Bharat Dave

Out on the town: A socio-physical approach to the design of a context-aware urban guide

As urban environments become increasingly hybridized, mixing the social, built, and digital in interesting ways, designing for computing in the city presents new challenges—how do we understand such hybridization, and then respond to it as designers? Here we synthesize earlier work in human-computer interaction, sociology and architecture in order to deliberately influence the design of digital systems with an understanding of their built and social context of use. We propose, illustrate, and evaluate a multidisciplinary approach combining rapid ethnography, architectural analysis, design sketching, and paper prototyping. Following the approach we are able to provide empirically grounded representations of the socio-physical context of use, in this case people socializing in urban spaces. We then use this understanding to influence the design of a context aware system to be used while out on the town. We believe that the approach is of value more generally, particularly when achieving powerfully situated interactions is the design ambition.

Virtual study abroad and exchange studio

Abstract The digital design studio has an area of application where conventional media are incapable of being used; collaboration in learning, design and dialogue with people in places other than where one lives. This distinctive opportunity has lead the authors to explore a form of design brief and virtual design studio (VDS) format not well addressed in the literature. Instead of sharing the same design brief, students in this alternative format design a project in the other students’ city and do not collaborate on the same design. Collaboration with other students takes the form of teaching each other about the city and culture served by the design. The authors discovered these studios produce a focus on site context that serves our pedagogical objectives – a blend of architectural, landscape architectural and urban design knowledge. Their students use a range of commercial CAD and computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) software common to that used in many VDS experiments reported on in the literature. However, this conventional use of technology is contrasted with a second distinctive characteristic of these studios, the use of custom software tools specifically designed to support synchronous and asynchronous three-dimensional model exchange and linked attribute knowledge. The paper analyzes some of the virtual design studio (VDS) work between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the University of Toronto, and the University of Melbourne. The authors articulate a framework of VDS dimensions that structures their teaching and research. Etudes virtuelles outre-mer et studio d’echange Le studio de design digital comprend des domaines d’application ou les media conventionnelles ne sont pas suffisantes; la collaboration lors de l’apprentissage, et la conception et le dialogue avec des gens vivant ailleurs. Cette opportunite distincte a mene les auteurs a explorer une forme de description du design et de studio de design virtuel qui n’est pas bien addressee dans la literature. Au lieu de se partager la meme description, dans ce format alternatif les etudiants travaillent sur un projet situe dans la ville des autres etudiants, mais ne collaborent pas sur le meme design. La collaboration avec les autres etudiants prend la forme de se renseigner les uns les autres au sujet de la ville et de la culture desservies par le projet. Les auteurs ont decouvert que ces studios produisent un focus sur le contexte du site qui correspond a leurs objectifs pedagogiques – un melange de paysage architectural et de connaissances en planification urbaine. Les etudiants utilisent une gamme d’outils pour le DAO commercial et travail collaboratif aide par ordinateur (TCAO), analogues a ceux utilises lors de plusieurs experiences sur les SDV decrites dans la literature. Cependant, cette utilisation conventionnelle de la technologie contraste avec une deuxieme caracteristique distinctive de ces studios, l’utilisation d’outils informatiques concus pour permettre l’echange synchrone et asynchrone de modeles trois-dimensionnels et la connaissance de leurs attributs. Ce papier examine la collaboration en studio de design virtuel qui a eu lieu entre l’Institut Federal de Technologie Suisse, l’Universite de Toronto, et l’Universite de Melbourne. Les auteurs articulent un cadre de dimensions SDV qui guide leur enseignement et leurs recherches.

The Palenque project: evaluating interaction in an online virtual archaeology site

This case study evaluated the effect on cultural understanding of three different interaction modes, each teamed with a specific slice of the digitally reconstructed environment. The three interaction modes were derived from an initial descriptive theory of cultural learning as instruction, observation and action. A major aim was to ascertain whether task performance was similar to the development of understanding of the cultural context reached by participation in the virtual environment. A hypothesis was that if task performance is equivalent to understanding and engagement, we might be able to evaluate the success of virtual heritage environments (through engagement and education), without having to annoy the user with post-experience questionnaires. However, results suggest interaction in virtual heritage environments is so contextually embedded; subjective post-test questionnaires can still be more reliable than evaluating task performance.

