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Amsterdam Hackable Metropolis

engage and empower a public around the issue of cycling

Team

Donna Schipper donnaschipper@gmail.com
Bernard Wittgen bernardwittgen@hotmail.com
Amber Ebrahim amberebrahim@gmail.com

Commissioner:

Description

Let’s bring the experts in!

Last week we organized an expert meeting to get some new insights and fresh opinions on our prototype. The experts were a diverse group of specialists of various fields. There emerged some nice discussions and we got swept away by all the good advice and ideas. For everyone creating a prototype out there an expert meeting is a great way to look into your creation from different angles and evolve its possibilities!

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Hackability
There emerged a interesting  conversation about the hackability of the city. There was stated that by using the plans of the municipality for designs, the tool would loose the idea of hackable city making. To make it more hackable the citizens should get the possibility to choose their own ‘problem locations’ and come up with new ideas as well. The experts liked this idea of organizing new initiatives by the tool of dissolving problems or initiatives in local neighborhoods. This way it gives the citizens as well an opportunity to come up with new ideas for their neighborhood and gain ground for these ideas in their neighborhood. But thereby re-designing bottlenecks in the city would be a part of the tool as well. With the tool the distance between municipality and citizen will become smaller, and thereby bottom-up city making is encouraged.

Of importance is that the tool can add restrictions upon ideas of the citizens about what is possible and not. This is because when you have to go to the municipality every time for improvements, you slow down the participation of the citizens. The system behind the tool has to you show restrictions on forehand about certain rules around city planning. The tool knows the rules and applies these to the designs of the citizens, a bicycle path cannot be 3 meters wide for instance.

Online/Offline
The experts where also interested in the online and offline possibilities of the tool. Online there can be gained ground to make an issue known to the neighborhood/city where people live in and to reach a big group of people. After time, there can be organized a public consultation meeting where different groups with different interests can co-design on a smart table or tablet. Experts of the field should also be able to participate in the process. In this manner you put the different views problems or ideas on the table. Thereby it’s about managing the expectations of the people using the tool. You have to combine this knowledge. This way the session is about brainstorming ideas and become a ‘social game’ for the neighborhood. A direct promising on an end result is not realistic and will lead to disappointment when designs or ideas are not picked up by the municipality.

The tool as conversation piece
When the tool is made manageable for consultation evenings, the tool can become a way to communicate the different ideas and interests of people and to make compromises and understand each other points. The idea of the smart table came up: to co-create together on a physical location on one design. Citizens and experts can work together in this process. Of course not everybody has the time or wants to go to these consultation evenings. Therefore there is decided to make use of gradations of participation, this can differ between ‘lightweight’ and ‘heavyweight participation’.
We will take all this good advice and ideas into account for our coming version of the prototype and research paper! So special thanks to our experts Reinder Rustema, Bob Kassenaar, Sid van Wijk, Maarten Groen, Wouter Meys, Gerrit Faber and Loes Bogers. For us it was one of the highlights so far!

And for everyone, keep the 25th of June free! Final Presentations!

Ciao!

Speaking about bottlenecks..

Yesterday, we were invited to participate at the knelpunten bijeenkomst (bottleneck meeting) at the Fietsersbond Amsterdam. The Fietsersbond arranges every other week a bottleneck meeting, where they discuss current issues within the Amsterdam infrastructure. They update each other on their contact with the municipality and the current status of the issue.

Gerrit Faber, who we already met earlier this semester for an expert interview, is one of the policy officers at the Fietsersbond. He gave us a warm welcome, as did the other members. We were able to pitch our prototype to these people of the Fietsersbond, who all have years of experience within the cycling culture of the Netherlands and thus form a core within the Fietsersbond society.

They were all pretty enthusiastic about the prototype, even though the functionality was questioned. Later on in the meeting, it became clear that we were a little vague about the way we see our prototype being used by users and the Fietsersbond.

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We proposed two prototypes earlier this semester, and we decided to work further on the first prototype; Verbeter de Straat. Donna and Bernard have been working hard on the design of this prototype. Our idea is to connect this prototype with Fietsersbond Meldpunt, a issue-reporting service that the Fietsersbond maintains.
Fietsersbond Herontwerpen is the current name of our product.

