Abstract
In southern Copenhagen, Cities at Play have engaged with public school students, to educate them about structural factors for their welfare. Cities at Play is scheduled for three iterations and expands in numbers of participants involved with the project for each iteration. The purpose for this research was to develop a digital platform to supports Cities at play and the participants, during the third and final planed iteration as well as for the potential future. The two previous iteration of Cities at Play did not make use of central storage facility, for the material produced. This resulted in the material was lost or scattered in many different places, and did not offer opportunity to build on previous knowledge. It was becoming important to develop a unified place for knowledge produced during Cities at Play as the scheduled iteration to expand to new network of schools to offer community and learning.
In order to build the digital platform and design features, an understanding of the participants practice and participation in Cities at Play would provide useful knowledge for the development. It led to the problem statement of how the participants’ insights and visions could guide a design process for the development of a digital platform to supports learning and creation of community for Cities at Play. A participatory design framework would provide the participants opportunity to collectively engage in designing suggestions and solutions for the digital platform. Participatory design approach was implemented with User Innovation Management (UIM) methodology, which led the research into concrete tools and techniques for planning and implementing a participatory design approach. Grounded theory was applied to the participants’ insights, which led to four central themes that would structure the research, and the development of features for the platform. The four themes were; Area, Learning, Language, and Real world.
The grounded analysis provided the thesis with for four central elements of importance for the participants. From the workshop the participants’ insights and visions for the digital platform created basis for the development of design features for the platform. The framework secured that the designs principles was grounded in the participants’ statements and vision. A total of 16 central features were designed to support the individual themes. One of the features developed was the support of map. The map would allow an array of other features such as; plotting communities, locate instructional video, and show social positive indicators.