Project goals – Page 2 – DigiCivics @ APL

air quality group Week 4

Project Goals:

The initial project goals where;

‘A Newcastle university urban planning focused bottom up campaign initiative to increase user and community awareness of air quality control cantered on Gosforth high street. Working with the users on easy and effective forms of interpreting the data supplied by the air quality monitors situated along the high street, making the data accessible to everybody with the goal of increasing community awareness and support for self-managed air quality control through community projects.’

The Goals have mainly stayed the same as initially outlined, however, we have also reflected on our interviews and the progression in our designs in which have both led to the incorporation of further goals. These include a focus on smart technologies to present data interactively as well as improving the air pollution levels through new material innovations. Another goal we have added is the need for a community behavioural change from the current passive users to a more active user base improving interaction in air quality activism this was formed reflecting on Peter McDonalds interview. Reflecting on our interview with Duncan we decided to add to our project goals in relation to local business interaction and inclusion within our plans.

Examples

Augmented Reality

– Using AR to visualise something, in our case it would be air pollution. We selected this as it could help us engage with younger audiences.

Air Quality App – Breezometer

– This app gives the user real-time information about air pollution across 27 countries. Furthermore, the app gives location-specific notification at times of bad air quality. We selected

Pollution Control Board – Eloor, India

– Large public display that shows real-time air pollution levels. We selected this as it can be shown to everyone on the high street.

Air Pollution Cladding

– Two types, one that cleans the air around it and another that changes colour depending on the current level of air pollution

Clever bus shelter advertising

– A bus shelter that has an interactive display using smart technologies.

Peter McDonald and Duncan Young Interview Reflection week 3

We had an interview with Peter McDonald and got a lot of background information about Gosforth high street and the air quality concerns. The main thing Peter wanted to change is increasing the public awareness of air quality and community activity. The council and people who live there have already taken some actions to improve the air quality, a local council plan was implemented called The Air Quality Action Plan carried out in 2011, However, Peter believes it is not effective as nothing has really changed in the area. There are still 96 bus routes on the high street which is one of the main causes of air pollution and are still not controlled. Ten air quality monitors are situated along the high street and they gather useful data but the data is not easy to access and understand and is therefore largely ignored by the local community. Peter hopes that less people will drive their cars everywhere and walk their children to school if the data is made easily interruptible for the users. They have a Facebook account and people can leave their comments. It is good for them to know what the residents think about but there are not enough people passionate about their community air pollution levels, therefore peter believes a behavioral change needs to be implemented with the local community to increase user activity. Display boards are the best idea for them because it is easily accessible for everyone who passes along the street and easy to understand for children, adults and the old. To some degree, the goal is to make more people realize the importance of air quality activism.

Duncan Young Interview Reflection

1. What is your Role within Gosforth high street?

Duncan stated that as well as being a business owner he was also a resident on the high street and a member of the trader’s association

He also discussed the existence of the trader’s association but said it was limited by the fact that only the independent business got involved.

2. What challenges do you feel Gosforth high street faces?

He said congestion was a huge problem on the high street especially at peak times. He wasn’t really sure on how to solve this personally but one idea he thought of was to divert the limited stop X bus routes via Cowgate instead of the high street. I personally felt this was a bit of nimbyism as the bus would just be blighting the residents of Cowgate instead. He also showed us the local council’s red route plan that local shops fought off despite it potentially reducing congestion on the high street as it would have stopped customers/delivery’s stopping on the high street.

3. Do you know how most of customers currently travel to the Gosforth high st?

He stated that most of his own customers drove to Gosforth High St, he then showed us a survey from 2011 of high street users.

The majority of respondents arrived by car:

66% car

16% bus

6% cycle

29% foot

This was particularly useful as really demonstrated how local shops are dependent on the traffic.

4. How do local shops on the high street feel about the Air pollution?

He said that local shops are concerned but are stuck with the problem that they need the traffic as well. He also said the larger chain shops were not allowed to get involved due to head office therefore their feeling is not known.

5. Do the businesses have an existing plan concerning the high street in general?

They did not have a plan.