We will post later this week more information about the prototype.

Stay tuned!

Dutch bicycle culture

pete_jordan

 

Pete Jordan wrote a book called ‘In the City of Bikes’. Twelve year ago Pete Jordan immigrated to the Netherlands due his passion for cycling. His book consists of research he conducted; unraveling the history of cycling in Amsterdam. An intriguing story interspersed with Pete’s own experiences as a cyclist in Amsterdam.

 

 

Amsterdam became a cycling city when in the twenty’s the Amsterdam market flooded with cheap German bicycles due hyperinflation in Germany. The sudden increase of bicycle use caused problems that nowadays still not have been resolved: cycle parking, bicycle that get stolen and overcrowded traffic situations. It’s was a lot of fun to read about solutions traffic police implemented.

Some facts: in the 1920’s the traffic police billed cyclists that did not lock their bicycles. Did you know the traffic police even billed cyclists that exceeded that maximum speed, a limit of 12km/h?

It was also great to learn about cycle observations Pete did. Pete researched eating habits of cyclist, with the apple on first place followed up by ice cream and a sandwich. Pete also observed what kind of luggage a cyclist carries while cycling. Beer crates, ladders, other bicycles are just a few examples.

Maybe it takes an outsider to open my eyes to realize how special cycling can be. I now observe my own cycling behavior and that of my fellow cyclist as if I am part of a nature documentary. About a month ago I moved to Amsterdam and now I have read ‘In the City of Bikes’ I can enjoy the experience of cycling to the fullest.

Cycling Cities!

Last week we met Gerrit Faber, a policy officer from the Fietsersbond. He provided us with some interesting insights.

Contemporary architects design beautiful buildings, but they forget to take the bicycle into account. Steven Fleming also formulated an opinion about this current development. Architects who design Vinex districts nearby large cities often design a car-friendly area. Density and heterogeneity are two key concepts when thinking about a bikeable city, which are mostly not contemplated when a new city is designed.

We should take the bicycle into our homes according to Fleming. What if stores would be more (cargo)bike friendly? Lets stop treating bicycles as if they are horses, leaving them hooked onto a pole outside the supermarket. It would be more convenient to take the bicycle inside and to load the groceries into the bicycle as you are shopping. Mothers (and fathers, of course) can leave their kid in the bicycle seat, so that they don’t have to carry them all the time.

fleming_8houseFleming also proposed a bicycle path where cyclists can field protection from rain and sun. He likes to play with hilly paths; slowing cyclists down by making the path going uphill, encouraging cyclists to go faster when the path is going downhill. Pedestrians would walk up, while cyclists have their own bicycle path under the pedestrian lane. Gerrit actually did not agree with this view. In Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, this has already been tried; separating the fast traffic from slower traffic. It resulted in unsafe situations, not necessarily on the level of road safety, but more on a social level.

His view on the bicycle as the ultimate design which can be brought inside stores and houses may seem a bit utopian, and certainly not within reach for a crammed city like Amsterdam. Most parents are not going to carry their cargobike three stories up on small, high stairs. But for cities that are newly build, like Vinex districts in the Netherlands, this would be an option!

Testing ’till we hit the floor

For the last two weeks we have been also working on another prototype; reporting of issues. The ideation tool would form a great second step within the whole process of engaging people with the bikeability of Amsterdam.

We based this prototype on three user scenario’s we created. In the first user scenario, Tamara, the rushing Amsterdam Cyclist, wants to report a pothole in the road on her daily route.

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This image shows all the different screens we created to make the clickable app with POPWe designed the screens with Balsamiq, which is a great program to design mock-ups easily. Different elements that are necessary to report an issue are ‘ location’, ‘category of the issue’ and a small description of the problem. The user is free to add a photo of the problem. We based this feature of the prototype on Fix My StreetVerbeter de Buurtand Fietsersbond meldpunt

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Tamara wants to explore the reported issues in her neighbourhood in the second user scenario. All the pinpoints on the map represent issues. Blue pinpoints are issues that Tamara filed herself, black pinpoints are issues that are in progress or still open and green pinpoints are solved issues. This feature gives Tamara more insights in the issues that are surrounding her and the status of these issues.

