Swarms In Urban Villages: New media design to augment social networks of residents in inner city developments

Overview

Project status: In progress

Swarms in Urban Villages is a three-year research project conducted to advance knowledge of how residents in urban environments can be assisted in their social communication and interaction through the use of new media that bridge the physical and digital city. The focus is on relationships between constellations of technologies including mobile devices, social networking sites, sensors and digital displays in urban environments.

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Grantor
Australian Research Council, Linkage grant LP0776341
Amount

Research leader
Research team
QUT
Organisational unit
Lead unit Creative Industries Faculty
Start date
1st January 2008
End date
1st January 2010
Research area
Digital media, communication and culture
 

Details

Developers and governments around the world are struggling to achieve socially sustainable neighbourhood communities in master-planned urban developments.

Research into the network characteristics of community in the Kelvin Grove Urban Village, Brisbane, will inform the design of proof of concepts of viable new media and ICT applications: peer-to-peer publishing tools, social networking systems and locative mobile media. The new applications will be trialled, and the impact of their use on enhancing the quality of community life in the Urban Village will be assessed.

The project will deliver transferable technologies and knowledge to strengthen Australia's social fabric.

Phase one: The Pilot Study

The initial phase of the research was a pilot study of 15 participants, aged between 19- 65 living in the inner city. It was hoped that that the pilot study would provide insights in to the nuances and complexities of a range of residential needs and that specific user needs and potential design implications might emerge.

Phase two: Urban Personas and Sci Fi Scenarios

Phase two of the research applied the insights from the pilot study to the development of a suite of urban personas representing a cross section of users. The personas then informed the basis of design specific use scenarios (Carroll, 2002). The science fiction genre was then used to augment the scenarios and tell the story of imagined future interactions.

Phase three: Prototyping

Designing for non-users Exploring the user needs of the participants in the study through the scenarios showed us that a compelling perspective is that of those in opposition to the introduction of urban screens. Therefore, our prototype for an urban screen was not aimed specifically at those willing to embrace the technology. Rather, it was aimed at potential non-users who wanted to avoid digital screens that reminded them they that were surrounded by other people. This approach is in keeping with our previous work (Satchell & Dourish., 2009) where we noted that that while HCI has been arguing for the importance of paying attention to users, it has rather neglected non-user.

In order to meet the needs of both users and non-users, the design prototype featured an urban screen of a cityscape that appears to have a primarily aesthetic appearance. This reduces its impact on those who are opposed to its presence. However, the display is embedded with rich data feedback that has meaning to those that wish to engage with it. The data takes the form of feedback loops that represent the changing state of the local environment. The color of the sky represents air quality, the temperature is represented by the sun, and UV levels, by the clouds. Users can download data from the screen to their mobile phones via Bluetooth. A sense of being there in real time is evoked with the nighttime sky fading to black and lights appearing in the buildings.

Publications and output

Satchell, C., Foth, M., Hearn, G., & Schroeter, R. (2008, Dec 8-12). Suburban Nostalgia: The Community Building Potential of Urban Screens. In F. Vetere, C. Graham & C. Satchell (Eds.), Proceedings OZCHI 2008 (pp. 243-246). Cairns, QLD: James Cook University.

Satchell, C., Foth, M., Hearn, G., & Schroeter, R. (2008, Oct 3-5). New Media Design to Augment Social Networks of City Residents. Poster presented at the Urban Screens conference, Melbourne, VIC.

Foth, M. (2006, Jun 12-14). Research to Inform the Design of Social Technology for Master-Planned Communities. In J. Ljungberg & M. Andersson (Eds.), Proceedings 14th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Goteborg, Sweden.