Scenario-Design-Kit for the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory

Project: Scenario-Design-Kit for the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory

This project will create a more powerful meta-design environment (called Scenario-Design-Kit, or SDK) that will enable the participants to dynamically configure the EDC system to fit their specific needs without detailed knowledge of programming. After the SDK is created, the project should test the newly added mechanism with urban planners. Furthermore, the project should test specific EDC environments reconfigured and customized by local urban planners with local citizens to investigate further whether the initial research observations can be confirmed or refined, and whether and how socially creative processes are enabled by EDC.

An early attempt for this effort was the EDC Project Builder (http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~haleden/PitaPB/example2.html), a Java interface to allow scenario designers to specific resources for an EDC session. (There is also some documentation at: http://swiki.cs.colorado.edu/PitaPB-Support/14). However, this was more of an administrative interface to the EDC and didn't really support developing a scenario. A previous DLC course project (http://swiki.cs.colorado.edu/dlc-2006/64) explored the design of a scenario builder, which could be used as a starting point or as background for this project. Figure 1 illustrates a scenario that urban planners would be able to construct with the proposed SDK. Charged with community engagement on a new development, the planners utilize the SDK to pull together numerous geographic information system (GIS) resources (maps, plans, census data, existing buildings, traffic statistics, etc.) related to a proposed project. Selecting from a number of pre-existing tools, models, and simulations, planners assemble an environment for a series of community meetings to allow neighborhood groups to understand and provide feedback on the impacts of the new construction.

The EDC interactive table (pane (a) in Figure 1), used as an action space for citizen participants, will allow them to bring their individual perspectives to the process and collectively interact with the design (for example, sketching proposed elements). Using mash-up approaches, the sketch would be shown in Google Earth as a simple 3D model (pane b) to allow participants to visualize the impacts of the design on neighborhood views and local environments so they can discuss, for example, whether proposed towers would block the view of the mountains from certain neighborhoods. As the process progresses, the crude sketches could be used to locate exemplars in the 3D Warehouse (pane c) or they could be imported to SketchUp to create more complete models to be used in both the action space and the 3D Google-Earth reflection space.

• The focus of this project will be on design mechanisms (Scenario Design Kit) to lower the threshold of participation for creating models and scenarios.
• The project should attempt to amplify situational backtalk of user actions with visualization techniques and investigate whether such technology leads to greater participation of users and the emergence of mutual understanding and socially creative outcomes.
• This project should investigate how boundary objects facilitate mutual understanding and engage all stakeholders in dialog and negotiating of meanings.