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In the third user scenario, Tamara likes to see the badges she can unlock through reporting and solving problems. We added this feature to stimulate the engagement of the users. Personal achievements seem to evolve into a positive feeling. Reporting of issues mostly comes forth out of negative emotions, so converting these emotions to a positive feeling is a goal we would like to reach. The motivation and stimulation of the users through badges is engaging the users into the process of participation. We based this feature on badges that users receive with Foursquare and FitBit.

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We are now looking for ways to integrate the ideation prototype Verbeter de Straat into this prototype, and how to combine these two prototypes. We are very interested in the combination of self-generated data and open data. We are also working on redesigning the low-fidelity prototype, adding other features and expanding existing features. If you would like to test it, please step by the Studio HvA any time!

Let’s redesign our streets!

Last week, we created a new low fidelity prototype. Based on existing tools like Streetmix, we were thinking of how to give people in Amsterdam, who don’t have great knowledge of urban planning and street design, a possibility to show their ideas about specific traffic situations in the city.

fotoThe next image is a screenshot of the design tool we are creating. The name Verbeter de straat is a working title.

Screen Shot 2014-04-08 at 14.52.32

The image showed above, is the screen in where users have to add traffic and road signs. They can drag the traffic signs and drop them on the road to design a better traffic situation. This turned out to be a hard part for the users. In the next sprint we’ll develop this screen. Probably we have to guide the users more through for example more specific assignments.

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You can use the (simplified) paper prototype online.

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Meeting the assigner

Last week we updated our assigner Martijn de Waal about our progress and search of the last couple of weeks for the improvement and adjustment of the bikeability of Amsterdam.

Related work
We investigated four different topics within our project which all relate to each other. Bikeability, smart city development, community engagement and hackable objects. We learned during the documentation of the related works more about the definition and discours of the concepts and the projects that relate to bikeability in which these concepts play a huge role.

Paper prototype
During the prototyping workshop with Tamara, we got inspired to make our own paper prototype in relation to the concepts that we came with up during the workshop with Charlie. The paper prototype we came up with is a ‘Rate your Route’ application. Users are able to rate their route on weather circumstances, busyness and safety by pressing a happy face or a sad face. Routes can also be saved and shared with friends that are also using the app.

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Martijn liked the idea of the prototype, but he noticed a few features that we did not include. We won’t work further on this prototype, but it was a fun introduction to (paper) prototyping and thinking about user possibilities.

Field research & personas
The sun was shining, time to go outside! We split up and started interviewing people on the street on their biking experience, biking behavior and biking culture. Their answers were quite surprising. Our focus lied completely on route planning and mapping of experiences, but these first cyclists in Amsterdam that we interviewed are not interested in apps that are related to route planning. We ended up with 17 interviews, which ultimately led to 5 different personas. These personas are all part of the bicycle culture of Amsterdam.

persona_Amsterdam_cyclist persona_elderly persona_foreigner persona_momdadchild persona_student(Click on the image for a larger version)

We wanted to create a visual experience of the personas, so we arranged a map of Amsterdam. We mapped different routes per persona, according to the routes our respondents mapped earlier that week. While discussing the personas, Martijn noticed that we missed three types; the commuter, the immigrant and the long distance cyclist. He thought that these subgroups might be interesting to investigate during our next sprint.

The whole experience brought the project to a new level. Currently we are working on two new prototypes; ideation and issue mapping.

Inspirational video’s

While we are very busy with sprinting, prototyping, field researching and interviewing, we found some really cool video’s. We felt instantly really inspired, which led to a whole bunch of new ideas for the upcoming prototype we have been secretly working on!

Bicycle Anecdotes from Amsterdam

There is no doubt that the Netherlands is a great place to use the bicycle. But Amsterdam, with all her energy, lies at the heart of this lifestyle. This video contains 10 minutes of the pure Amsterdam bicycle lifestyle. Different professionals share their insights on the bicycle culture of Amsterdam. It is really fascinating to see how the dynamic bicycle system works for every inhabitant of the city.

