Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - U_CODE (Urban Collective Design Environment: A new tool for enabling expert planners to co-create and communicate with citizens in urban design)

Teaser

Whereas many tools for e-participation have been developed to involve citizens and large stakeholder groups, there are no digital instruments which enable creative participation of the citizenship on a massive scale. The new co-design environment U_CODE enables communication...

Summary

Whereas many tools for e-participation have been developed to involve citizens and large stakeholder groups, there are no digital instruments which enable creative participation of the citizenship on a massive scale. The new co-design environment U_CODE enables communication and collaboration between large numbers of citizens and professional experts. U_CODE will assess design proposals on a semantic and emotional level, in order to devise early detection of resistance against projects, and to prevent the build-up of negative public sentiment. U_CODE will enable professional creatives to utilise the public´s creativity, to recognise public opinions and sentiments, and to derive design intelligence from them. The design and decision making process will be informed and transformed by impulses of \'citizen experts\' as a driving force.

Work performed

Within the first period, substantial research and development work as well as first communication and dissemination activities have been carried out. Research activities covered the analysis of sample cases in Germany, France and the Netherlands, the assessment of state-of-the-art tools and processes, as well as extensive literature reviews. Thereupon new co-creative workflows have been designed, leading towards a generic process model for U_CODE. The model contains functional modules such
as co-briefing (collaborative information-collection), co-design (citizen-experts participatory design), and sentiment analysis (monitoring moods and emotions of the crowd). Starting from this workflow and component description, specific use-cases and functionalities were derived in the last months. For external communication and dissemination, a public project website (http://www.u-code.eu/) was published and an explanatory video clip created. The consortium has published international articles and papers, and carried out several expert and user workshops.

Within the second period, efforts were focused on the development and testing of the tools related to the U_CODE process. The description of functional specifications have been further refined, whereby technical specifications regarding the connection to, as well as the data exchange with and within the U_CODE platform have been defined. Tools for co-designing in focus groups (VR and touch table applications) have been pushed to technical development and went through first testing with professionals and citizens. Also first steps in the development of tools for Sentiment Analysis and for online co-design (“Playground”) have been carried out to enable participation on a massive scale. Questions regarding data exchange across all processes and tools have resulted in comprehensive workflows mirroring the U_CODE process.

Regarding methodology, the U_CODE process was tested with real-world participants and data under lab conditions using dummy tools. Thereby the whole process of planning a quarter in Hamburg was simulated, starting from project initiation, collection of massive information, co-designing, ranking/ voting of contributions, towards professional design work and final decision/ approval processes. Further research had been carried out on the methodological principles of co-design and participation, eventually resulting in a catalogue of over 40 criteria on good facilitation for co-design, plus a database on participation tools and methods.

Final results

Part of the development of the generic process model, the U_CODE partnership has created a tool for visualising complex communication and co-design processes be-tween experts and non-experts. This allows a flexibility in the workflow design in accordance with stakeholders, situation, and project typology. Within this process model the U_CODE partnership integrated sentiment analysis in order to represent possible interaction on a small and massive scale. There are yet no planning tools available that systematically include public voice and sentiment as design information. The hitherto schemed functional designs and design workflows within the U_CODE tool will enable in the middle run the collection and analysis of such information in an easy and understandable way, both for professional and nonprofessional designers. This will change the way how designs are evolved and debated. All cities carrying out larger design and development projects face the challenge to base / mirror their planning decisions with public opinion. This will be possible with the co-design method of U_CODE enhanced with sentimental analysis and serious gaming approaches.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.u-code.eu/.