Design Research Society Student Research Bursaries Report
Design Research Society Student Research Bursaries Report This is a PhD research to establish a digital computational framework to involve the people into the housing design process. It is not simply to involve individual families to collaborate with the architects but also between each family to establish connections between them which could bring about community forming even during pre‐occupancy of the residential building. As the context is housing, one of the basic needs of the people, there are self‐interests involved which means competitions and conflict of interests will exist, making the design collaboration process much more complex. In addition, current systems which are available for housing design collaboration are still not at a level which can have easy and flexible direct manipulation of the design by the people. In response, gamification and some basic game logics and game theories are adopted as a methodology. By studying game designs, this research aims to understand how they are developed to engage the players in generating varied outcomes easily. And especially how, in multi‐player platforms, to facilitate not just competitions among players but bringing about collaboration at the same time.
Figure 1. Comparisons between a game design framework and the proposed system that adopted gamification
ModRule, a system was developed to test out the research methodology, and it was selected to present a workshop in the 34th Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe). The theme for 2016 was “Complexity & Simplicity” which fits the idea of this research very well. The DRS research bursary was therefore used for the travel expenses to the University of Oulu, Finland where the workshop was held. It was a two‐day workshop open to all conference participants and the public. The participants were strangers to one another which provided an exemplary setting to examine the interaction with the system as a focus group. The participants were introduced to the context through images and a virtual site model. They then tried out the system: shared their ideas among themselves, collaborated with each other to achieve their desired outcomes, negotiated to reduce conflicts and developed the design outcomes with the acting architect.
Figure 2. Image was taken at the eCAADe workshop
The feedbacks from the participants were overall very positive. Firstly, their preferences towards this method of inclusive design process were clear. A digital system allowing them to design their living space was a common desire. It was a brief exercise, but ModRule became a medium for the participants to engage deeply with the cultures and living standards of each other. Most of them saw a potential in ModRule and provided suggestions to improve the interface and modelling process and requested for more functions and capabilities that could enable the system to adapt to different housing policies. The details of ModRule and the outcome of the workshop have been published in AMPS (Architecture Media Politics Society) proceedings series 7: Future Housing: Global Cities and Regional Problems. (http://architecturemps.com/proceedings/) The author is very grateful to DRS for providing the necessary resources to support this PhD research.
Figure 1. Comparisons between a game design framework and the proposed system that adopted gamification
ModRule, a system was developed to test out the research methodology, and it was selected to present a workshop in the 34th Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe). The theme for 2016 was “Complexity & Simplicity” which fits the idea of this research very well. The DRS research bursary was therefore used for the travel expenses to the University of Oulu, Finland where the workshop was held. It was a two‐day workshop open to all conference participants and the public. The participants were strangers to one another which provided an exemplary setting to examine the interaction with the system as a focus group. The participants were introduced to the context through images and a virtual site model. They then tried out the system: shared their ideas among themselves, collaborated with each other to achieve their desired outcomes, negotiated to reduce conflicts and developed the design outcomes with the acting architect.
Figure 2. Image was taken at the eCAADe workshop
The feedbacks from the participants were overall very positive. Firstly, their preferences towards this method of inclusive design process were clear. A digital system allowing them to design their living space was a common desire. It was a brief exercise, but ModRule became a medium for the participants to engage deeply with the cultures and living standards of each other. Most of them saw a potential in ModRule and provided suggestions to improve the interface and modelling process and requested for more functions and capabilities that could enable the system to adapt to different housing policies. The details of ModRule and the outcome of the workshop have been published in AMPS (Architecture Media Politics Society) proceedings series 7: Future Housing: Global Cities and Regional Problems. (http://architecturemps.com/proceedings/) The author is very grateful to DRS for providing the necessary resources to support this PhD research.
