Champion City Part 8: Well, That Went Well!
In sharp contrast to our disastrous dress rehearsal for Sprint 2, our actual Sprint 2 held on July 16th went swimmingly!
The purpose of Sprint 2 was to invite community members to play with three samples of the immersive technology we believe may be useful in increasing citizen engagement during the development planning process.
Visitors to the New Rochelle Grand Market were greeted with a colorful and fun (we hope!) 5-tent exhibit that invited them to first learn about New Rochelle’s participation in the challenge via a comic storyboard (more about that here) before trying three different tools: 1) An augmented reality “AR” app that let individuals digitally place street furniture throughout Ruby Dee Park/Library Green to “see” their choice as close as possible to real life; 2) A virtual reality “VR” experience teleporting visitors into a virtual version of the park, then encouraging participants to highlight their favorite parts of Library Green; and 3) A streetscape design tool, presented by Streetmix, where members of the public could try their hand at digitally widening the street, adding trees, bike lanes and other features to see how these additions could change street functionality.
For the purpose of Sprint 2, our team wanted to learn what the public thought about our idea — did they feel immersive technology was a good next step for cities to pursue in terms of citizen engagement? We also wanted to observe the logistical issues that popped up when engaging members of the public using these vastly different tools. Would people gravitate towards one station over another? Would motion sickness be an issue? How long would it take to orient someone on the piece of equipment/software, before they were able to start providing meaningful feedback? If the technology didn’t work for someone, would they hurl it across our exhibit in a state of rage? (Admit it, we’ve all had those moments.)
Participants were invited to test one, or all three, stations. Each station was color-coded by type (Streetmix=red, AR=blue and VR=green). Upon completion of a station, individuals were provided a survey to fill out, to turn in at what we called the “Download” tent, where they were quizzed further on their experience in exchange for a token of thanks.
We estimate about 60 members of the general public visited our Sprint 2. Nearly 40 gave us their email addresses so they could stay informed about the Mayors’ Challenge and our final sprint. We’re still cranking the quantitative data from the surveys, but here are some early findings/observations from the day…
Comments:
“I still use pen and paper for a lot of things, but if you want to reach my kids and that generation in the future on community issues, you do need to embrace advanced technology like this.”
“I want to be involved in my community, but feel uncomfortable speaking about my opinions in large public hearings. Virtual reality or augmented reality might give me a better way to express my thoughts.”
“I think people use technology too much, so I’m unsure about this idea.”
“I like this idea a lot. I would want any future tech tools designed by the City to elicit resident opinions to have tightly-set boundaries so that our community couldn’t design unrealistic things, but really use them strategically to better understand and design something meaningful.”
Logistics:
- The public loved being able to “design” city streets using the Streetmix tool.
- Virtual Reality was incredibly popular and also very staff intensive. In order to engage the public with virtual reality, we need a large team on hand.
- People were surprised by the capacity of the Augmented Reality tool to portray an object they could “walk around” and observe from all sides.
- Although we had a Spanish-speaking translator walk people through the experience, that particular translator was very busy with several participants. We would like to increase our translators at our final Sprint.
- We need much more time than anticipated to set up a tech exhibit. Tech team should arrive at least an hour earlier next time.
- People with certain visual impairments were unable to participate in our exhibit.
- All ages seemed amenable to this technology once oriented. It’s important to have staff on hand that can explain things in a clear, easy and non-intimidating manner to accommodate differing levels of tech familiarity.
- AR on smart phones took the least amount of physical space and VR took the most amount of space. Tripping hazards (over extension cords, etc.) theft or damage risk for equipment, battery life/power availability, lighting and weather, as well as crowd management (managing wait times, etc.) all need to be planned for when planning to use these tools in a public engagement setting.
One of the activities at our download table was to have people pose with a smiley or a mad face regarding their overall opinion of our idea their experience from Sprint 2. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, I’d say the below pics accurately sum up how we feel the day went!
