Reflection – DigiCivics @ APL

It’s been a great time

It has been our great honour to have the opportunity to work on this project and we think it’s time to look back on the many things we’ve achieved, together.

When we were first assigned the project, we had no idea how to start. We didn’t know what the young people were after. Our team had to come together to explore and think about all possible options to set out a basic framework.

Comparing with other teams, we’ve come a long way before we finally made the decision of what we were gonna do – an educational app. It was late and so we were pushing the time limit a bit, too. With the invaluable input we received from our project partners, we’ve learnt, we’ve grown, we’ve refined, together.

This is the final interface update we expect for now and it is based on the feedback we’ve got from our project partner. We’ve given it a bit more of character, we’ve got the street view and we’ve revamped the way it looks. We’re loving it and we hope you love it as much as we do.

Another reason for us to celebrate the finish of this final Plan A Lot prototype is that it responses to our original intention naturally and successfully. It looks good and it is helping young people to learn about planning. We haven’t gone for the ‘hard-sell’ tactics to get the idea of urban planning across, but it is working even better than using the ‘hard-sell’ tactics. So yes, it really is something to celebrate.

To us, we’ve given our best shot to this project. As much as we want to continue bringing this project further, we’re afraid it has to come to a close at this stage. We’re committed and we still firmly believe that this project will really make a difference to the young people and we hope further developments would be considered by the relevant parties, but we regret to say that this might not be something that’s within our ability today. Please allow us to say a massive ‘thank you’ to you for being part of our journey on Plan A Lot in the past three months.

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P.S. Just before we go, we’d like to let you know that we’ve actually done a presentation plus a write up that chronicles the processes we’ve gone through to produce Plan A Lot. If you’re one of our project partners, you should have received these items electronically already through Teresa, our very charming coordinator whom you really should have known by now. If you’ve never worked with us before but would still like an electronic copy as well as for all other enquiries, please email us at T[dot]Ho1[at]newcastle[dot]ac[dot]uk.

Week 9 – Prototype User Tests

Users reacted to our prototype mostly highly positively, with notice board idea being the most appreciated by all users. Every user put high emphasis on improving feedback system, which would encourage constructive criticism and that there should be a follow-up for feedback from organisations receiving it. Bud and Will agreed that regular newsfeed on social media, especially Facebook, but possibly also twitter should be present to keep younger Walker residents informed and, over time, convince them to use the website more often. Heather insisted on creating an introduction guide for new users. This could be solved by an overlay on the home page, adding new, separate subpage for this or just having the guidance on the main page. Overlay seems to be most effective, as it allows for user interaction, instead of only having passive information somewhere on the page. For all users it was highly important that the whole initiative, including the website will stay in hands of the people, and/or the organisations present in Walker, as it is a matter of distrust to the local council or ‘outsiders’. Unfortunately our idea of having achievements and volunteer points systems was not well received, user’s reason for this was that it would rather confuse the general public, rather than helping them to be more committed for the local causes, but they did not exclude a possibility of adding it later, as the wide user group gets used to the website.

The user tests went mostly as expected, with an exception of our idea of volunteering points and achievements (a reward for activity system), which wasn’t accepted very enthusiastically by the users. Nevertheless, users ‘rejected’ this system, not because it is bad, wrong, etc., but rather than that it would simply confuse the general public, so they advised implementing the system later on, after most website users get used to it.

User testing with Will and Gerrard were quite informal and pleasant for both sides, as we have already spent significant amount of time talking together before. User test with Heather was also alright, but a little bit more tense, as Heather was very focused on constructive criticism of our prototype and after-test discussion regarding the prototype.

The process was fairly easy to understand for everyone, even for Will, who self-declares himself as ‘techno sceptic’. Heather raised the need for an introductory guide for the website, bearing in mind wider public’s computer literacy levels.

I think the user interviews went very well and that there isn’t much, if anything, that could be changed for better, perhaps maybe organising the user test for all users at the same time and providing each user with a device for testing. Unfortunately this was not possible at the time.

Young People Engagement – Week 5

After a successful site visit, we came together as a group and discussed the different possibilities of creating a digital device. We were inspired by a number of non-digital and digital ideas. We came across ideas such as having a VR hologram projecting the user’s propositions of the development. We debated other potential ideas, like the use of chalk to make graffiti visualisations on a surface that could show the user’s proposals but chose to keep a more digital approach to our final project because we considered the non-digital ideas to be less suitable for our users.

At first, we thought of making a QR code. The idea was that the code would be scanned by the users which would lead them to a government related website with information about the current development site. We knew this idea would appear quite late during the planning process and thought it might have an affect on the user’s propositions. We were also worried that the website would provide too much information at once for the users which would not be easy to understand nor enjoyable to read.

The second concept we were trying to develop was an app. We thought the proposition of an app would allow the users to take part in the planning process at an earlier stage, therefore giving time to the Council and developers to consider the user’s propositions. The app would work like a visual interface. The app will allow for new topics and activities to be created. How does it work? Well, once the app is opened, a plot of land would show up on the screen. Through its tools, the app would support a large variety of subjects, like inserting different types of infrastructures or ponds onto the plot of land. A dragging feature would allow the plot of land to be filled with houses, schools, parks, roads, shops. These would be designed through Sketch Up (One of our design software’s) and then integrated into our app with the help of our technician. We want these animated features to reflect what the users want to see in the new development like leisure centres, open spaces and well linked roads. We also suggested that the app would have a share button indicating that the user designs can be commented on by other users, or shared with developers and the community and downloaded for future use. This is where we have got to so far, next week we’ll be looking into more detail about our concept while discussing it with our project mentor.

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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.

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!