Wellbeing in the built environment is a paramount aspect for the success of both new developments and planned improvements for existing urban areas. Having a holistic point of view on how people interact and feel in a specific domain is essential for planners to understand the needs of users, and turn bare spaces into enjoyable living and working places, where a sense of belonging and wellbeing is nurtured in an inclusive way.
Nonetheless, detecting and assessing the satisfaction, quality of social dynamics, state of physical and psychological health, especially in diverse and large user groups, is a hard task. This might change over the time, and be dependable on external factors which are not easy to detect from without, and ‘on paper’ only. A similar challenge is posed by creating inclusive design and development practices where all stakeholders can take part in the decision making process.
The proposed solution offers a holistic, geographically and time referenced, customised data collection tool designed to empower extensive user communities to offer personalised insights on well-being and satisfaction within specific urban areas or campuses. At the same time the system provides an easy to use and anonymized infographic dashboard for planners and developers. This grants both data visualisation and actionable analytics, supporting decision making on specific improvements and further investigations to be undertaken.
The system comprises three layers.
- The DATA COLLECTION consists of a mobile application enabling the inputs from the end user side. The software can be standalone or integrated into campus applications (such as universities or tech campuses) and in any case installed and customised on any mobile device in a few steps. To avoid frustration and optimise usability, the use of the app is very simple, immediate and triggered inside the use case areas only. Whenever the user is detected within the area of interest, specific short questions are pushed as screen notifications. The user is asked to answer the questions with a yes-no-maybe answer. This happens once per day.
- The DATA ANALYSIS layer is machine learning and AI driven. All the answers collected from the end users together with location and timestamp are anonymized and saved in a database. Specific algorithms work on classification or clustering of the answers, detecting statistical correlations with specific locations and time. The same software is responsible for selecting and pushing new questions for each user in a specific area or at a defined time. The more data gathered, the more precise the questions will be targeted, and the answers will be valuable. Initial questions are selected from a more generic collection defined by experts and including mental or physical health topics, satisfaction, state of urban environment, social interactions etc. Further queries might include more specific opinions on possible improvements and actions to be undertaken.
- The INFOGRAPHICS layer is responsible for collecting the gathered information and making it visually available for end users, city planners, developers, and campus managers through specific data access privileges. The dashboard provides actionable statistics, heatmaps on emotions, mental or physical wellbeing, use of the public space based on the analysed data. Dashboard users can navigate the information geographically, within the target areas and time travel through different moments in time, days, weeks or months of use of each space. The interface provides AI based customised design suggestions on specific areas speeding up the initial decision making and design process.