6. Are you aware of the Urban observatory data available online at http://uoweb1.ncl.ac.uk/ that shows real time data from the 10 air pollution sensors on Gosforth high street?

He said he was aware there was some pollution sensors but was not aware there was 10 of them and that the data was available online. I found this interesting as you’d of thought somebody based on the high street would be aware of theses sensors.

7. Given the choice of a Smartphone App, Interactive Display on the high street, Emails, Website, Newspaper or any ideas of your own. Which would most likely engage you with air pollution is Gosforth High St.

He said something as simple a leaflet to inform his would work. He then said big token acts are very good but if the resident’s/shop owners don’t know what there about then there pointless. I took away from this statement that whatever we propose must be simple to engage people and be well-advertised so people know what it actually is.

He then ended the interview by saying the problem for business is they need to save the high street without killing it.

Blog Entry 1 – A digital means to create and share energy in your neighbourhood.

Our group is called JEPP – Jesmond Energy Co-Production Platform.

Members: Crystal, Conrad, Rob, Chris and Brandon

Members of JEPP met with the client Tony Waterson of the Jesmond Residents Association on Thursday 6th October. Initial discussions with the client involved …

It was established that the team should approach the project by setting goals. The goals were discussed as follows:

To improve JEPP’s understanding of renewable energy principles and current technology systems, which include solar power and our platform of an energy dashboard regarding its role and ability in reaching the target audience.
To discuss the role that energy has as a resource to the target users in the locality of Jesmond.

To look into what is considered viable to the interest groups and what is not.
To foster a shared ownership of energy at neighbourhood level similar to those principles of energy co-operatives.

But ultimately,

we want to support residents, organisations and businesses in Jesmond in adopting a more energy efficient approach to their current consumption patterns.

Stakeholders

We have discussed about stakeholders with our client and decided business owners are the biggest stakeholders since they uses a lot of energy compare to other stakeholders – according to our client. After that, there are less important stakeholders such as, elderly and retired people living in Jesmond, young professionals and organisation based in public buildings, since they’re the ones who’ll use the energy dashboard.

However, the stakeholders are afraid of installing solar panels. They’re scared about the price of installing solar panels. If that’s the case, they need to be communicated in order to make them notice the importance of renewable energy and the message of using renewable energy can actually save them money in the long term. Then we’ve discussed about ways to communicate with them.

Advertising and publicity

We talked about ways of publicising the JEPP project:

We need to promote the JEPP project
Find out more about the Jesmond Residents’ Association
Have a forum to gather communitiy opinions and level of interest
Design an engaging email to send out to possible stakeholders
Deliver a message – the importance of renewable energy
See if we can use exisiting ways of advertising information to the local community ( e.g. through a display at the Library or by asking if we can have an advert on a school newsletter)

Walker Community project: Week one progress

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In the first week, we start off by understanding our project, the Walker creative neighborhood, and get a clue on what our project is about. We met Joy, one of our client representatives, to discuss on the project. It was a very meaningful meeting as she helped us to recognize the project’s objectives throughout our discussion.

Goal

The main goal of the project is to gather the Walker community. Due to the lack of funding to local community initiatives, the organisations may fail to cooperate with each other and brought down the connection between community. Therefore, our client hoped that some measures can be made to bridge back people in Walker.

With the aid of an online platform, such as a homepage or forum, we wish to build a space especially for the walker community. It will be a Walker-focused page including local organization and volunteer information. We hope that it can become a key in arising residents’ awareness to their community and promote volunteer work in Walker.

In long term, it is hope that connections can be rebuilt between the Walker community and people can also get use to helping each other or leaning for help on their own, which hopefully can increase their living standard or quality. The increase volunteering promote may also solve problems in business. People may also start their own business with the help of other volunteers.

Key stakeholders

Since our project involves digital technology, local people who are able to reach the internet may be our target. They may be looking for events and update information in walker in the website. Among them, we focused on people who have higher possibility in participating volunteer work at their free time, such as housewives or students, as our main users. Students, or other locals, may be interested in volunteering for their own reasons, such as building experience for their CVs, can also easily applying one through the website. We will also have to cooperate with local business in walker since they may also be promoted in the page. Especially community organisation, as they may recruit volunteers via website.

