MyPLACE: Mobility and PLace for the Age-friendly City Environment

Lead Research Organisation: Newcastle University
Department Name: Sch of Computer Science

Abstract

The aim of this project is to develop and test through real-world research, a digital platform and toolkit that will enable members of the public to engage with local councils and other organisations more effectively in the research, planning and design of the urban environment.

The specific domain of this project is people's experiences of mobility and access to the urban environment, and how this changes with age. The project is a collaboration with City Councils in the Northeast Region, and Newcastle's' Age Friendly city initiative. Through VoiceNorth will engage members of the public in the project as co-researchers and co-designers, to collect a body of quantitative and qualitative data on older people's experiences of mobility in the built environment, and to co-design digital tools, information and services to enhance that experience.

To achieve this we will design and develop a toolkit of digital sensors to capture evidence and experiences from older people's journeys through and social interactions within the city centre. We will combine this evidence with social research data through interactive architectural visualisations which will support citizens and stakeholder in participatory design of the age friendly city.

We will also develop a participatory design platform which will allow members of the general public to access, comment, and vote on design issues, and to add their own experiences of access and the built environment. This extended public engagement in the research and design activities will offer a new model of public engagement in civic decision making.

The toolkit and platform will be validated through the design of and deployment of digital interventions in the city. We will also document our findings for policy makers and other stakeholders regionally and nationally.

Planned Impact

The aim of this research is to develop a technical platform and methodology to enable more inclusive and more democratic participation in decision-making concerning our built environment. The particular focus will be on older people's experiences of mobility and place, and how architects, designers, local governments and other service providers can engage with evidence about these experiences. More than this however, our aim is for the platform and methodology to allow citizens and service providers to work together in analyzing and interpreting data and in designing tools and services for the future age-friendly city. The key point here is that the platform and methodology will allow service providers and service users to engage with one another much more deeply and effectively than traditional methods of consultation. Consequently, we would anticipate the economic and social impact of this project to be significant and we would envisage our routes to impact ensuring effective impact not only locally but nationally (see routes to impact n case for support). Currently the Age Friendly City initiative in Newcastle have signed the Dublin Declaration and this work will strengthen the city's understanding of the evidence base and what needs to be achieved to become part of the WHO Age Friendly City network and importantly ensure our communities are age friendly.

Our research methodology is user-centred and involves working together with members of the public as co-researchers gathering evidence and experiences of mobility in the built environment, and also using that data to recommend and co-design new user-centred services. Members of the public in the Northeast will be involved in design workshops and in data gathering activities, but in addition to these face-face collaborations our participatory platform will allow on-line citizens to be engaged in sharing their experiences and comments and evaluating design proposals.

Our partners have been chosen to represent a wide range of potential economic and social impact routes (e.g. local government, architecture firms, social housing providers, age related charities, volunteer and participant networks). These partners thus represent a diverse range of stakeholders in the provision of services for older people who could potentially make use of our platform and methodology beyond the life of the project. Our platform and methodology will be developed as an open source project.

Beyond the impact we achieve through our co-research a co-design with citizens and stakeholders, The project will deliver some design interventions that will positively impact the experience of mobility in the city for all citizens. More significantly however, through the open sourcing of the developed platform and methodology, we hope to have a significant impact on how public consultation and decision-making occurs nationally. Our partners (e.g. Age UK, Age Friendly City initiative, Years Ahead) will be instrumental in this wider engagement (see routes to impact)

Finally this project will take place in the context of Newcastle University's commitment to a civic engagement agenda and to making research relevant to the real world. To execute this agenda, the university has launched three societal challenge themes on Ageing, Sustainability and Social Renewal, each with an institute to ensure a sustained commitment. Of particular relevance to this proposal is Newcastle Initiative on Changing Age is helping to generate an increased volume of connected research including exciting new inter-disciplinary collaborations. This will support sustained engagement and brings together world-leading scientific research with innovative health care, business, civic agencies and the public.
 
