd, David Webb, Jude Murphy and Katrina Jordison) we chose to interview them informally. With these interviews, we can interchange views and ideas and hopefully collect information that will enable a deeper analysis of a given problem. Hopefully we will engage in a lengthier conversation which touches on their current aims for public engagement and digital platform and the issues the organisations deal with on a neighbourly basis.

What insights we hope to gain:

From our user research, we hope to gather a much more detailed insight into the project. We chose these two methods as they will help us obtain information on opinions and perceptions on a local and professional level. By collecting this data we hope to gain knowledge on how the area is managed now, and how residents are made aware of events and developments within the community. From the interviews with the organisation members and David Webb, a senior lecture in town planning and also a local Wingrove resident, we hope to gain knowledge of how they feel on an organisational level, as well as a paralleled local level, about how the area currently engages with projects and events, and how they think this could be improved for the future. In addition, we also hope to gain a wider image of their vision for the future of the area.

Questions we have come up with for…

Local Residents:

How do you feel about community interaction within the area now?

Do you think this could be improved?
Could this improvement be in the form of a digital platform? If so what would you like to see?

What is your experience of the current use of the facilities in the area?

How did you hear about the reuse of the building on Arthurs Terrace?
Would you engage with the building after its refurbishment?
Any ideas for the building?

Do you think that interest in community connection is focused on by a certain demographic? (one of our stakeholders being schools).

What do you think to using the primary school as a main stakeholder?

Project Partners:

What is your role and background, in the area/community?
How do you feel the area receives information and communicates internally now?
How do you currently attempt to engage with the public?
What are your aims for the area? And for public engagement?
Could public engagement be progressed by the involvement of a digital platform?

David Webb

What is your role and background?
How do you feel, as a local resident, information is distributed now between the community? Is there a social space for the residents?
How do you feel, as a professional, the area is managed by the different organisations? Is there anything that could improve this for future progression?
Do you have any opinions on the current use of social media to connect the different events/organisations within the area?

Below are photographs of our session together in which we brainstormed different questions and ideas for the user research process.