We present a work-in-progress (WIP) report about the analysis of multicentered gigamapping experiments supporting a more-than-human perspective in a contemporary central urban environment, here namely, the central city campus of the University of Stuttgart investigated within the COLife project. Our work comprises two early-stage codesign workshops about the cocreation of sustainable and biodiverse urban spaces. Students and stakeholders from different communities and disciplines discussed and extended an initial map developed purely by the students, consisting of individual and collective ideas and design aspects through synergising minimaps into one collective gigamap. The experiments combine digital (among students) and analogue (with stakeholders) processes that are happening with the students’ updates in feedback loops.
This is a collaborative and transdisciplinary work that brings in perspectives from systems-oriented design, architecture and design, visualisation and eye tracking research. This WIP research is based on curiosity about what these disciplines can discover together regarding codesign processes and methodologies, relating them in design and systems thinking. It is driven by the motivation to apply eye tracking methodology to inspect codesign processes. We investigated the interaction processes between the participants during two workshops and considered their interaction with the gigamap. Our research question is: ‘How can we capture and interpret behaviour during design processes?’ To answer this question, we equipped multiple participants with eye tracking glasses to record their visual attention over time.
For a better understanding of the process, we developed a timeline browser showing people’s attention during the process. The timeline is enriched by manual comments that add to what is happening in the room. This way, we can capture gaze distributions indicating visual attention, social interaction, and interaction with the map. With the presented approach, we want to investigate new ways to better understand codesign processes. However, more details are required for future behaviour research and understanding how gigamaps and gigamapping processes could be better organised for codesign.
KEYWORDS: gigamapping, eye tracking, systems-oriented design, codesign, interaction design
Originally published for the RSD13 Symposium