Title Age is Just a Bingo Number 
Description The documentary aims to promote social aspects of the environment for older migrants, by introducing the audience to a community of ageing Italians in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Hence, the characters of the documentary gather in a recreational centre to play Bingo 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact Dr Simona Palladino was presented with the Pietro Corsi Award from the Italian municipality of Casacalenda for her documentary film "Age is just a Bingo Number" during the summer of 2019. Simona based "Age is just a Bingo Number" around her PhD research into the North East's older Italian community. The Pietro Corsi Award is made in honour of the writer Pietro Corsi who wrote about travel and migration and emigrated to the United States. In December 2019, at the Mediterranean Film Festival Cannes 2019, it was awarded 'Best Documentary' Honourable Mention. "Age is Just a Bingo Number" was also selected as a semi-finalist in the International Film Festival Fest-Pro, Russia, 2019; and selected as Finalist at Intima Lente/Intimate Lens, visual ethnographic film festival, and shown there on December 27 2019, in Caserta, Italy. 
 
Description Aims and Interim Findings
The stated aims of this project were twofold;
1. To develop a digital participatory platform, associated methodology and model of public engagement to allow citizens to better participate in the design of urban environments with a special focus on the age-friendly future city;
2. To test the platform and methods by using it to build an evidence base of peoples' mobility in, and experiences of, the urban environment of Newcastle upon Tyne, and to use this evidence-base as the starting point for co-designing age-friendly interventions with citizens and city councils.
We have sought to achieve these aims by working closely with partners such as Newcastle City Council, Nexus, the Alzheimer's Society, and local actions groups such as Jesmond Dementia Action Alliance as well as members of the public.

As intended we used our early field work to inform the design of a prototype platforms some of which were focussed on to provide the final case studies. These are Let's Talk Parks, MetroFutures, and Dementia-Friendly Places (see collaborations and engagements). Each of these case studies has were developed in response to our partners and stakeholders actual needs rather than designed as 'academic' case studies. That is to say, these are real-world engaged projects undertaken by our partners that will impact how they designed and and roll out services in Newcastle and the Region.

Models and Methods
Although there is variation in our case studies to date, and the findings are interim, the generic model of citizen-led, co-research and design we are working towards is grounded in our earlier research on experience-centred design, and involves the following phases:

1) A core group of citizens and other stakeholders are recruited to act as co-researchers

2) Co-researchers are engaged in a series of co-located workshops. In the first of phase of these co-researchers document their experiences of mobility and place in the city using a variety of digital tools developed for the project. This include phone-based video and audio recording apps, tweets and bespoke delivered scenarios.

3) In the second phase or workshops, co-researchers use the platform to share, analyse, annotate and interpret the data they have collectively gathered and edit it for public use as seed data.

4) A campaign is launched to advertise the data available on the platform and the design challenge to the public and other interested organisations.

5) The general public and other interested organisations can participate through the platform by studying the experiences seeded by the co-researchers, commenting on design ideas and making them for relevance and importance.

6) Meta data is used to identify themes and design issues to be included in Design proposals and recommendations put forward.

Field Work
The majority of ethnographic Fieldwork has reached its conclusion and findings have informed the participatory platform and tools development which has led into the final case studies (Nexus and Lets Talk Parks, Dementia Friendly Places) ). This includes our studies of Grainger Market and our work with the Italian Migrant Community, Cycling communities in Rotterdam and Newcastle, and community mapping workshops with the Elders Council.

Tools and Platforms
A range of digital tools have been used. These were developed in Open Lab either specifically for MyPlace or adapted for specific uses by MyPlace, and include:
Bootlegger, App movement/care and connect, ThoughtCloud, Journey Cam, Metro Futures and Let's talk Parks. (For details see software and tools).

We have postponed further development of the Senior Cycles platform with a view to integrating it into a generic journey mapping platform at a later date. The Urban Narrative Environments platform and the crowd sourced Eyetracking platform platform is still under development and testing.
Exploitation Route Much of our early fieldwork has been reported in academic papers and also used to understand the requirements for our digital technology toolkit and platforms.

A number of prototype tools and platforms have been deployed and tested in real-world co-research projects with citizens the findings from which have been used to engage local council and other public sector organisations to inform policy and design relating to aspects of city and regional developments including the future of Newcastle's parks and green spaces, and the design of the next generation of Metro trains for the NE region. The three final case studies will be written up for academic audiences over the summer.

