Description:

SCAPE was commissioned by the Hornery Institute as an educational tool that would be used in conjunction with a field trip to the Kelvin Grove Urban Village with the intention of introducing students to the concept of urban planning.

It was never really finished (as you can see from some screens in the form of ugly fonts etc), but the folk at Hornery felt it was good enough to deploy.

Students would come in groups several times a week (this may have been used to educate thousands of students. Something which I’m very proud of) and go on a tour of Kelvin Grove Urban Village. They would then all be taken to a room. There they would be split into groups of 6 and given a dossier detailing the following roles: developer, politician, student, senior citizen, resident and open spacer (kind of like a hippie).

Using the dossier as a guide, students had to negotiate their way through a series of steps until they reached a point where they would be shown the impact of their decision on each of the roles. At this point, they were able to see in detail the parallels between Kelvin Grove Urban Village and the software. This produced gasps of wonder and squeals of delight (which I’m also very proud of).

As an end reward, students end up in a 3D simulation of the urban village that they can interact with.

Skills Employed:

Photoshop

Role:

Interaction Design
There was much taken into consideration before we actually began designing the interface. Because SCAPE was going to be much more than just a computer based tool, we had to look a little more at how the concept of role playing would impact the decisions made by students and how that in turn would be reflected in their level of agency in the system.

One of the results of this decision was that students would only be allowed to move forward in the sequence and never backwards. This brought home the message that in urban planning situations, decisions made are often irreversible because of their magnitude.

Interface Design

The SCAPE engine is actually based simplified formulas used by urban planners as provided by the Hornery Instutute.

On my part I had to figure out how best to represent such a large volume of information in the most simple, aesthetically pleasing manner that would appeal to secondary school students.