SOCIETY AND TECHNOLOGY DESIGNING FOR ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION
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n this semester ‘Technology and society’ you will further develop your creative and research skills by developing and critically analyzing interactive systems with a focus on the role of technology in society. You will draw on design concepts and patterns to explore different modes of interaction. In this second term you will be expected to create
hi-fidelity prototypes and research reports that demonstrate your analytical and practical design skills developed through the module. Throughout the year you will have a chance to work with industry professionals and researchers via guest lectures, workshops and events.
“Creating educational content for children aged 8-10 about the importance of honey bees�
OUR PROJECT SUMMARY
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s a team, spent the first quarter of 2017 working on a research project with the aim to design for increasing awareness in wildlife conservation. Together we visited different locations, habitats and organisations in and around the city of Bristol before deciding upon doing a project around the importance of bees. Followed by guidance from industry experts, such as Dr. Rob Phillips and through employing a user-led methodology, our team conducted interviews with real beekeepers, followed by participatory observations visiting a local hive. With our research and guidance we gained valuable insights that informed our idea towards providing educational tools for children. Aiming our project towards children, and following in-line with the current teaching curriculum we developed a
prototype that provides a key emphathetic link between the real and virtual world. A two-part project. Firstly using real data, gathered from either a local or sponsored hive, to secondly creating a virtual hive based upon the gathered data. Within this virtual hive, different scenarios can be simulated representing the weather, levels of pesticides and other factors that affect the health of the bees inside over a number of months. Students will be able to visualise what happens to bee populations, mood and health for example when there’s a bad winter, or if more flowers are planted. By showing the students how fragile the ecosystem can be, the project aims to get more children engaged and interested in conservation at an early age and to help them understand one of the worlds most important insects.
RESEARCH TRIPS VISITING BRANDON HILL, STOKE PARK AND KEW GARDENS
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e visited Brandon Hill as part of our initial research into local wildlife conservation associations, given that it was close to the Avon and Somerset Wildlife Trust (who we were thinking of focusing on). The trip allowed us to discuss potential sources of inspiration for our project idea. After attending the Hive exhibition at Kew Gardens it gave us a beautiful illustration and blueprint for engaging and educating the public. Set up as a mesh structure with lights scaling high up the sides, wavering between flickering faintly and then brightly and a low continuous droning sound adding to an impressive atmosphere. Lights and sound correspond to the action in real bee hives around the
Left: Brandon Hill and Stoke Park Right: The Hive at Kew Gardens
area, so when lights flash it means there is live movement within the local hives. This sort of “feedback” seemed to excite people even though it wasn’t particularly interactive, giving credit to the idea that aspects that are live or can visually change due to stimuli are extremely engaging.
PROJECT FOCUS
GUEST LECTURES FROM DR. ROB PHILLIPS, JEMMA KAMARA AND ANTONIO GOULD
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Right: Looking down inside a hive.
JEFF DAVEY INTERVIEW UWE Beekeeper
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e conducted a semi structured interview with Dr. Jeff Davey who takes care of hives located at the University of the West of England. He works with school children to educate them about bees using a range of methods such as live hive demos and short videos.
complex information. He also remarked that if children did not engage with nature before the age of around 11, it is unlikely they will as adults. As we want to encourage people to care about bee conservation we realised that this would be the perfect age range to target.
Having experience with both bees and primary school teaching he helped us to understand how to make learning about conservation fun for younger children. Jeff told us that he wanted to create a virtual hive to document the bee’s progress and give children a way to explore the inside of the hive.
Throughout the interview we also gained valuable background information into different types of bees and how, for example, 90% of all bees are actually solitary bees. It was good to have this extra information, really getting involved in learning about the entire ecosystem to truly inform our project.
The main insight gained from the interview was that in his experience, children have short attention spans but love using technology and at around age 10 they can comprehend
Left: Interview with Jeff Davey
Thematic Analysis coding our data After conducting our interview as a group we performed a thematic analysis session to acquire insights from the qualitative data we had collated so far. Having interviewed Dr Je Davey we were left with a lot of notes and ideas. In order to try to focus on what was important we conducted a thematic analysis exercise together. Each person took a stack of post-it notes and wrote out what they found helpful, insightful, or important. We then shared what we had with one another and started to group together information that was similar in terms of their theme. Once we had grouped the post-its together we discussed what codes we would use to file them under. We then displayed this on the wall so that we could individually assess whether or not we felt the codes were correct. The codes that we came up with were: DATA COLLECTION TEACHING HABITAT PHOTOGRAPHIC/ MAPPING PROBLEMS
In order to make sure that everyone is on the same page about their meaning we created a ‘memo’ to describe each one. These codes will serve as a starting point to our research and design iteration. ject around the importance of bees. Habitat We will look into the human impact on bee habitats, and how to create bee friendly spaces. Problems What different areas there are problems that need solving such as: Pesticides, loss of bee populations, lack of knowledge, children unable to approach hive, bees cover objects inside of the hive. Teaching Target audience (primary school children), promote solitary bee knowledge, different bee species, life cycles, attention span of children. Photographic / Mapping Hive video recording, photos of the hive, 3D imaging of hive. Data collection Collection of hive information, app for recording hive data
VISITING A BEEHIVE
Above: Preparing the Bee Smoker to cover the mask the pheronomones released by guard or injured bees.