However, considering that people in Walker may experience any technological problems, technology support may be need. We suggested printed newsletter, as another media besides webpage.

Further Research

When meeting other representatives later on, we would like to know more on the status of the existing community group and their projects in Walker. It is important to know if there are already similar projects running now. We may also have to investigate information of walker residents to give a background study of our stakeholders. Their background may vary our decision and how we execute the whole project. Also, it is hoped that we can interview with people having different position in walker and get a full picture of what their needs are. People with different identity may have different goals and expectation in this project.

Blog Entry 1: Air Quality Gosforth High street

Digital Civics: Air Quality Blog Entry 1

Project goals:

FullSizeRender (5) A Newcastle university urban planning focused bottom up campaign initiative to increase user and community awareness of air quality control centered on Gosforth high street. Working with the users on easy and effective forms of interpreting the data supplied by the air quality monitors situated along the high street, making the data accessible to everybody with the goal of increasing community awareness and support for self-managed air quality control through community projects.

Stakeholders & users:

In this project, the main users are students that in both private and church schools, commuters from the North, different business on the street and residents. They are quite important as variety role are played by them. For example, students and the old residents should be taken good care but the poor air quality make them expose under the risk of illness. Commuters come here by private or bus and bring business to this street and shop owners really need them to live. However, they can make traffic congestion as to many cars and buses which is also the main cause of air pollution. As residents, they create a group called SPACE on Facebook, Twitter and website. What they have done is they have posted the problem of the air pollution and explain this to the public. People can say their needs and make suggestions in this group.

At first the council and population wants less traffic on this road because of the
air pollution but the thing is they wants more traffic for the health of businesses. FullSizeRender (4) Besides, there are a lot of data available on a few websites but they are unusable. We think because it’s difficult to understand the data if you are not an expert. For example, for the level of the pollution in air there are only numbers with abbreviations of products. Therefore, to have a better use of data, they need to be more imagery with colours and map for the localisation.

Key Questions for the Sprint

Why does the existing air quality data not work?

We think this could because the current data is hard to interpret and very technical.
One way we could improve this is by colour coding the data so the average resident know it the current amount of air quality is bad.

To what extent are the stakeholders participating with each other?
- Despite Space existing as a community group it is unclear how much corporation there is between other stakeholders such as the GPS forth schools trust.
- We will aim to work with them all in our development process in order the improve links between groups. This is important as the long term goal of improving air pollution in Gosforth will require all the stakeholders to cooperate.

First log entry: Connecting cyclists and transport planners

Hi, this is our first design log entry for the module by Alistair, Derek, Jake, James and Rachel. Only our second week into the course and we’ve already met the client in a workshop as well as set goals for the remainder of the project. By doing this, we’ve also come up with a few questions that we hope will be answered in the coming weeks!

GOALS

To increase the amount of cyclists in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This is because cycling is seen as a renewable, cost-effective transportation method that does not consume energy and promotes a healthy, active lifestyle.
Making cycle routes more known, accessible and easy to navigate. In particular, routes between the city centre and surrounding residential areas as well as potentially linking neighbouring local authorities to the scheme in the future e.g. County Durham and Northumberland.
Producing a compact, interactive, integrated and easy to understand app that is accessible for a variety of users. Anyone should be able to use and operate our app regardless of their age, educational background or geographical area, for example.
Another benefit of this app is that it provides Newcastle City Council with new data about cyclists and their main routes that they have never had before. For instance, where are they coming from? Who are they? What is their cultural and social background? How long will they be traveling? What is their purpose (e.g. are they a part of a club, student, or commuting)?
It will enable city and transport planners to accommodate for high volume areas of cyclists and will enable them to understand and offer more cycle friendly facilities. These include bike lock/rack locations in Newcastle City Council and suggest where these installations can go. In doing so, it will also address problem areas that cyclists feel need solving.
It will improve the routes to make them more cycle friendly e.g. smoother road surfaces, an increasing knowledge of cycle paths around the city and wider regions, wider and safer cycle pathways.
To consider incentives that increase the amount of people that cycle and for longer. This needs to be done through interactive modes such as easy-to-read maps, user-shared routes and live traffic updates as well as business integration.
Secondary data has already been collected by organisations such as Newcastle City Council as well as key user groups such as Sustrans. Our app will hopefully provide the means to further develop the relationships with planners, developers and cyclists to create a balanced city.