Routine production or symbolic analysis? India and the globalisation of architectural services

Developments in information technology have reduced the need for spatial proximity in the geography of architectural employment: computer-based drafting allows for better standardisation and more efficient production of project information, whilst electronic communication links make the immediate transfer of this information possible across long distances. The ability to compress time and space may be paving the way to the relocation of architectural production facilities from higher-wage to lower-wage regions: numerous examples already exist of firms that have adopted this strategy to reduce their overheads. Thus far, discussion of the viability and desirability of this emerging trend has been hampered by its close focus on the type of work carried out, and a consequently narrow view of its costs and benefits. Remote drafting is seen as a cheap form of professional north-south exploitation in architecture’s intellectual circles that should be ignored if not deplored. By stressing the connection between the task and the culture in which it is developed, this paper seeks to produce a broader, alternative perspective, which identifies the several limitations of current off-shore collaborations but also points out possible future strengths, development strategies, and necessary environmental conditions. The Indian context provides an opportunity to highlight analogies and differences between the recent growth of the export-oriented IT industry and the construction of a colonial professional practice at the turn of the twentieth century. If properly acknowledged by the domestic profession and considered by policy-makers, the development of a framework for distant architectural collaborations could be used not only to support the local design sector and bring the contested components of its post-colonial tradition in sharper focus and possibly closer together, but also to respond to the many challenges posed by the country’s economic policies, growth, and infrastructural conditions.

Silver towns and smart technologies

The rapidly increasing aging population combined with a lack of aged care facilities in Korea has led to the recent development of silver towns. They comprise high-rise apartment units that are conceived, designed and marketed as smart living environments for the elderly. This paper offers a preliminary analysis from our research on how silver towns integrated with smart technologies are received from the perspectives of elderly residents.

DDARepository: an associative, dynamic and incremental repository of design diagrams

This paper describes implementation of an online prototype that, on the one hand, offers interactive diagramming support to externalize thinking about design compositions and, on the other hand, acts also as an incremental repository of diagrams that can be dynamically interrogated to find other proximate compositional thinking and ideas related to a particular position. The prototype helps both notate design thinking and draw out associations between separately notated design compositions.

Smart silver towns: prospects and challenges

An increasingly aging population, information technology developments and shift to high-rise residential neighborhoods combined with lack of aged facilities have led recently to a specific type of residential development in Korea. They appear in the form of silver towns integrated with smart technologies and targeted specifically at the aging population. The silver towns are increasingly being conceived, designed and marketed as smart living environments for the elderly. This paper analyses selected silver towns to obtain insights from the elderly perspective about these developments and understand design challenges for future silver towns and smart technologies.

Rules of Engagement: Testing the Attributes of Distant Outsourcing Marriages

Abstract In the space of a few years, the provision of architectural services that rely on the digital outsourcing of documentation responsibilities to other firms—often located offshore in areas of the world with lower labour costs—has come to the forefront of the restructuring debate of the architectural sector. Today, the discussion about digital outsourcing cannot be reduced to the simple exploitation of rent differentials between distinct socio-economic and professional worlds. It must also reflect and examine the objective extension of the transactional market of architectural practices, where firms can reorganize their production strategically across a vast territory to remain sustainable or competitive. Even though the distant collaborations that underlie this arrangement are drawing more public attention than in the past, it is still difficult for nonanecdotal evaluations to take place, since the parameters currently employed in the analysis of this phenomenon have not yet been sufficiently developed theoretically. As a result, it is arduous for industrial scholars, or for those firms that have not directly taken part in such ventures, to assess the perils and possibilities of this emerging mode of service delivery in a balanced way. Building on work carried out for a research programme sponsored by the Australian Research Council, this article establishes a set of criteria and protocols to gauge, more systematically, the potential and viability of distant alliances. By adopting such criteria, it becomes clear that the evaluation of digital collaborations cannot be done in the abstract or solely through the use of office spreadsheets. It requires a thorough consideration of the socio-technical characteristics of the firms involved, and an in-depth analysis of their cultural routines.

Labyrinthine Digital Histories

Interactive and media-rich digital representations are being increasingly used to offer passages through time and space, a role that was traditionally supported by travels and travelogues, maps, sketches, books and oral histories. In the last two decades, a number of projects have been implemented using digital media with the aim of recording past and extant artefacts and environments. However, the future of such digital past remains as fragile as the memories and moments it tries to capture. There is a need to go beyond creating introverted and closed historical reconstruction projects. This paper surveys significant issues and describes our ongoing work in developing an interpretive, extensible and referential framework toward virtual reconstruction projects.

Teamwork constructs in architectural design

Architectural design is fundamentally collaborative in nature due to the large number and diversity of participants that are involved in most design projects. Using architectural design as the domain of interest, the paper motivates the need for articulating concepts at an appropriate degree of detail for developing future CSCW systems. The paper draws upon the studies of the architectural practice and empirical observations of students to propose a set of constructs that characterize design teams. These constructs, termed PRATOE, include projects, roles, actions, tools, outcomes and work environments.