{"id":1341,"date":"2019-03-05T13:27:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T13:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/digicivics-at-apl\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2019-03-12T13:08:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T13:08:08","slug":"week-5-log-nutc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/digicivics-at-apl\/2019\/03\/05\/week-5-log-nutc\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 5 Log – NUTC"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOG WEEK 5\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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. \u00a0He 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. \u00a0This 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.)<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/newcastlewalkingcyclingroutes.commonplace.is\/comments\/5beefcc45a173b000e05ac22<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ladder of Participation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our Best Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

After an intense group discussion we figured that our best approach should be a more persuasive<\/span>\u00a0one, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Af<\/span>ter 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 : <\/span><\/p>\n