When complete we hope to use our case studies and their digital technology as part of a City Demonstrator project through Newcastle City Futures (http://www.newcastlecityfutures.org/). We have follow-on funding for further research through the Digital Economy Research Centre and the Digital Civics programme (https://digitalcivics.io/) to further develop and use our platforms.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Healthcare,Transport
URL http://www.myplace.ac.uk
 
Description The MyPlace research team worked with the following organisations to develop technology to meet their needs and through which we were able to validate our tools and platforms: The Age Friendly City Initiative (Newcastle); Newcastle City Council; Jesmond Dementia Action Alliance; Tyneside Cinema (Dementia Friendly Cinema initiative); Henshaws Newcastle (a charity supporting people living with sight loss; Sustrans (Newcastle City Council Cycling Initiative); Newcastle City Futures Development Group; Nexus. The Academic impact of the project reflects the breadth of our interdisciplinary work, ranging from publications in world leading HCI conferences and journals to social/human geography and social gerontology conferences and Journals. Our most recent publication (Bowen et al, 2020), describes and evaluates the participatory methods, tools and platforms, through the final integrative case study we carried out in partnership with Nexus, the Company responsible for Newcastle and the regions Metro system. More generally, our engagement with non-academic stockholders can be summarised under the three concluding case studies that we engaged in, namely: Let's Talk Parks; Metro Futures; and Dementia Friendly Places. For each of these case studies there was significant engagement and co-production of research. For Let's Talks Parks The MyPlace Research team were approached by Newcastle City Council to undertake an extended case study for citizen-led design around the future of Newcastle City's parks and green spaces. The project began in 2016 and completed in 2018 with a major publication in 2019 (). For this case study, we worked extensively with members of the public, the Newcastle Parks Forum, Park Rangers, Park Volunteers and the Newcastle City Council members. The collaboration began with extensive field research about current and future uses of the parks. A series of workshops were designed to allow participants to envision the futures of the parks with specific reference to spending cuts and the idea of turning over the running of the parks to a charitable trust. The MyPlace team led by Clara Crivellaro, designed a board game (Parks 2026) and process to structure the consultations and design discussions and report findings back to Newcastle City Council. In the second phase of the research the MyPlace team worked with the company Social Finance UK (http://www.socialfinance.org.uk) who were commissioned by the council to deliver a Target Operational Model of the parks. The team worked with Social Finance to design and deliver a second round of public consultations and consultations with councillors. The findings were reported to the council and in the third phase of the study the team built a digital platform "Lets Talk Parks" (https://letstalkparks.co.uk) that allows members of the public to engage with the findings so far and with further public workshops. This third phase began in March 2017 and completed in May 2017. A do-it-yourself version of the board game, Parks2026 has been designed to allow Newcastle City Council's own community engagement officers facilitate the design workshops. For Metro Futures: The MyPlace Research team, led by Simon Bowen collaborated with NEXUS (http://www.nexus.org.uk) who run the NE Metro trains. This collaborative project undertook a 9-month joint project in which the MyPlace team were responsible for citizen-led service design improvement for the metro train carriages. The MyPlace team organised a series of workshops in which citizens collected data about their experiences of metro travel and worked together to identify themes and design ideas for the future carriages. This design work was shared with the public via a participatory platform (https://metrofutures.org.uk). Members of the public were able to read comment and vote on design suggestions via the platform. The work has fed directly into NEXUS's bid for Government funding to commission the design of the next generation carriages which proved successful. The contribution of MYPlace to the Nexus project was mentioned explicitly in a Parliamentary event run at the House of Parliament. Citizen participants in the project covered a range of ages 11-70, a range of disabilities/mobilities (visually impaired, hearing impaired, well chair users) and a range of geographical and socio- economic) backgrounds. Nexus, have supported the project through advertising campaigns and they have contributed to the design or the workshops and the platform. They provided access to metro carriages for our design work with school children. A full findings report was prepared for Nexus, which fed into the bid and tendering process that Nexus completed in May 2017. The academic research findings have been published at the ACM CHI conference 2020. Dementia Friendly Places: This case study led by Katie Brittain, Kellie Morrisey and Cate Degnan, explored the idea of "dementia-friendly" communities and explored what this might mean in practice. This was achieved through a number of different channels of engagement and co-design work: 'Care and Connect', is a mobile application created through the App Movement platform (https://app-movement.com) for MyPLACE. The app allows users to identify and rate public places (e.g., parks, shops, cafes) on their 'dementia-friendliness' - their suitability for people with dementia and their carers. Care and Connect saw significant support in its early stages on the online platform, yet failed to engage participants in its design phase and deployment. To understand this, we analysed its initial use in the community, and conducted a series of workshops with carers and people with dementia to gather data. These workshops used Care and Connect to structure discussions of participants' own experiences of dementia-friendliness, and uncovered themes of 1) trust, 2) exclusion versus inclusion, 3) duration and quality of time, and 4) empathy becoming action. Using this evidence, we advanced an account of online community commissioning as a process which needs to understand not only the general issues of communities facing significant life challenges, but also the particularity of community members' experiences. The research was published at the ACM CHI conference in 2017 and the paper was awarded an Honourable Mention, which means that it is ranked among the top 5% of all submissions to the conference. This work also formed the basis for a successful follow-on funding grant from the Newcastle Institute of Social Renewal in 2016 (£3000 + £3000 matched from Open Lab). This funded project extended our previous scoping work on dementia-friendly communities (DFCs) in Newcastle Upon Tyne. An Alzheimer's Society-backed initiative, DFCs was criticized for a lack of definition on what 'dementia-friendliness' might entail. Additionally, the sole two DFC projects in Newcastle have been in Jesmond and Gosforth, historically affluent areas. The follow-on project explored dementia-friendliness in South Heaton, where many ageing residents face significant challenges stemming from social inequality. In addition, researchers on MyPlace were also involved with the iterative design of dementia-friendly cinema screenings at the Tyneside Cinema. In 2015, these screenings were documented via a pilot study carried out by Brittain, using lightweight feedback technology developed in Open Lab. The pilot identified and overcame barriers and stigma to enable people living with dementia, their carers, companions and families to come to the cinema and watch a series of classic films and musicals. The simple steps and care that was taken in developing Dementia Friendly Cinema enabled people who are often excluded, to enjoy an everyday cultural experience in a supportive, friendly and social environment. The pilot was very successful and had a dramatic impact on both the cinema's staff and operations and the audience members. The Tyneside's DFC programme is now being presented in other areas of the UK and Ireland as an exemplar of how to set up such a programme.
Sector Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Retail,Transport
Impact Types Societal
 
