Project Details
Description
Card-based methods have become established as valuable tools in the early stages of the design process across several fields. Similar to decks of playing cards, their physical nature provides a tactical interaction that delivers contextual information to designers fingertips. They drive and democratises multiuser and multidisciplinary design efforts.
The Cardographer project involves card tools, or decks, which cover topics including Design, Cultural Heritage, Ethics, Policy-Making and Data Protection. These are integrated with the Cardographer platform that captures and digitises their usage and produces data-driven visualisations and analytics. We employ Cardographer in teaching, industry engagement and ongoing research projects.
To date this has been primarily concerned with the use of physical card based tools used in colocated workshops. However, the current world situation has rendered group research activities of all kinds unfeasible. Therefore we prioritised an ultimate goal of the project: developing equivalent, accessible and agile digital versions of the Cardographer tools for use by distributed and remote participants.
To pursue this, we will utilise established online sandbox gaming platforms, which offer robust infrastructure and interfaces, as reference test-beds. We will implement our card tools on these platforms and conduct a series of adapted Cardographer activities with our network partners. This will gather feedback and give us insights into adapting existing physical processes into a virtual setting and inform the design of our future bespoke platform.
The reflective process of adapting existing tools will provide lessons around issues including:
- Practicalities, benefits and limitations of using existing systems
- Challenges of working with cards remotely and internationally
- Technical and ethical issues
- Benefits and limitations of this approach in practice.
These lessons will form a case study of practice with wider implications and application to others within and outside the U21 who may be looking, or indeed be compelled, to adapt colocated physical research practices to an online remote, distanced context.
The Cardographer project involves card tools, or decks, which cover topics including Design, Cultural Heritage, Ethics, Policy-Making and Data Protection. These are integrated with the Cardographer platform that captures and digitises their usage and produces data-driven visualisations and analytics. We employ Cardographer in teaching, industry engagement and ongoing research projects.
To date this has been primarily concerned with the use of physical card based tools used in colocated workshops. However, the current world situation has rendered group research activities of all kinds unfeasible. Therefore we prioritised an ultimate goal of the project: developing equivalent, accessible and agile digital versions of the Cardographer tools for use by distributed and remote participants.
To pursue this, we will utilise established online sandbox gaming platforms, which offer robust infrastructure and interfaces, as reference test-beds. We will implement our card tools on these platforms and conduct a series of adapted Cardographer activities with our network partners. This will gather feedback and give us insights into adapting existing physical processes into a virtual setting and inform the design of our future bespoke platform.
The reflective process of adapting existing tools will provide lessons around issues including:
- Practicalities, benefits and limitations of using existing systems
- Challenges of working with cards remotely and internationally
- Technical and ethical issues
- Benefits and limitations of this approach in practice.
These lessons will form a case study of practice with wider implications and application to others within and outside the U21 who may be looking, or indeed be compelled, to adapt colocated physical research practices to an online remote, distanced context.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 31/07/20 → 30/06/21 |
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.