Yehuda E. Kalay

Enablers and barriers of the multi-user virtual environment for exploratory creativity in architectural design collaboration

Abstract Pioneering psychology and co-design research has highlighted the potential that multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) may help architects’ exploratory creativity that is a recursive search to discover an optimal match of novel and appropriate solutions. However, it has been not reported hitherto in what ways MUVE helps or obstructs architects’ exploratory creativity in individual and collaborative modes of collaboration. To investigate this issue, we compared MUVE and sketching media in face-to-face and remote collaboration modes, involving 22 pairs of architecture major students. Based on interview and video-observation, we discovered that (1) in MUVE, anthropomorphic avatars, which other media do not have, enabled individual and collaborative explorations to discover unexpected affordances of new solutions, with evaluation on physical properties and layouts of solutions. In addition, (2) co-presence with collaborator’s avatars enabled inspiration on new ways of problem-solving and puzzle-making through shared design processes and events, with co-evaluation on social aspects of design solutions. (3) Co-presence in a shared environment also allowed mutual co-exploration that promotes emerging creative solutions, with co-modification on design errors. As barriers of MUVE, (4) avatar’s immersion caused inconvenient perception to explore large-scaled environments and track collaborators’ different experiences, but the barriers were not reported in remote collaboration.

A study of human behavior simulation in architectural design for healthcare facilities

INTRODUCTION Current tools and methods in architectural design do not allow predicting and evaluating how people will use designed environments before their actual realization. OBJECTIVE To investigate how computational simulation can help in evaluating design proposals as far as their use by people is concerned. METHODS Simulation of a medicine distribution procedure in a general hospital facility, while accounting for serendipitous social interactions made possible by the presence of different users in the same space, at the same time. DISCUSSION The simulation shows how use patterns are influenced by the social and physical context in which actors are situated, and demonstrates the significance of the proposed method of evaluating hospital designs before construction. The system allows simulating use patterns with different degrees of complexity, and enables architects to ask new types of questions related to the interactions between people and physical settings.

Impacts of New Media on Scholarly Publishing

This article summarizes a few key results of a workshop, held in the University of California Berkeley in June 2006, organized by the Center for New Media and supported by Elsevier, the leading publisher of scholarly journals. The workshop focused on the following questions: How will scientific publishing be affected by New Media? How will the new means of production, dissemination, and consumption of information impact scientific publishing? How will they affect the social, cultural, legal, and economic modalities of its practice? How will they affect the practitioners and the institutions that rely on it? How will they affect society at large? The article discusses the results of the workshop in terms of how New Media affect personal information behavior, research group behavior, and issues affecting scholarly communication generally.

Architectural design creativity in Multi-User Virtual Environment: A comparative analysis between remote collaboration media:

Previous studies have argued that a Multi-User Virtual Environment has the potential to foster creative collaboration, but empirical studies that examine this claim are rare. With a focus on architectural design, this study has investigated the affordance of Multi-User Virtual Environment for the production of novel and appropriate solutions in remote collaborative environments. Forty-four participants produced design solutions using Multi-User Virtual Environment and online sketching in remote collaboration. Four expert-judges assessed the novelty and appropriateness of the collaborative results, following the Consensual Assessment Technique. The results analyzed by paired samples T-test indicated that in remote collaboration, Multi-User Virtual Environment’s scores for both novelty and appropriateness were partially higher than those of online sketching. In remote collaboration, the immersion by avatars and co-presence with others in Multi-User Virtual Environment were perhaps more effective due to explicit communication cues used to share spatial information and collaborative procedure, compared to the two-dimensional, static representation of online sketching.

How Smart is the Smart City? Assessing the Impact of ICT on Cities

The notion of “smart cities” has gained much popularity over the past few years, fueled by emerging needs and opportunities, and accompanied by considerable political and commercial hype. But in fact, throughout their long history cities have always strived to become “smarter”, in order to mitigate existential challenges such as defending their citizens, providing them with water, disposing of waste, facilitating access, and more. They did so by making use of available (often new) technologies, such as new fortification methods, water supply, sewers, and transportation systems. The reciprocal relationship between cities and technology has, in turn, shaped urban form, function and use patterns. Cities, in the twenty-first century, are confronted by unprecedented social, economic and environmental challenges. In response, they are attempting to enlist Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) —the current “new” technology —as one of the leading strategies to mitigate urban problems, increase efficiency, reduce costs and enhance the quality of city life. It is the use of this particular technology which is viewed as making cities “smart.” History teaches us that every such new technology, while advantageous in some ways, also has unforeseen side-and after-effects. Due to the highly ubiquitous and distributed nature of ICT, it affects individuals directly and in highly personalized ways in terms of spatial use patterns, consumption habits, and social interactions. The large number of variables and interactions affected by ICT makes it difficult to predict its explicit and implicit effects on the spatial and social use patterns of people in cities. What will be the effects, side- and after-effects of integrating ICT in cities, as it becomes ubiquitous and more accessible to both city governments and citizens? How will it transform people’s interactions and behavioral patterns? How will it affect the form, function and —especially —the use of cities? In short —what will be ICT’s impact on cities, and how can we assess it? Current tools used by city planners fail to account for these new types of interactions and transformative behavioral patterns. New tools, capable of forecasting dynamically and at high resolution the behavior of many individual people in a city, are needed. This paper aims to provide a framework to assess the impact of ICT on the form and function of cities, through its effect on people’s spatial behavior patterns.

The Effects of Online Multiuser Virtual Environments on Creative Motivation in Collaborative Design Studios

Online Multiuser Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are online, immersive 3D environments based on anthropomorphic avatars and synchronous multiuser access. We investigated the effects of MUVEs on students’ creative motivation in collaborative design studios. Based on qualitative analyses of two long-term and authentic collaborative architecture design studios in Second Life, a commercial MUVE platform, we found that the avatars’ immersive experiences in the MUVEs, the presence of classmates’ avatars, and co-presence with them allowed the students to evaluate the usefulness of the proposed buildings and organization of exhibition spaces. In addition, we found that the shared objects in the MUVEs encouraged the production of unexpected and new solutions. However, in the MUVEs, if any buildings were not in the immersive perception of the avatars, with respect to the body and views, students struggled to develop solutions.