Digital Tools for Partcipative Design - a Pilot Study

设计通常被认为是一项个人活动，或者可能是由一小群专家完成的事情。然而，当涉及到城市设计时，必须考虑到广大用户的需求，如果能找到让这些用户参与创意过程的方法，那将是非常有益的。参与式设计是一种很好的方式，这个项目通过研究开发一套数字工具的可行性来增强参与式设计过程，这些工具将使非专家也能在高水平上参与设计。非专家经常发现很难理解传统的建筑图纸，因此，当参与式设计练习发生时，大量使用手绘草图和简单的卡片模型。尽管这些工具很容易使用，但它们在表现内容方面非常有限，这限制了设计理念的解释和发展方式。在过去的二十年里，计算机辅助设计（CAD）在建筑师办公室中已经变得司空见惯，以至于传统的绘图板现在已经很少见了。虽然当CAD首次引入时，它很难使用，但它已经变得更加用户友好，并且在过去几年中，新一代的CAD软件包已经推出，对它们有更直观的感觉。此外，随着计算机变得越来越强大，不再需要工作站来运行CAD程序，因为入门级笔记本电脑将足以满足所有要求，但最苛刻的应用程序。该项目旨在通过研究采用这种技术支持参与式设计的可能性来利用这些发展。这将允许参与者为他们的想法创建更真实的数字模型，并以一种准确而令人信服的方式将他们正在设计的东西可视化。这个项目是一个试点研究，将调查是否可以开发一套数字工具来帮助参与式设计的过程。它的目标是：1；通过对现有实践的案例研究，了解参与式设计目前是如何运作的。调查现有硬件和软件的潜力，以促进参与式设计的过程。描述如何将硬件和软件开发成一套专门用于支持参与式设计的新工具。

Design is normally thought of as an individual activity, or perhaps something that is carried out by a small team of experts. However, when it comes to urban design, the needs of a wide range of users have to be taken into account and it is highly beneficial if ways can be found to involve these users in the creative process. Participative Design is an excellent way of doing this and this project is concerned with enhancing the participative design process by investigating the feasibility of developing a set of digital tools that will enable non-experts to engage with design at a high level. Non- experts often find it difficult to understand conventional architectural drawings and so, when participative design exercises occur at the moment, extensive use is made of hand drawn sketches and simple card models. Although these tools are easy to use they are very limited in terms of what can be represented and this constrains the ways in which design ideas can be explained and developed.Over the past twenty years computer-aided design (CAD) has become commonplace in architects offices, to the point where conventional drawing boards are now a rarity. Although when CAD was first introduced it was very difficult to use, it has become more user-friendly and within the last few years a new generation of CAD packages have been introduced that have a much more intuitive feel to them. Also, as computers have become more powerful it is not longer necessary to have a workstation to run a CAD program as an entry-level laptop will suffice for all but the most demanding applications. This project aims to capitalise on these developments by investigating the possibility of adapting this technology to support participative design. This would allow participants to create much more realistic digital models of their ideas and visualise what they are designing in an accurate and convincing way.This project is a pilot study which will investigate whether a set of digital tools could be developed to aid the process of participative design. Its objectives are:1. To understand how participative design operates currently through case studies of existing practice.2. To investigate the potential of existing hardware and software to facilitate the process of participative design.3. To describe how that hardware and software could be developed into a new set of tools specifically designed to support participative design.