Description Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics
Amount £4,707,329 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/L016176/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 04/2014 
End 09/2022
 
Description Digital Economy Research Centre
Amount £3,713,739 (GBP)
Funding ID RES/0550/7405 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 11/2015 
End 10/2020
 
Description Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal Grant
Amount £6,000 (GBP)
Organisation Newcastle University 
Department Institute for Social Renewal
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 12/2016 
End 07/2017
 
Title Participatory design and co-research tools and methods 
Description Tools and Platforms A range of digital tools have been used. These were developed in Open Lab either specifically for MyPlace or adapted for specific uses by MyPlace, and include: Bootlegger, App movement/care and connect, ThoughtCloud, Journey Cam, Metro Futures and Let's talk Parks. (For details see software and tools). Bootlegger: Is a mobile phone application for shooting and managing high-quality multi-camera video footage. Teams of people can connect with one another to jointly create a video, where the app helps to co-ordinate shots according to where individuals are located and automatically uploads videos to the cloud enabling teams to share footage. Events covered by Bootlegger include the Great North Run and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It has been used in the MyPlace project to allow co-researchers on the Metro Futures project to record their experiences of Metro Journeys. App Movement: Is a community based website that allows groups to create their own mobile applications to review particular locations. Communities start campaigns by developing an idea and sharing this through their online social networks, gathering votes, designing and launching their app. A diversity of apps have already been developed including Feed-Finder (location-based reviews for breast-feeding mothers). In MyPLACE it has been used as part of the Dementia-Friendly Places Case study to commission the production of the Care & Connect dementia friendly places rating app. ThoughtCloud: Is a feedback tool designed to invite people to express their thoughts. Organisations are able to pose questions about services and gather data in the form of ratings, video or audio messages on tablets. This feedback is then collated and displayed on a website where it can be organised, commented on or shared. ThoughtCloud has been used for feedback on cultural events including drama workshops for people with disabilities. It has been used in the Dementia Friendly Places case study, specifically dementia-friendly cinema events- to get feedback form audiences. It has also been used in the Metro Futrues study to elicit comments and rankings at pop-up labs. JourneyCam: Is a bespoke phone app and phone mounting device that that can be fitted to wheel chairs and operated by a single button press and records audio and video footage of "what just happened". It can be taken on journeys to record experiences and the data can be uploaded to the participatory platform. It is currently being used with wheelchair users to document and share their experiences of journeys into the city and using the Metro and which will be shared via the metro futures website. Jigs audio: Is a tangible computing system for engaging public participants in drawing and describing their responses to specific topics. Participants are invited add notes and drawings to jigsaw pieces, and then describe their annotations and drawings through activating a small audio recording device with near field communications (NFC) tags attached to jigsaw pieces. These recordings, and the images the pieces collectively produce are then shared on interactive web pages. This public engagement tool was used at The Big Draw event at Seven Stories (October 2016) and throughout the Metro Futures project (during November 2016). Bespoke Platforms Metro Futures and Let's Talk Parks: These two platforms are variants of the same underlying software prototype. The platform allows co-researchers to upload audio and video data and to annotate these with meta data tags and add interpretative text. The co-researchers can then decide whether to keep their data private, share it with other co-researchers or make it available to all public subscribers to the platform. All participants with legitimate access can study, comment and rank data that is available to them and they can also add their own data for others to study comment on and rank issues in terms of relevance and importance. By the end of the MyPLACE project and through our follow-on funding, we aim to have a generic platform available to the public and our partners through which they can commission their own co-design projects. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact These tools are currently being refined and developed through th project and will be released in their final forms for use by other project and interested parties, under a open licence. 
 
