DESCRIPTION
Vision3 is a community engagement tool helping communities bring to life their vision of the future. Connecting communities to the natural and cultural heritage of their area, it aims to help individuals develop informed opinions on future developments, and a way to be heard.
DESIGN BRIEF
Our task was to address a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of our choice.
SDG 11.4 - Protect the Worlds Natural and Cultural Heritage
Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
We approached this SDG with the belief that positive solutions come by enabling those most impacted with the knowledge and tools needed to make a difference. As urban development is largely facilitated by government and private developers, we wanted to focus our design on empowering individuals within the community.
RESEARCH
Methods
Key Insights
Sense of belonging
Participants who felt a greater sense of belonging within their community were more likely to get involved in the community focused activities.
Awareness and Opportunity
Amongst participants who expressed an interest in commmunity involvement; the main barriers preventing them from doing so were a lack of awarness of opporunities and time constraints due to personal responsibilities.
Communities and Individuals Value Nature
Individuals rely on green spaces and close connection with nature to promote better wellbeing.
From this data, serveral user personas were developed in order to guide the next stage of ideation and concept developement. From this we developed our problem statement to be:
How might we foster a sense of belonging within urban communities - encouraging individuals to participate in the management and maintenance of natural and cultural heritage?
IDEA GENERATION
As a team, 3 different concept ideas were developed from storyboards to lo-fi prototypes. Each prototype was then user tested.
Prootype - Concept 3
Prototype - Concept 1
User Test - Concept 1
A decision matrix allowed us to compare each concept and decide what would continue to develop. Concept 2 Enviroglimpse best addressed our problem statement.
The previous user tests convinced us that we needed to further the Enviroglimpse concept to better meet our refined design criteria. Specifically, the design must:
1) Be Egaging - use gamification and iterativity should make community participation fun and interesting. 3) Raise awareness - through learning about their community participants should develop a greater sense of belonging. 2) Give agency - participants should feel inspired and be given the opportunity to express their voice.
Through a brainstorming session we formed the begginings of Vision3000 as a museum installation, which through user generated data would generate an visual image representitive of a communities vision. Through further iteration, this would evolve into the community engagement tool that it is now.
PROTOTYPING AND TESTING
To ensure we received feedback that reflected the full intended experience we divided the concept into three key sections; the timeline, user created enviroments, and spatial experience.
Timeline:
The timeline educates users on the historical and cultural context of their community through an interactive visualisation depiciting changes in the enviroment over time. At various points along the timeline users can click on points of interest to learn take a deeper dive into their historical significance. The intention is that by deepening peoples connection to place they will develop a greater sense of belonging within their community.
Lo-fi Prototype
Mid-fi Prototype
Hi-fi Prototype
User Created Enviroments:
Following the timeline, users are encouraged to design their own space on a preposed site developement by dragging and dropping objects into the space. They are then able to upload their design onto a public library that displays all other user made designs. Amongst participants this may evoke a sense of unity; for researchers this is a valuable set of data on a community they are creating for.
Lo-fi Prototype
Mid-fi Prototype
Hi-fi Prototype
Spatial Experience:
Because this is an installation it was inportant to test the overall experience to show an accurate depiction of the user experience journey.
Lo-fi
Hi-fi
FUTURE WORK
Whilst happy with our end result we were able to indentify several areas for improvement should the project undergo further developement. The following changes and improvements would be made:
- Different framework for optimisation and functionality
- Bug fixes
- A more robust social media implementation
- Creation of 3D assets
- Analytic data in the drag and drop section. Objects dragged in have enviromental an social effects making the user think about their choices more.
- Audio implemenetation in the timeline
- Timeline zoom in and slider
- Involving developers and governments