cyclists in newcastle

QUESTIONS

Who: Cyclists of all ages. From families, school children, students, commuters and the elderly.
• Will an app be accessible/appealing to all age groups?
• Our main concern is the elderly age bracket. How can we reach out and involve this audience to this social community?
• Would additional physical resources be more engaging for the elderly or those that do not have access to digital means?

What: An app that creates an online community of cyclists who engage with each other to improve their routes and environment.
• How do we successfully promote the app to create this community? (Engage with local social clubs? Online forums? Physical posters/leaflets? Conduct focus groups?)
• Will this be easy to maintain and will the idea catch on? (Do we need a points system? Prizes e.g. sustained cycling = rewards at local businesses, discounts with retail brands)

Where: To begin, in the Newcastle City Council region.
• Could this develop and expand to engage neighbouring authorities?
• If the idea gains significant interest, would it be credible to work nationwide? Worldwide? Would it be easier to engage by using countries such as Denmark and Holland as examples where cycling is more integrated into normal life? Can we learn from these places to gain more cycling activity data and improve our town planning capabilities?
• Locally, how valid will individual data inputs from users be? Can this be monitored?

Why: To promote a healthy lifestyle whilst also promoting sustainable transport.
• Does everyone have a bike? Or know how to ride one? Can we promote bike hire companies on the app?
• Will the app actually produce the desired effect?

Allow us to introduce ourselves

Hello, Tobias here signing into the Blog. Here in our team we have also Julian, Manveer, Sam and Yilin. Ultimately, we are going to seek a digital solution for our project partner, namely North Tyneside Council, to try to get the youngsters to tell the Council what they want in their own community so that the Council can craft around it for the future. We’re still very much newbies on WordPress, so please go easy on us!

On the first week, we’re glad to have already met our project partner and we’ve had a very constructive conversation to start off with.

We’ve brainstormed a little and have identified some long term goals. In fact, we only had one initially – we wanted the final outcome to be engaging amongst the younger generation. This is at the heart of our project. Simple.

But when the project partner come to us, what they really want from us is “how”. To answer this question, first we need to know more about what’s actually going on; why it’s not working at the moment.

Claire, the representative of our lovely project partner that day was very kind and analysed with us patiently the links and relationships between different parties involved in the planning processes. With the help of Sharpies, we’ve produced a diagram shewing exactly what is happening currently in the real world as Claire shared her experiences on urban planning, having worked at this industry for over a decade already. It’s all complicated, so the easiest way might be just to let you have a look at the diagram yourself:

No, unlike the maps on Local Plans, we don’t have a legend for the diagram. Sorry! But we believe it actually speaks for itself.

So obviously, developers are also very important stakeholders in the processes. Even if the youngsters have a jolly good plan, if the developers don’t want to build it, it’s just no point of doing anything at all while the young people might also end up disappointed. As a result, we went back to our long term goals and added one more item: how to get the developers to build?

Although the meeting was only an hour long, we still attempted to get some short answers – and questions – for these two long term goals. For engaging with young people, we’ve came up with a few sub-categories: how do we grab their attention? Do we want to make it real fun? How do we make it not too childish to appeal to the older-young people and at the same time not be overly-fledged to appeal to the younger-young people? And if we make an app as the final outcome, do all young people have access to mobile devices?

On the other hand, commercial institutions perhaps have another sets of values that differ from the general public’s in order to sustain their businesses and profits. Okay, that’s fair enough, but if we’re gonna have to work with them to materialise the community in the end, do we have to look at their values in the business world and lead the (even) younger generation to give their input with that in mind, or would that be limiting ourselves to the developers’ world? It really is a tricky business.

Anyways, this pretty much sums up the first week in the office. If you have any dandy ideas on our project, please drop us a few words below – we’re all ears!