Digital Tools for Partcipative Design - a Pilot Study

设计通常被认为是一项个人活动，或者可能是由一个小型专家团队进行的。然而，当涉及到城市设计时，必须考虑到各种使用者的需求，如果能够找到让这些使用者参与创作过程的方法，将非常有益。参与式设计是一个很好的方式，这样做，这个项目是通过调查开发一套数字化工具，使非专家从事高层次的设计的可行性，以提高参与式设计过程。非专业人士通常很难理解传统的建筑图纸，因此，当参与设计练习时，广泛使用手绘草图和简单的卡片模型。虽然这些工具很容易使用，但它们在所能表现的内容方面非常有限，这限制了设计思想的解释和发展。在过去的二十年里，计算机辅助设计（CAD）在建筑师办公室已经变得司空见惯，以至于传统的绘图板现在已经很少见了。尽管当CAD首次推出时使用起来非常困难，但它已经变得更加用户友好，并且在过去几年中推出了新一代的CAD软件包，给人的感觉更加直观。此外，随着计算机变得越来越强大，不再需要有一个工作站来运行CAD程序，因为入门级笔记本电脑将足以满足所有要求最高的应用程序。该项目旨在通过调查适应这种技术以支持参与式设计的可能性来利用这些发展。这将使参与者能够创建更逼真的数字模型，他们的想法和可视化他们正在设计在一个准确和令人信服的方式。这个项目是一个试点研究，将探讨是否可以开发一套数字化工具，以帮助参与设计的过程。其目标是：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。研究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.