Description Age Friendly City Initiative (Newcastle City Council) 
Organisation Newcastle City Council
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution Project members attended regular meetings as MyPlace Representatives and representatives of Newcastle University. We supported events organised jointly. Valuable networking opportunities.
Collaborator Contribution Networking and dissemination, and connection with potential collaborators and participants.
Impact None
Start Year 2014
 
Description Henshaws 
Organisation Henshaws
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Henshaw are a charity is a charity which supports people living with sight loss and a range of other disabilities to achieve their ambitions and to go beyond expectations. We provided a dedicated researcher (Jayne Jeffries) to work with the organisation.
Collaborator Contribution Henshaw provided access to people living with visual impairment who participated in our project as volunteer co-researhers. They participated in a series of design workshops for digital technologies to support their mobility needs.
Impact Book chapters and conference presentations.
Start Year 2014
 
Description Newcastle City Futures 
Organisation Newcastle University
Department Newcastle City Futures
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Newcastle City Futures is a partnership between Newcastle University and Newcastle City (especially Newcastle City Council). We made contact with Nexus through NCF which led to the MetroFutures design Case study- one of two large case studies that concluding the MyPlace Project
Collaborator Contribution Newcastle City Futures acted as brokers introducing us to Nexus, our MetroFutures Case study which was a collaboration with Nexus features as one of their City Wide Demonstrators.
Impact Technical reports; Video Documentary, Academic papers (pending).
Start Year 2015
 
Description Nexus Metro Futures Partnership 
Organisation Nexus
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution The MyPlace Research team, led by Simon Bowen have collaborated with NEXUS (http://www.nexus.org.uk) who run the NE Metro trains. This collaborative project called Metro Futures, has undertaken a 9 month joint project in which the MyPlace team have been responsible for Citizen-led Service design improvement for the metro train carriages. The MyPlace team organised a series of workshops in which citizens collected data about their experiences of metro travel and worked together to identify themes and design ideas for the future carriages. This design work was shared with the public via a participatory platform (https://metrofutures.org.uk). Members of the public can read comment and vote on design suggestions via the platform. The work has fed directly into NEXUS's bid for funding to commission the design of the next generation carriages. The contribution of MYPlace to the Nexus project was mentioned explicitly in a Parliamentary event run at the House of Parliament. Citizen participants in the project covered a range of ages 11-70, a range of disabilities/mobilities (visually impaired, hearing impaired, well chair users) and a range of geographical and socio- economic) backgrounds.
Collaborator Contribution Nexus, have supported the project through advertising campaigns. hey have contributed to the design or the workshops and the platform. They provided access to metro carriages for our design work with school children.
Impact A full findings report is currently being prepared for Nexus. This will feed into the bid and tendering process that Nexus will complete in May 2017.
Start Year 2016
 
