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The Welcome to the Neighbourhood project is an attempt to develop a new approach to public understanding of science that empowers individuals to explore questions and ideas of interest to them in the solar system. The prototype is an experiment intended to discover what sorts of representational systems can encourage users to confidently explore questions of science and discover answers for themselves.
The installation itself consists of a moving signpost linked to a digital touchscreen. The signpost moves to point to an object within the solar system of the user's choice and displays the changing distance to that object on an LED screen on the sign. The digital touchscreen provides further information about this object, and offers users a range of different options for interacting with three-dimensional representations of objects within the solar system. The installation is designed to be located in an outdoors public space likely to be affiliated with a public institution (for example outside science centres or galleries) and to be usable by the full range of the public, with appropriate accessibility for individuals with physical disabilities. The installation can be described as a cross between street theatre, street furniture, installation art and science centre exhibit.
The over-arching aims of the project were:
- to empower users to conceive of astronomy not as a domain both literally and conceptually 'out there' (either in 'outer space' or in the scientific arena) but as a domain within which we live and breathe
- to facilitate confident engagement with scientific representations that can be interrogated by individuals in the ways they interrogate and interpret the signs and symbol systems of their local neighbourhood.
The Welcome to the Neighbourhood project consisted of two phases of development:
- Concept development and prototype testing.
- Design and build of first installation (funded by COPUS).
This report focuses on the first of these activities.
The technical development of the project was conducted in-house at Futurelab between Adam Nieman and Alex Burton (DTI-funded programmer), a process that enabled close cross fertilisation of ideas between programmer, content developer and research and technical teams at Futurelab. It uses open source software, Celestia, and has involved the development of a flexible HTML interface to allow modular changes in further development.
1 First phase prototype development
1.1 Research and development questions
Within the two over-arching research aims outlined above, the project development has focused on the following specific questions:
- What are the key questions that a wider public audience is most interested in exploring about the solar system?
- What representations will most easily enable users to answer and explore these questions?
- Does the presence of a concrete external reference frame aid navigation through and understanding of the digital representation of space?
- Does reference to actual objects and real distances help users make a link between a 'god-like' three-dimensional representation on the screen and an actual view of the sky?
- What type of interface is likely to encourage confidence in users to explore and interact with a digital resource?
- Which facts or ideas or tools stimulate enquiry or provoke questions?
- How do pre-existing conceptions of space conflict with the language or mode of explanation in WTTN?
There are also three further generic research questions that each Futurelab prototype needs to address:
- What does this prototype tell us about the best ways of designing digital resources for learning?
- What does this prototype tell us about how informal learning processes can be transformed through use of these tools?
- How does this prototype help us understand the potential of next generation technologies to create intrinsically motivating and engaging learning experiences?
1.2 Prototype development
1.2.1 First phase concepts
The first stage of any project is the development of its overarching aims and objectives as outlined above. In the early development stages, Futurelab staff and Adam Nieman worked to develop an appropriate 'metaphor' for the project. From the many initial ideas Adam brought to the table (including science centre star installations to outdoor physical sculptures showing moon movements), we focused specifically on the metaphor of the local signpost and on the solar system as the general framework for the project. In its first iteration, we considered a signpost with multiple arms, each of which could be directed to specific objects in space in order to allow users to explore the relationships between them. The image below is an early concept sketch for this idea.
During an early discussion, the possibility of drawing on the digital information points now to be found in city centres also emerged. The idea of using these resources, rapidly growing in familiarity across the UK, was one that had significant resonance for the team, offering the possibility of diverse users outside science centres interacting with 'scientific information' through the same mechanism as local information about the city.
Early discussions with developers of these resources and with electrical engineers, however, identified significant costs both in the multi-armed signpost model and in using these info-points as a basis for development. The decision was therefore taken to scale back the ambitions of this first phase prototype development to focus specifically on the possibilities afforded by the combined representational tools of a single moving signpost in interaction with a digital interface. What was retained from this early phase development, however, was the metaphor of the local signpost and of the touch screen interface drawing on the model of local digital information resources.
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