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.

Week 3 Log – NUTC

Log week 3

Hello, this week we decided upon our user research methods. We believe the best method for us would be to participate in detailed (structured) interviews with stakeholders and the general public, and also to take general observations of the areas usage. Within the seminar we came up with some brief questions, following this we met as a group to expand upon them more.

Planned site visit

This week we contacted Ali to try to organise a meeting with her, Mark (computer, tech side of the project) and Julie (environmental/health side of the project) although Julie wasn’t able to make the dates suggested, so we have agreed to try to meet up next week with them where we will be able to ask them more detailed questions about the project. As we cannot interview them this week we have decided to make a site visit instead to Heaton Road, to try to interview some of the locals and the stakeholders. We realise that we need different types of interviews for each set of people, some needing to more open and others more specific and closed to only certain groups of people who would know the answers or have experience with the questions asked. We would like to talk to a few of the people below, although we have been warned due to local elections to not focus on them too much. These would be users such as:

Residents (both alongside Heaton Road and nearby neighborhoods)
Cyclists
Stakeholders

Examples of our “open” to all questions – resident, general public etc.

What is your main usage for Heaton Road ?
What are your usual methods of transport when on this road?
Do you find parking spaces easy to find and are there a good amount of them?
Would you find travelling along Heaton Road a positive experience, and why is this?
What would you change, if anything, about Heaton Road if you could?

Examples of our “closed” for certain people questions – Mark, Julie, Ali, Space for Heaton etc.

What is your main usage for Heaton Road?
What are your usual methods of transport when on this road?
How do you feel about parking along Heaton road?
Do you find spaces easy to find and are there a good amount of them?
What would you change, if anything, about Heaton Road if you could?
Do you believe the changes would be beneficial for the area?
What incentives would you think would lead people to want the changes made?
What are the main reasons you believe people are against?

From these questions we hope to gain a greater insight into how people feel about the project and its outcomes, hopefully helping us to understand our project end goal a bit more, and the process in which we will develop our prototype to which will help us achieve this goal. We realise the reasoning behind why our research activities should be individual as to be the fact that many people should be be approached differently and we aim to get a less biased view of these things, alongside this the elections that Ali told us about play a large role in us needing to keep open questions as we wouldn’t want locals views to be changed due to our influence.

Additional Research

Streets for people ; Heaton and Ouseburn 1

Streets for people : Heaton and Ouseburn 2

After researching further into the Streets for People which is a local research method that has already been collected by the local groups, we found these two links which lead to posters including information on pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. This information showed us that pedestrians held the highest percentage of travel (42%) and cyclists came second with (34%) driving came in with the lowest percentage out of the three options (13%). We also took note that 51% of the people wanted a segregated cycling route, proving to us that this was a slightly more prefered option and our project is more favoured.

Week 2- Team 2- Chase Park

A diagram from talking to a couple of the stakeholders.

During seminar two we met with a few key stakeholders of Chase Park. Within this meeting, we got to know Clare Ross from Gateshead Council, as well as Alan Scott and Ken who are involved with Friends of Chase Park. During this session as a group, we found talking to Clare, Alan and Ken most helpful. Clare focuses on communities as well as being involved in Friends of Chase Park. Alan is one of the key founding members of Friends of Chase Park. Ken is also involved with Friends of Chase Park and is their chancellor.

During the session, we mapped out the stakeholders in order of their priority as well as discussing the main issue: creating pride and ownership in the park. Talking to Clare, Alan and Ken we came up with a list of stakeholders and prioritised them in order of influencing ability and how important they were when it came to achieving our team goal. The stakeholders with the highest priority were; Gateshead Council, Friends of Chase Park and Front Street Primary School. Those who classified as medium priority were, Local residents and Kick the Dust. Members of the bowling green were seen as low priority when it came to achieving our team goal.

At this stage in the project, our long-term goal is to provide an app or video prototype which will be aimed at young people to encourage them to use and respect Chase Park. In order to meet these goals as a group, we are going to look round Chase Park with Ken in order to give us a better idea of what we are dealing with. As a group, we will also be attending a Friends of Chase Park meeting in order to explain what our intentions are and if they have any advice or opinions on the matter. Clare and Ken are also preparing for us to go and talk to year 5 students within the local primary school. At this moment in time, it is unclear how we are going to interact with the children around the subject of Chase Park. As a group we are unlikely to interview the children as there is a large number of them. Instead, we are likely to split them into groups and get them to do an activity to produce information which will, in turn, help us to produce our prototype. By setting short term goals of going to see Chase Park, sitting in on a meeting of those involved in the Friends of Chase Park and meeting children from Front Street primary school, the hope is that we can make a prototype specific to the needs of our stakeholders.

Week 2 Log – NUTC

Log week 2

This week we have welcomed Ben and Miki, who has become members to the NUTC. We also met with one of our project partners, Ali Lamb, who is the Engagement officer at Newcastle City Council. She talked a bit about her role and the project proposal for Heaton Road, as well as informed us about where it stands today. We then asked a couple of questions regarding the project and got together to identify the main stakeholders and the long-term goals what we want to achieve through a number of objectives.