Description PARKLIFE- Newcastle City Council 
Organisation Newcastle City Council
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution The MyPlace Research team were approached by Newcastle City Council to undertake an extended case study for citizen-led design around the future of Newcastle City's Parks () and Green spaces. The project began in 2016 and is still on-going. Through this collaboration we have worked extensively with members of the public, the Newcastle Arks Forum, Park Rangers, Ark Volunteers and the council themselves. The collaboration began with extensive field research about current an future uses of the parks. A series of workshops were designed to allow participants to envision the futures of the Parks with specific reference to spending cuts and the idea of turning over the running of the parks to charitable trusts. The MyPlace team led by Clara Crivellaro, designs a board game to structure the consultations and design discussions and reported findings back the Newcastle City Council. In the second phase of the research the MyPlace team worked with the Company Social Finance UK (http://www.socialfinance.org.uk) who were commissioned by the council to deliver a target operational model of the Parks in a second round of public consultations and consultations with councillors. The findings were reported to the Council and in the third phase of the study the team built a digital platform "Lets Talk Parks" (https://letstalkparks.co.uk) that allows members of the public to engage with the findings so far and with further public workshops. This third phase began in March 2017 and is on-going until May 2017. A do-it-yourself version of the board game has been designed to allow Newcastle City Council's own community engagement officers facial the design workshops.
Collaborator Contribution Newcastle City Council have been extensively involved in the design of the workshops, the board game (and DIY pack) and the digital platform.
Impact Two findings reports have been produced for Newcastle City Council (confidential). A final report will be completed in June. Academic papers are in progress and will be submitted in August/September 2017.
Start Year 2016
 
Description Sustrans, Newcastle 
Organisation Sustrans
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Dedicated researchers to understand th potential of a range of digital technologies to support cycling in the city, specifically amongst older adults
Collaborator Contribution Provided access to participants in research studies.
Impact Papers, chapters, technical report, conference presentation.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Tyneside Cinema 
Organisation Tyneside Cinema
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Researchers on MyPlace have been involved with the iterative design of dementia-friendly cinema screenings at the Tyneside Cinema. In 2015, these screenings were documented via a pilot study carried out by Brittain, using Open Lab's lightweight feedback technology ThoughtCloud. The pilot identified and overcame barriers and stigma to enable people living with dementia, their carers, companions and families to come to the cinema and watch a series of classic films and musicals. The simple steps and care that was taken in developing Dementia Friendly Cinema enabled people who are often excluded, to enjoy an everyday cultural experience in a supportive, friendly and social environment. The pilot was very successful and had a dramatic impact on both the cinema's staff and operations and the audience members. The Tyneside's DFC programme is now being presented across the UK and Ireland as an exemplar of how to set up such a programme, and researchers are still engaged in evaluating the project via observational methods and interviews with attendees as it progresses over time.
Collaborator Contribution Tyneside Cinema gave us access to space and to the dementia friendly showings in order to engage audience members in evaluation, feedback, and follow-up in-depth interviews. They contributed tim to the design of the evaluation activities.
Impact Initial findings were reported to Tyneside Cinema and used in their planning of a follow-up programme. Academics outputs in progress.
Start Year 2016
 
Title Care and Connect 
Description Through App Movement, Care and Connect was commissioned for people to rate and find places that were friendly towards people with dementia. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2015 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The application is currently being distributed among local communities within Newcastle with a view to wider expansion in the future. We are still in the early stages of distribution and therefore no impact has been recorded. 
URL https://app-movement.com/d/60
 
Title Let's Talk Parks 
Description This is a participatory platform that allows members of the public to subscribe and comment and vote on design ideas and design data emerging from co-design workshops. Members of the public can also add design idea and data of their own. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2017 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact Shaping decision making about the future of Newcastle City Parks. 
URL https://letstalkparks.co.uk
 
Title Metro Futures 
Description This is a participatory platform that allows members of the public to subscribe and comment and vote on design ideas and design data (including video and audio media of passenger journeys) that has been placed on the platform through citizen-led co-design workshops. Members of the public can also add design idea and data of their own. (including video and audio media of passenger journeys). 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2017 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact https://metrofutures.org.uk 
 
Title SeniorsCycle 
Description The product is designed to log cycle routes and share within a social network. The prototype combines an Estimote beacon, mobile phone tracker application and associated website. When cyclists start a ride, the Estimote Beacon activates the app to load and begin recording a journey. Once completed cyclists can upload and share to a private or public page online. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2015 
Impact We're currently in the process of further developing the software to test with users. 
URL http://www.seniorscycle.co.uk
 
Description Collaborative Housing, Mutual Support & Specialist Care Seminar 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Seminar series from ESRC invited to discuss collaborative housing, mutual support & specialist care including members of the public and partners such as Age Friendly City initiative.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL http://collaborativehousing.net/seminars/four/
 
