Through the act of participatory mapping, the community, along with the research team, wields thumbtacks and yarn to create a communal awareness of the potential landslide risks in the area. Human Centered Design
Sensemaking
Designing systems with a human centered focus is central for allowing users to gain full value from the system. In the case of the participatory 3D mapping (P3DM) applied to the landslide risk assessment project, the 3D mapping allows users to relate to a context (the actual landscape of their community) they are already familiar with, and therefore provides minimal intellectual processing in order for use. The visual, and physical cues on the 3D map directly relate to the mental map in the users mind that represents the actual physical world.
As the community members share their individual observations, gathered through daily activities, they start to understand how their viewpoint relates to others. Once a language is established, using thumbtacks, yarn and other reference objects, the community can begin to organize their cumulative knowledge of the geographical and weather processes of their area. Similar observations mentioned by many members offer a reference for frequency of events and increase the value of the communal model. The participatory 3D mapping process is enriched by each community member who adds his or her mental model of the area. Once merged with the insights discovered through geographical surveying, the new model is the product of many minds. Community members participating in the exercise or informed of the results now have a richer understanding of the forces that surround them. Daily observation continues with the mental model of the observer now undoubtedly altered for the better.
Potential Risk Lake
Once the community, through interaction and the application of knowledge has manipulated the map, the community then has an easily accessible and well-understood model to make decisions and plan for the future.
Climate Change Basin
Distributed Cognition
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Risk Assessment Delta
P3DM for landslide risk assessment uses distributed cognition (DC) to map local knowledge. DC is an approach to cognition that considers that the unit of analysis can be greater than a person and the range of events considered part of cognition to be greater.
Conclusion Participatory 3D mapping as a component of a multi-phase data synthesis program for landslide risk assessment in Nunavut communities considers the human factors that should be central to any design challenge. Risk assessments that have been conducted in Nunavut communities previously have failed to adequately incorporate community knowledge or take a human-centered approach. By including a participatory mapping process as part of the risk assessment program, not only do researchers gain valuable local knowledge, but communities have the opportunity to reach greater understanding which fosters future decision making. Participatory 3D mapping, as proposed in the project, incorporates understandings of distributed cognition and sensemaking to create a human-centered design. Rather than only producing a report that may be inaccessible or hard to understand, including participation as a key part of the process centers the needs of the communities that are at the heart of the design challenge undertaken.
The proposed process of mapping uses DC since it spatially illustrates and offloads the knowledge of multiple people. The base map is prepared with geographic data, onto which community members layer their observations. There may be many types of observation and many people involved. Participants physically pin, paint or delineate with yarn observations of risk in their communities, creating spatial markers of individual knowledge into a collective whole. The result is a map that is spatially organized to depict knowledge in a visual way that allows for future collective decision making based on the DC of the map.
We applied concepts learned in the Human Factors course to solve the problem we defined using techniques learned in Business and Design Technique. Martin Berry, Dustin Johnston-Jewell & Lauren Snowball