JEFF DAVEY’s Hives field research
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s part of some further research we met with Jeff Davey again, but this time at his bee hives. This was the perfect opportunity to get hands on with bee keeping to get a better idea of what the process actually involves. We met Jeff at his allotment in Fishponds where he currently keeps two of his bee hives. He provided us with two extra beekeeper suits to allow us to get up close and personal with the hives. The whole experience was incredibly enjoyable but also really interesting as it allowed us to confirm insights we had previously drawn up from our interview. One of these key insights was confirming the different aspects of information Jeff records about his hives. Until this point we had developed our app based off of an online beekeepers record chart but we wanted to confirm that it was appropriate in terms of the data we wanted to re-
cord for our own project. Being able to get up close to the hives and take part in the documenting of Jeff’s hives helps with our aim to conduct participatory research, as we can now say we have conducted beekeeping activities. It also gave us an opportunity to ask Jeff further questions and to actually learn more about beekeeping ourselves as it’s an area of interest amongst all our group members. This was also beneficial as ultimately the aim of our project is to create educational resources to learn about bee’s so being able to learn more ourselves was really useful. Overall we thoroughly enjoyed this element of research as not only will it help improve our project but was also a personal interest for all of us and something we had not done before.
LO-FI PROTOTYPING PROTOTYPING OUR INITIAL IDEAS Our first prototype begun as a lo-fi version of an element of our project. We had initial ideas of creating a sensor system to collect data about the health of a honey bee hive. The data to be collected was informed by Dr Rob Phillips research and was to include internal hive temperature, weight of the hive and weight of hive feeders. Therefore, we created a lo-fi beehive out of cardboard to function as a real hive and act as the source of data. Paper cubes acted as the sensors that would obtain said data. We also decided to create small model bees using modelling clay. These were not only made to accompany our model hive but to also represent the anthropomorphised aspect of the project. Creating and prototyping the bees along the hive made us think about attaching personalities to each one to create a better connection to the children. This idea was informed by programs such as Springwatch and the educational series Horrible Histories.
When the prototype was complete, it was clear that placing sensors into a hive that wouldn’t alarm the bees (causing them to cover them) would prove to be difficult and ultimately unnecessary for the direction of our project. Upon further research, we gained an insight from Dr Jeff Davey that most beekeepers collect a simpler set of data, recording it with a physical medium such as a notebook and introducing sensors may be unnecessary. Due to this insight, we made a design-led decision to keep the interaction of the beekeeper and hive instead of relying on technology to collect the data. The sensors proved to be an unnecessary complication and by building upon this interaction we could keep a core part of the experience intact. The idea was to introduce an application that logs the data collected to then communicate with the second part of our idea – a virtual representation of the hive health.
Left: App interface for collecting beehive data that will give a starting point for the virtual hive
Below: Virtual hive prototype
FINAL PROTOTYPE the virtual hive For the virtual hive, we had to think about the different variables that we would include, and what visual effects to add that would make sense for the children. As the simulation is educational and going to be a teaching aid for the Key Stage 2 curriculum we had to make sure that the variables and effects to the hive will be not only interesting to the children but also relevant to the teachers. Therefore, we had to develop the interface in line with our research on what can affect the bee life cycle, habitat gain and loss. We designed many iterations to the game’s. Firstly, we decided to create the interface in 2D rather than 3D as we felt there was no need or value in it being 3D. The first iteration included temperature, level of pesticides, and a day/night cycle. After initial testing, we found the early interface to contain both confusing or redundant parts, and removing certain features gave the game an overall streamlined feel. We decided to scrap the day/night toggle after realising that the effects wouldn’t provide much useful information,
nor show any significant effects. We initially thought seasonal scenarios would better illustrate the effects of temperature, but felt even that was a cluttered approach and to refine it further decided on a simple temperature slider. We found it’d be better to represent time through a sped-up version of the day with nights going by, instead of seasons. The final iteration was created using Unity 3D and was programmed with C#. The prototype includes sliders to alter the level of wild flowers, pesticides, temperature and a swarm toggle button. Depending on the level of these sliders, associated visuals will be displayed to demonstrate the effects they are having on the hive. For example, when the level of wild flowers is increased, visuals of flowers appear surrounding the hive and therefore improve the health of the hive. There is a section for the queen bee to tweet about what effects the sliders are having on the hive. The data from the hive application will inform the initial set-up of the hive simulation to represent the live health of that particular bee hive.