Description Creative Fuse NorthEast Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange Event 9th Mar 2016 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Simon Bowen presented the Metro Futures project to academics and small businesses in the creative sector at the a Creative Fuse NorthEast CAKE event (Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange) on 9/3/2016. Approx. 50 people in attendance.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
URL http://www.creativefusene.org.uk
 
Description Cycling in the City Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Mapped and discussed cycling activity with 25 members of the general public at Cycle Hub. The questions and discussions focused on leveraging local knowledge of particular routes and places to go in Newcastle for cyclists. People discussed how they found new routes, their motivation for finding new routes and how they found new routes and what they looked for in new routes. This involved using both digital and non-digital means of discovery and exploration, networks of friends and events, online and mobile tools.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Dementia Friendly Cinema Events 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 5 Dementia Friendly Cinema screenings were evaluated with partners at the Tyneside Cinema using ThoughtCloud and a number of qualitative research methods. The aim was to evaluate the success of training for staff and specially co-ordinated screenings for those with dementia and their carers. The evaluation consisted of observations and informal group discussions using ThoughtCloud - a tablet based feedback system and follow up interviews. Initial findings have been discussed with partners and a report is currently being written to share with partners to inform the Tynesides future cinema screening programme.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL https://www.tynesidecinema.co.uk/whats-on/dementia-friendly-cinema
 
Description Dementia Friendly Places App Evaluation 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Patients, carers and/or patient groups
Results and Impact As part of the MYPLACE project the team develop "Care and Connect" and App that allowed people with dementia Sandor their carers to rate places for their dementia friendliness.
This engagement activity was series of workshops and one-off engagements with carers (and two participants with dementia) undertaken in order to understand: a) what participants' experiences have been with public spaces, both 'dementia- friendly' and not, and b) their opinions and suggested revisions surrounding the Care and Connect app.
These engagements consisted of two workshops (12 participants in each), and six one-on-one engagements with carers who expressed a wish to be met alone. Most of our participants were carers with family members in the early to mid stages of dementia (20), although we also had two participants with dementia, six with family members in late stages of dementia, and two who were ex-carers, their family member having passed away.
Participants were recruited through our collaborators; Jesmond Dementia Action Alliance, Carers Northumberland and the Alzheimer's Society and findings were shared with these organisations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Design for Wellbeing Seminar Oxford Brookes April 2015 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation and facilitated session on co-production as part of Seminar at Oxford Brookes University.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL http://bit.ly/1FkgPb2
 
Description Design workshops with Henshaws 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Weekly workshops with Henshaws Society for the Blind to explore how technology might support partially sighted people to navigate their way around the urban environment.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL http://www.myplace.ac.uk/index.php/disabilities-and-older-age/
 
Description Elders Council Newsletter 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact After taking part in design workshops, a small group of Elders Council shared their experiences as part of 2 of their quarterly newsletters which reaches an audience of approximately 2000 older people in Newcastle. This has helped to raise the profile of the project with a much broader community of interested older adults who have requested further information about MyPlace and have taken part in further cycling workshops and Grainger Market walk about interviews.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Engagement of Park Services: volunteers and staff 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 1 x workshop that engaged park services, including volunteers and park staff. The aim was to explore park practices. The insights generated from this and other activities were used to shape the new entity (a parks trust) for Newcastle - which is today Urban Green - https://urbangreennewcastle.org. They have recently been in touch to use some of the engagement process and kit in their organisation.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Future Cities Development Group 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact We have presented current software/ hardware development and research from Open Lab and the Virtual Newcastle Gateshead model to the Future Cities Development Group (FCDG) to encourage more strategic alignment with future research.
A collaborative arrangement between universities and Newcastle City Council, the NELEP, and other policy organisations. This partnership is a first in Newcastle but also is innovative for northern core cities.

FCDG provides a one-stop shop for the universities, Council, NELEP & industry to discuss emerging and new areas of research that could be of benefit to the city, to identify ongoing research being undertaken at the universities and colleges that could be disseminated to a policy audience, and to hear of city intelligence needs to inform future research project bids.

