Virtual Collaborative Design Environment: Information structure and interfaces

The failure to identify design issues in early phases of construction projects has been identified as a significant cause of costly rework, as these issues can impact the building occupants’ abilities to efficiently perform their daily work tasks. Therefore, it is crucial to consider their feedback when design reviewing. To date, efforts have been made to involve building occupants via a variety of user-interfaces that provide different understandings of the project. One such example is Virtual Reality (VR), which increases building occupants’ spatial understanding. Another, is use of design guidelines, intended to support both end-users such as building occupants and also the design team in basing their decision-making on best-practice and ensuring compliance with design requirements. When used together, these different user-interfaces can complement each other by enabling, for instance, visualization of the furniture layout depicted in design guideline documents. However, few studies have identified what is required of a design tool capable of supporting both visualization of design and design-compliance via different user-interfaces. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to advance the understanding of end-users’ involvement in virtual collaborative environments in the building design process. Accordingly, Design Science Research was applied with a two-fold purpose. First, to identify different stakeholders’ challenges that are faced in the design process and specifically how building occupants’ daily work tasks are considered in the design process. Secondly, the research methods such as workshops, semi-structured interviews and documentation analysis helped identify the requirements of a design tool that would enable this knowledge to be transferred and accessible at a cross-project level. The results show that the information structure and user-interface of design guidelines determine to a large degree how effectively compliance with requirements can be validated. An example is the absence of user-interfaces in design guidelines which prevents building occupants from gaining sufficient spatial understanding. This lack of spatial understanding results in them to being reliant on other project members, such as architects and facility planners, for providing input on the design. Moreover, the results show how cross-project knowledge is difficult to facilitate due to how design guidelines have not been created in relation to today’s digital design process. Therefore, this thesis bridges the concepts of integrating design guidelines and VR in the same design tool

WP1: Analysing multilevel water and biodiversity governance in their context. Report

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Gender in Water and Sanitation

The report highlights the experiences of mainstreaming gender at various levels in the water and sanitation sector. It begins with a discussion on gender responses to policy and its requirement for analysis and clear policy objectives to guide operations. The report touches on experiences of mainstreaming gender within sector operations, beginning with the importance of mainstreaming in the workplace, and describes how gender can be addressed within service delivery in urban water, in sanitation, in small towns and rural water operations. The report also addresses gender responses to monitoring and evaluation processes, examines responses to gender issues within accountability and voice initiatives, assesses gender responses within hygiene and behavior change programs, and examines the linkages between water, sanitation and HIV/AIDS

Measuring Developer Experience of a Digital Platform

Smart city and smart transportation are concepts that have emerged as an enabling solution which facilitates the grassroots social innovations to mitigate the problems generated by rapid urbanization and population growth. The digital service platform has fostered a new paradigm of transportation by involving all key players to create a novel environment. It is concerned developer are also the user of the platform as they are using the system development tools and methods for further development, that is why developer experience over the platform plays a vital role. Delightful developer experience not only improving the platform performance but also invokes to introduce new innovations. In this research we off to measure developer experience and answering the research questions “how to measure developer experience on top of the digital service platform” and “how to analyse the developer experience”. In the state of measuring developer experience, an application has been developed over the digital service platform and a measurement procedure has been introduced by modifying System Usability Scale (SUS) to more suit the context of the developer. The SUS has been borrowed from UX measurement tools as developers are the user of system, system development tools and methods as well as SUS is a widely accepted tool by the usability researchers for measuring usability. The result of the proposed method showed superior experience from the developer’s perspective to develop the application over the living lab bus platform. The result is almost same when it is compared with another method, but it is arguable as it showed small discrepancy. Furthermore, it can be said that, this research provides a straight forward way to measure developer experience on a digital service platform. The answer of the research questions provides a detail guideline of the measurement process and analysing criteria of developer experience. Moreover, it comes out with few recommendations that can be helpful for the developers of the platform to improve the platform in future, so that it could ensure the delightful experience for the developers

Interactive guidelines:Public communication of data-based research in cities

Trilles, S., Granell, C., Degbelo, A., & Bhattacharya, D. (2020). Interactive guidelines: Public communication of data-based research in cities. PLoS ONE, 15(1), [e0228008]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228008Scientific research results are traditionally published as articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings or journals. These articles often use technical jargon, which precludes the general public from consuming the results achieved. New ways to communicate scientific results are thus necessary to transfer scientific insights to non-experts, and this work proposes the concept of interactive guidelines to fill this gap. A web tool, called Interactive Guidelines Tool, was developed as a proof-of-concept for the idea. It was used in the context of the GEO-C project to communicate research outputs in smart cities scenarios to the public. A comparative analysis between the Interactive Guidelines Tool and related tools helps to highlight the progress it enables beyond the current state of the art. Interactive Guidelines Tool is available as an open-source tool and can be customised/extended by any interested researcher, in the process of making scientific knowledge and insights more accessible and understandable to a broader public.publishersversionpublishe

Bioreceptive interfaces for biophilic urban resilience

The emerging field of Biodesign sees living organisms as embedded in the design process to create bio-generated materials and artefacts. To support the growth and maintenance of these organisms, designers can adopt a Bioreceptive Design (BD) approach, recently defined as a design approach occurring every time materials or artefacts are intentionally designed to be colonized by life forms. Through this approach, the inert counterpart undergoes specific studies to reach the best bioreceptive potential for the designated life form, also considering the environment in which the artifact will be placed. In urban environments, BD examples tackle vegetation to create greener spaces and provide phytoremediation for better air quality and biodiversity in the built environment, in the wider view of nature-based solutions and climatic transitions of cities. This study addresses the possibility of developing bioreceptive interfaces for mosses and lichens to respond to biophilic and regenerative sustainability needs in urban contexts. These organisms have contributed as pioneers, during the evolution of life on our Planet, in the formation and regulation of soil and atmosphere; moreover, they are currently used in biomonitoring actions, also contributing to the environmental awareness of the built environment. The paper proposes BD as a design approach of mutual interest, aiming at responding to the host needs and preferable environmental conditions, serving multiple species that act as co-authors of an open-ended design, increasing urban biodiversity, and providing resilient, restorative, and regenerative environments. In particular, we present some of the results of an interdisciplinary research through design, born from the collaboration between design and biology, aiming both to bring sustainable and innovative solutions for the Biodesign and architecture sectors, but also to positively affect biological activities of biomonitoring and citizen awareness. From the design perspective, BD is applied for the selection of those material features that match the needs of the selected organism (e.g., porosity, color). Moreover, the use of Computational Design has played a crucial role in designing and prototyping bioinspired, organic shapes and textures. From a biological perspective, the research compares different methodologies for the bio-colonization of artefacts to obtain the best results for the timing and survival of the organisms. The prototypes were therefore exposed open-air with no protection or superficial treatments in a highly colonized area (from mosses and lichens), favoring the attachment of spores and propagules on the surfaces. On the other hand, some prototypes were used to test the transplant of the organisms as an alternative and faster possibility, also suitable for interior design. This study points out how BD can be applicable when designing for the living, making clear the designer’s possibilities for adopting this approach: ranging from material design to biomimicry, designing for not-only-human users, considering the host’s needs and preferable growth conditions, adopting a multispecies design approach while suggesting new relationships among biotic and abiotic agents. The paper highlights how BD can provide sustainable, low-maintenance, and regenerative nature-based solutions to foster resilient urban environments