Groningen: The World’s Cycling City

In this video you’ll see the 10,000 bicycle parking spaces at the train station, some of the incredible infrastructure that enables cyclists to make their journeys safer and quicker, and you’ll hear from many resident who go by bike just about everywhere they travel. Professor Ashworth, one of the interview subjects, wanted the video maker to point out: the three days I was there were bright and sunny, and the hardy people keep up the bicycling through the cold winters.

Blockholm

Blockholm is a project in Sweden where Minecraft (yes, the game) and the infrastructure of the existing city Stockholm are combined. Users can imagine and create their own perfect city with blocks, animals and other humans.

 

Open Data FWD

Open_Data_FWDLast Thursday we did a little field trip. First we had our amazing workshop with Charlie Mulholland about problem definition, followed by the inspiring talk of Jan Rotmans about the city in transition. Now something completely different: Open Data FWD. Facilitated by Waag Society in the interest of the four largest municipalities of Holland, it was time to start thinking about open data.

Andrew Byrd, Open Trip Planner

Andrew Byrd is de developer of Conveyl. His main story was about Open Trip Planner, a real time data visualisation application for transport routes. These maps run on Google engine. The precise location of public transport vehicles is tracked and illustrated on the map. The application focuses on public transport, but also includes bicycle and walking. Different from other trip planner applications, Open Trip Planner offers a lot of interesting options. For example, you can choose to take the safest cycling route or the route that is the least uphill.

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Andrew also showed that trip planning applications can be visualised in different ways. Conveyl offers a geographical style map which shows the estimated travelling time, visualised on the map in different colours. This image shows the reachability of Manhattan, where all the warm colours can be reached within an hour.

Overall the Open Trip Planner and Conveyl are very interesting applications, maybe we can use some features as inspiration for the development of our project!

David Demper, Snappcar

David Demper is the founder of Snappcar. A simple yet promising concept; sharing your car when you do not make use of it. Research has shown that cars are generally  used for one hour a day. David went further on this mindblowing thought. He came up with some interesting concepts that are relevant for our project. Snappcar is not a product, it’ s a service, a solution that tears down barriers between people. Snappcar works because it makes data available through crowdsourcing, and so it enables the full potential of the available information.

Break out session

Then it was time for our breakout session, a nice relieve after listening for a couple of hours. During the session we got some insights for our problem definition in relation to cycling. The target groups within the subject were divided in four sections: students, commuters, pedestrians and vulnerable cyclists (children, parents, elderly). Eventually we had a useful problem analysis for cycling in Amsterdam with input from multiple perspectives on the subject. All the insights from different perspectives were of great use for our project. What kind of problems are cyclists running into in large cities? We ended up with four sheets full of problems we wouldn’t even consider in the first place. The diversity in problems made us aware of current issues.

Erik Romijn, Openbaar Vervoer

Erik Romijn is the developer of the application Openbaar Vervoer. A real-time public transport schedule for routes in the Netherlands. From which platform does the bus depart? Are other lines still running properly? When will this exactly arrive at that stop? He pointed out that a lot of public transport applications often provide inaccurate information. For example, some stops would have a sign that said: accessible for wheelchairs, while they don’t. It was interesting that he didn’t only tell about features of the application, but he emphasised on keeping the data up-to-date and maintain the validity of the application.

Openbaar_Vervoer_Application

Open Data from municipalities

Next up, municipalities of the four great cities in the Netherlands revealed which open data already was available and which data would be accessible in the near future. Fun examples were: real time traffic light data or real time cyclist counting. They challenged developers to come up with smart applications to make the best use out of the open data. As a motivation factor they added a decent winners price to the best open data application.

    Amsterdam open data
    Utrecht open data
    Rotterdam open data
    Den Haag open data

After having a splendid exotic dinner the day came to an end. We gained knowledge about open data and the possible use of it. We got new insights from different user perspectives on the issue of cycling in Amsterdam. We also expanded our network within the cycling and open data community. Tired as much as inspired we left the Waag to let all the new knowledge sink in.

Let’s rack our brains with Charlie Mulholland and Jan Rotmans

Getting ‘the designer mindset’ with Charlie Mulholland

Today our brains have been challenged. During the workshop Problem Definition, given by Charlie Mulholland, we were searching for the real core of the given problem. The problem, according to the project proposal, says:

‘How can we make use of digital media to engage and empower a public
around the issue of cycling in Amsterdam?’