We are currently in discussion with FCDG with respect to their plan for a City Wide Demonstrator Project. Our aim is to incorporate the MyPlace methods and toolkits as part of this wider civic project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL http://www.newcastlecityfutures.org/about.html
 
Description Metro Futures Design Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A series of design workshops and pop-up labs deigned to engage members of the public as c-designers of th e next generation of Metro trains. Participants used bespoke designed technology to capture their experiences of metro journeys and worked together to analyse and categorise their findings and propose design solutions. These citizen findings were shared with the general public via a bespoke designed participatory platform using a range of of digital tools designed by the MyPLACE team. This allowed visitors to the pop-up labs and th public on-line to add, comment or vote on user experiences and design solutions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016,2017
URL https://metrofutures.org.uk/present/
 
Description Monthly Age Friendly City Meetings 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Our team attends monthly Age Friendly City forum meetings. The forum consists of a consortium of partners within Newcastle University and third sector organisations such as Alzheimer's Society and the Elders' Council. Our team regularly contributes insights and updates from our current research and ensures our research is of relevance to ongoing partner issues and interests.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014,2015,2016
URL http://www.qualityoflife.org.uk/age-friendly-city/age-friendly-city
 
Description Parks Life Design Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A series of design workshops around the future of Newcastle's Parks.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016,2017
URL https://letstalkparks.co.uk
 
Description Partnership Workshops June2014/Jan 2015 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 2 partnership workshops were held to engage partners in discussion about expertise and involvement in MyPlace. The workshops brought together a useful combination of both academics across universities and faculties (9 of the Co-I, 4 researchers and 3 Phd researchers) but also, council staff members working across social care (2) and neighbourhood planning (4), professional architects (2) and third sector organisations such as the Elders' Council (3), and Henshaw's Society for the Blind (1). The first workshop in June 2014 encouraged discussion on what collaborative research could mean in the context of citizen engagement in urban planning and development and a number of presentations from academic collaborators were presented to discuss. The second workshop which took place in January 2015 was to plan specific case studies with partners on specific projects partners were working on. As a result researchers were able to take forward future work with partners focusing on Grainger Market, Grainger Street, cycling infrastructure and associated consultation with older adults, and future workshops with Henshaws.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014,2015
 
Description Presentation Cycling Forum Feb 2015 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation to the cycling forum to discuss the potential and challenges of data collection using mobile phones for informing cycling routes and health benefits. The discussion raised awareness with forum of how to consider the experiences of those who do not use mobile phone cycling trackers potentially coming from a particular demographic and that those who do not currently cycle often, were considered harder to reach in terms of understanding their experiences and barriers to taking up cycling.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Presentation on MyPlace Activities 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk presented at the Cooperative Neighbourhoods Working togged event organised by Newcastle University. 25th January 2017
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Presentations to Newcastle University Business School 3rd March 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Undergraduate students
Results and Impact Two talks presented By Peter Wright and by Clara Crivellaro To Newcastle University Business School about MyPlace case studies as best practice examples of co-production and service design.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description SeniorsCycle Prototype Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact The workshop aim was to further understand perceptions and use of mobile technology for older cyclists who had recently come back or interested in taking up cycling again. The workshop took place at the Bike Hub, cafe and cycle workshop, at the Quayside in Newcastle. We worked with 12 cyclists and 2 members of staff to try out a prototype system for tracking and sharing cycling journeys. The outcome of the workshop highlighted particular qualities of routes that older people who were just coming back to cycling liked to look out for when finding places to go. The workshop also highlighted the significance of social recommendation of routes and trusting those who had similar cycling experiences and interests. We fed these insights back to staff at the Bike Hub and to project co-ordinators at Newcastle City Council who are developing health and well-being programmes around cycling. As a result we are now further developing an app and website around particular qualities of cycling focused on social and well-being benefits rather than performance related health benefits such as supported with other more commercial health related digital services.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Urban Design Workshops with Elders' Council 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact We developed 3 design workshops with a small group of members from the Elders' Council to a) understand their experiences of engaging with council decision makers on urban planning and development and b) understand the potential role that technology could play in future forms of engagement with older people. 8 members of the council attended day long workshops in Dec 2014, Feb 2015 and Mar 2015. As a result of these workshops we were able to highlight the challenges facing the public more generally, but older people in particular in contributing to discussions on urban planning. While we used technology to collect evidence about people's experiences of particular places, using audio-visual data and maps, the technology helped to focus the group on what they felt was important about the specific places we visited and gave them confidence to discuss their particular concerns with planners and engineers in the context of new transport infrastructures. We were able to take these insights back to Newcastle City Council to discuss future potential of technologies to support such forms of communication and exchange and we are now in the process of working on designs to support future work in this area.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014,2015
URL http://www.myplace.ac.uk/index.php/community-exchange/