Monthly Archive for October, 2003

My idea is that of a learning system to explore the city using a mobile recording different parameters.
In my vision, the user can walk into the city with a group of friend. All of them have a mobile with special functions which allows them to track their position and defines landmarks that is reported in the virtual map of the city. In addition, they can define sections of the map just joining the landmarks of the map. I hope to stimulate, through this system, the comprehension of the city and the ability to “read” the map and build upon existing structures and sites.
For this reason I think that the advices of a professional urban planner can have a great value on the definition of the project. the following are some of the questions I need to answer in order to proceed into next step of development:
1. What are the parameters a urban planner have to consider while planning the city?
2. What kind of information you can gather while walking into the physical city you cannot get from the map (*important*)?
3. What are the key idea a urban planning student has to grasp in order to achieve the goal of the course?
4. What is the elaboration a urban planner does on the layout of the city in order to test hypothesis?
5. What is the common process for proposing a city expansion or redesign that a urban planner does to formulate hypothesis and to test them before formulating the final conclusions?

Kevin Lynch
L’image de la CitÈ

p.4
… il semble aujurd’hui improbable que le fait de truver son chemin soit du ‡ un quelconque “intinct” magique. Il s’agit plutot d’une utilisasion et d’une organisasion logique des indicasions sensorielles fournies par l’environment exteÈrieur. Cette organisasion est fondamentale pour l’efficacitÈ et la survivance meme de toute vie sans entraves.

Meeting with Pierre:

There are three reasons for justify the mobility:
1. Physical experience while walking into the city which brings an added experience to the learning.
2. Finding special information on the site which cannot be simulated or incorporated in by any means. these information are not present on the maps of the city because too specialise to be part of a previous study.
3. Reporting virtual information from the virtual world into the physical world. For example, exploring the lost city is just one of these examples because it allows to follow a street that doesn’t exist any more with the physical experience of bumping into buildings.

One of the possible solutions is to use the specific information recorded from the physical position to solve something in the virtual and the obtained outcome to be the pointer to another physical position (next move).

The problem of our epoch is the problem of the house
— Le Corbusier (1919)

DreamHaus is a third person adventure / design game. DreamHaus uses architecture as an entry point for learning AP-level mathematics, engineering, and physics material. Players examine virtual architectural sites (such as the Tokyo Olympic Stadium), solve physics and engineering-based puzzles, and complete architectural design challenges using the game’s design tools. Players may also participate in a web-based community surrounding the game, submitting their designs, viewing others’ work, or offering critique on designs.

DreamHaus draws on the artistic allure of architecture and romantic history to make Engineering and Physics accessible to a diverse audience of players. Players explore fantastic virtual buildings, solve thought-provoking Physics and Engineering puzzles, manipulate virtual Engineering Systems, share their work in virtual communities. These game practices have proven to be successful with non-gamers in games such as Myst, SimCity, and The Sims. DreamHaus capitalizes on games’ ability to represent buildings as systems, and allows players to learn through manipulating these systems. DreamHaus is grounded in David Perkins’ Teaching for Understanding a pedagogical framework that is designed to foster deep, intuitive understandings of phenomena by providin learners multiple entry paths into understanding and performance-based modes of expression.

DreamHaus

if you wanted to design a city, what rules would you make?

The effort to maximise one’s wealth through personal profits and land speculation creates all sorts of problems in the modern city, and that is difficult to administer such a city.

Should decisions affecting all the players be made by one of them? Where to place major buildings, where to locate city services, and what kind of services to provide should be decided by everyone.

MapTribe is moving towards the direction of tool for supporting urban planning. During the past few weeks we sketched possible applications for this technology:
1. place a landmark_ define zones, track the geometry of a place.
2. contextual alerts_ social navigation.
3. additional information_ Geographical Information System (GIS) -> Local Observation: data you can observe directly and that you cannot find elsewhere.
4. Mix physical and conceptual experience: physical experience is an important added value to the cognitive experience.
5. Movement tracking.

An interesting idea for the scenario is to ask students to follow a street that doesn’t exist any more. They can follow the street using the historical map on their mobile and they can leave landmarks in the new map of the place for comparing the the maps but also for understanding physically how the landscape was modified during the years.

Another interesting activity is related to the making students stepping back from the map and encouraging them to take their perspective:

For this purpose we envisioned an activity of taking pictures of the facade of buildings and relate these information to the gps position and send back to the server for building an interactive map of the city.

I realised that a game is the perfect script/activity to support both exploration/collaboration and learning practice. So, the proposal needs to be rewritten trying to:
1. building a learning/game scenario
2. merge the game design with the learning design
3. give an idea of possible feature/interaction on the map
4. synthesise the key ideas of the scenario

Today I started reading the book by Wilson Forrest titled: City Planning: the games for human settlement.
This book target precisely the idea of learning the urban planning through games on tridimensional game boards.

I need to restructure the proposal following the new idea: ClickTribes / MapTribes_

1. Restructure the scenario placing a picture + a map of Lausanne. for the interaction design.

2. Rationale: (1) Mobile Learning in Urban planning; (2) territories for Urban Tribes.
-> answer the question: Why would you pay for this project?

3. Research framework
. Questions
. Method
. Similar work
. Technology
. Planning and Budget
. CRAFT

4. Tools to understand the city / to decompose the map
5. Differencies with SimCity: - there is no dynamic aspect

6. possible application: 1- bridge to SimCity
2 – to do something else