The importance of citizen participation in urban planning has increased in the past decades. In recent years the practice of co-creation has become a popular tool to structure this participatory process. Co-creation is a mainly transactional process, a transaction of perspectives and opinions that together create an outcome, in which people have their assigned roles. To move away from this transactional way of participation, this study explores the experiential side of participation in urban planning. Experiential with the aim to not oppose perspectives but create a better understanding between them through the possibility of experiencing other perspectives. Through the design of the “What’s going Ön?” experience we explore how Virtual Reality(VR) can play a role in the participation of citizens in the urban planning process of the Ön island in Umeå, Sweden. We present the designed experience and the qualities that play a role in the use of using VR as a tool for participation in Urban Planning.

For more information about What's going Ön? you can watch the video or read the pictorial.

Published at the 2021 ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction - TEI '21

Featured on: Dutch Design Week 2020 - Drivers of Change exhibtion

Articles: Innovation Origins (Dutch)

Coaches: dr. ir. P.D. Lévy & dr. ir. Jeroen Peeters

Client: RISE & Umeå Kommun

As data is becoming increasingly important for decision making in municipalities, we ask ourselves what this data actually means. With BIAS, we explore the value of subjectivity in the act of data representation and data sharing, to facilitate informed debate and constructive discussions. Can one’s subjectivity (values, background and role in society) be of value when interpreting data? Our tool allows for interpretation of sets of data through being able to model one’s own perspective regarding the relationships of these data points. As an addition to Telos’ statistical data reports, BIAS uncovers hidden values which facilitates constructive debate.

For more information about the BIAS you can watch the video or read the report.

Coaches: dr. ir. P.D. Lévy & dr. J.P. Djajadiningrat

Client: Telos & Municipality of Helmond

The Project of facilitating transformative practices (TP) has been about a systemic approach to the TP community as a source information. This approach led to the identification of multiple issues on 3 levels.

With the introduction of the design concepts, The Transformative Matchmaker and The Transformative Mapping, possible solution to the issues on all three levels were introduced.

The Transformative Matchmaker is a chatbot assistant that facilitates the search for relevant information enclosed within the community, such as people of interest, papers and tools. The chatbot is also a guide for the community members with updating their projects on the TP platform.

The Transformative Mapping is an installation that connects the physical and the digital, with the goal to have community members physically create their digital platform profiles.

For more information about the concepts you can watch the video or read my bachelor graduation report.

Coaches: J.A. Alves Lino & Prof. dr. ir. C.C.M. Hummels

The increase of mobile phone usage over the last decade has a big impact on the way people interact with each other. On the one hand there is a rise of spontaneous communication but on the other hand this rise has a negative influence on the quality of face-to-face interaction.

This research looks at the influence of peripheral interaction on the awareness of mobile phone use. For this study a lamp was designed and integrated into multiple family homes. Litt, the lamp, changes color whenever the participants switch on the screen of their mobile phone at home.

After the field test of two weeks group interviews about the experience were held together with a short survey on demographics and mobile phone use. The qualitative data from the interviews was analyzed and clustered.

For more information about Litt you can watch the video or read the paper to get an insight in our research!

Coach: dr. ir. S. bakker
In collaboration with D. van Driel & J. Moens