Clear, isn’t it? No, it isn’t yet at all. As designers we’re given the task to answer this question, which will be the design for the solution and to actual produce this solution. But before we can do that, we have to question all the reasons and the total context of the brief: who is our assigner? Why is he asking us this? What are his motives? Which problem has leaded to this question and why is this problem a problem? Who are our stakeholders and potential users?

At first, we did nicely what we were asked but we didn’t make any progress in the thinking process so we didn’t find any new insights. We only were repeating what we already knew before this morning. Fortunately, this was just Charlie’s reason to arrange this workshop, so he encouraged us to think a step further by filling in the map below.

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By answering these questions, we focused on the motives of the assigner, which has lead to the given question about biking. As you can see in the picture above, we ended up in a line of thought about the whole process of city making. At the end of the workshop we were able to invent this raw temporary conclusion:

The process of city making is changing from ‘top down’ to ‘bottom up’ because of the overall changes in society. There isn’t a steady or highly supported new collaboration between municipality, designers and the public yet. It’s our task to find a potential solution in this process.  Bikeability in Amsterdam is a given case, so we can focus on one topic, but our project will also provide new insights for other themes in the future of city making.

Unfortunately we had to leave the workshop early, because we wanted to attend a talk of Jan Rotmans in the Zuiderkerk. Thanks a lot, Charlie, for encouraging and forcing us to attack the problem! If we need some inspiration in the future, we’ll find you!

HALLELUJAH – Let’s make this world a better place

Jan Rotmans – Talk: De stad als transitie ‘The City as transition‘. 13 February, De Zuiderkerk.

In the first place, it was a bit of a weird experience to enter a church for a scientific talk, but the outcomes where inspiring. It felt like a few pieces of the massive puzzle found each other. Jan Rotmans was talking about the shifting of different time periods. He has the opinion that the old-fashioned way of top down planning in city development doesn’t suit to our present society anymore. The fixed planning and production doesn’t fit to the characteristics of nowadays society, which changes quickly. This period of change will not stop in the coming decades, so we have to find a way to work around it. A new collaboration between citizens, institutes and designers, is needed. The same translation of the problem we we discovered during this mornings workshop!

Rotmans mentioned that already lots of small groups of citizens are trying to build the city from bottom up, but this leads to a countless number of small initiatives. They are temporary, the founders of the different project don’t work together, which leads to inefficiency and they aren’t supported by the government in many cases. Anyway, they don’t provide a solid base for the development of the society.

According to Rotmans, in the new city planning workaround, the government still plays a role. They aren’t the ones who plan city building on their own anymore, but they will facilitate and support opportunities for the rest of the people to participate in city development. The government has to give room to bottom up initiatives, but places those into a more broader structure, so the new development process will be solid for all of us.

Our Calling?

Oke, this brought us a lot of inspiration. Sometimes, Jan Rotmans statements appear to be a bit idealistic, but as he said in the beginning of his talk: it is an argument, not a concrete plan. He made us aware of one of the downfalls of our assignment: to fall back in making a tiny bike application which in the end only fits in the group of those small initiatives, which aren’t supported by a larger public and only cause more diversity and inefficiency.

Cristina Ampatzidou invited us to the talk. She works already as an embedded researcher for the Amsterdam Hackable Metropolis project for a longer period of time. While she will continue with her own research, she’ll support in the bikeability project we focus on. She made an interesting remark to the argument of Rotmans, which we also can keep in mind:

‘Ideas like “participation”, “bottom-up”, “open-source” are very alluring but their strength lies, among others, on the fact that they are not directed from the top. I would be concerned about the municipalities placing themselves solely on the role of  “facilitators”, as not all problems can be addressed in this way and not everybody citizen is equally able or willing to contribute. The emerging phenomena of active citizenship should not become an excuse for local authorities to offload their responsibilities’

Oke, this day provided us lots of theoretical input, we are curious what Martijn de Waal, our assigner will tell us about this. We’ll meet him next week. A more applied approach to this topic in the context of the city of Amsterdam, mobility in general and bikeability is on the agenda this afternoon, at the Open Data FWD at Waag Society.