The main stakeholders

With the help of Alis intel, we have done a mind map that presents the main stakeholders as well as their opposition towards the project proposal. The colour ‘Red’ represents the group that disagrees with the proposal, ‘Green’ represents the group that agrees with it and ‘Yellow’ represents the group who still remains undecided.

The stakeholders that disagree with the project proposal are:

Residents along Heaton Road
Services and facilities, such as Heaton medicals and Rugby/Cricket Pitch (University’s Sports ground)
The Corner House Pub
The People’s Theatre
The churches, e.g. St Gabriel, and the mosque

One reason to this has to do with them losing a number of parking spaces they will be facing. The stakeholder that would benefit from this cycle route project, and hence agree are:

The primary/secondary schools, who look for safe alternatives for their children to get to school, e.g. St Mary’s catholic school

Freeman Hospital
The Tax Office HM Revenue & Customs, who has over 10.000 employees
Cycling groups
Streets for people
The elective counselors important stakeholder, who also have the final say on which scheme goes forward, they support this project. Although, they are also heading towards an election so the project will be presented to the public afterwards.

Aims and objectives

Within our last blog we questioned what the actual form of the project would be, the state of the current situation and how connected it will be in the end. These were all answered by Ali and she helped us to understand the objectives of the project more along with the main aims.

Aims:

Advertising a cycling route for all and not only the existing minority of cyclists today
Convince the resistant stakeholders of the advantages with this project

Objectives to achieve the aims:

Site visit
Read findings report
Find other alternative transportation/parking options
Start with the concepts

Next Steps

Based upon the latest lecture we believe our next step is to focus on user research and how it would be more effective towards the outcome of the project if we have a plan for it beforehand. After speaking with Ali Lamb we have concluded that the website common place and the public platform streets for people will be the best way for us to conduct our research and gain a greater understanding of the public’s views on the subject matter.

Another next step we have considered is participating in a site visit to Heaton Road and beginning to survey some of stakeholders within the area, for example the local church, schools and businesses.

Using this diagram we intend to analyse the stakeholders and see their weighting within the project and see how we should act upon their perspectives on the project.

This week helped us to truly understand the main goal of the project and how we will play a role in the final outcome. Besides the research and site visit we now hope to also develop an understanding of what the best approach would be towards our users and how to get the most beneficial outcome from anyone involved in the project.

SIA Week 2 Log

This is the second log by SIA for the Wingrove project. This week we met with Nigel Todd who is a local resident and City Councillor, as well as Chair of the Greening Wingrove CIC and Secretary of the WEA Green Branch. The WEA Green Branch undertakes activities such as courses and workshops that can help community groups understand sustainability and work better as a community. With his various roles, Nigel gave us a greater insight into the project and helped us understand what aims and goals the WEA Green Branch has for the task.

This week we made a mind map that discusses all the different stakeholders involved in the project and the various links between them.

Mind map:

We began by naming the main stakeholders such as families, local residents, community organisations and WEA Green Branch, then branching off from these, connecting in other local groups. We discovered that the WEA Green Branch would have a link with the Greening Wingrove Community Interest Company and also with investors (who provide grants for events and developments). Volunteers and students from Newcastle University were also interlinked within this group as they would help provide support for many of the events done by WEA and Greening Wingrove. Another connection was found between the WEA and schools in the area, as education centres are a central hub for community connection. We felt having schools as one of the key stakeholders would help disburse information more effectively. Lastly, from schools there comes a link with families, the police, businesses and the council, therefore creating a bridge between the different interest groups within the area.

Stakeholder Groups:

Below are the three main stakeholder groups (the council, local residents and community organisations) we have found for the project:

In order for the project to be a success, each group’s wants and needs must be taken into consideration. Therefore communication with the three will be very important when working on the project.

Indicative Project Aims:

After speaking with Nigel, we found that the primary focus of the project was to develop ideas for community uses of the new buildings on Arthurs Hill Terrace. He mentioned existing ideas included a café, offices and potential for a music studio in part of the building. There was also a plan for rooms in the building to hold children’s activities and youth projects. However, the council and community organisations were open to any new/different ideas. Finding ways of enabling neighbours to get to know each other and feel comfortable about interacting is another of the key project aims. From the talk with Nigel it is clear that finding an appropriate use for the building will be a key stepping stone in creating public togetherness and community cohesion in the area.

There was also discussion of creating a digital platform for locals to interact with each other and finding a platform (such as an app, website, etc.) that would be suitable for everyone.

Next steps:

During the discussion, questions of how we could involve as many people as possible in the project arose, as it is unlikely every user or stakeholder group will agree on the outcome of the renovation idea or digital platform. Nigel himself did hold some reservations towards a larger digital platform, as different groups in the community may exploit it by uploading or sharing inappropriate or negatively opinionated content. At this stage with his hesitance, collecting user research from the local residents would be a natural progression.

Therefore, out initial next steps are to visit the Arthurs Hill Terrace building and the area of Wingrove in general. We are planning on going to the open day at the Arthurs Hill Terrace building on the 16th February where the future use of the building will be discussed. Visiting the area and building will help us collect user research on possible uses of the building and find out which digital platforms locals would be interested in for information distribution and social connections. It will also enable us to get a better insight into the project as a whole, understanding the people and area we are working with.