Sing City by Service Design Innovation Mdes at the London College of Communication

Annah M. Kassen | 22 November 2010 Masters of Design Innovation & Creativity in Industry Service Design Thesis Report

thank you A big thank you goes out to the people who met with me to talk birds & ideas at different stages in the project. Your insights were tremendously valuable in steering its course. Thank you John Thompson for approaching a student group; it’s always more interesting to work from real life situations. Thank you to my MDes class mates for the much-needed camaraderie; congratulations on finishing a very intense and interesting year. Thank you to my course tutors, Alison Prendiville & Cordula Friedlander, for the guidance, the interesting conversations, and for introducing me to the area of design I had been looking for without knowing. Finally, thank you to my parents, without who’s support—in every sense of the word—I would not be writing these words.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have lost our connection with nature. Listening to birdsong is a way of connecting back, and our mental health improves when that connection has been made.â&#x20AC;? - Dr. William Bird

singCity | service development report

synopsis SingCity is a service that combines technology and birdsong, encouraging people to go outside and enjoy their local environments. This report follows the progression of research, design methods and reasoning employed in its development. A final breakdown of the service includes how the ideas were tested, adjusted, and finally placed within a context of Systemic Change.

contents 4 context & setting the stage 7 introduction 8 background 12 selecting a user 14 design thinking 16 observation & understanding 18 Lewisham 20 urban landscape 32 events 39 sound 47 design research 54 case studies 58 development

singCity | service development report

66 concept development 68 analysis 70 branding 74 strategy 78 service 90 testing & feedback 98 scouting 100 feedback 104 considerations 106 conclusions

chapter 1 context & setting the stage

“Wildlife is good for us, it’s a natural tonic that lifts our sprits, clears our minds and helps us get some exercise, too! So making space for nature doesn’t just help birds, plants and animals – it’s good for people.” Dr. Mark Avery, Director of Conservation RSPB, Natural thinking

singCity | context & setting the stage

mission To provide a quick, uplifting break for busy people by re-acquainting them with birdsong in the streets of London.

introduction Starting with an idea of John Thompson’s (Head of Green Scene in Lewisham) for an iPhone app that recognises birds, SingCity subsequently arose from this latent desire to use design and technology to enhance the experience of going outside. We are nearing the end of 2010, declared International Year of Biodiversity by the World Health Organisation. As we face an increasing presence of dauntinc global issues, it is easy to forget that many of them affect us an immediately local level. Some of these include: endangered species (including a long list of British birds, RSPB 2010), climate change, economic recession and a growing number of mental health disorders within cities. With this in mind, there is an opportunity for design to explore solutions that : 1) are low impact and/or beneficial to the environment 2) provide an alternative to consumer culture

3) facilitate individual and community wellness This project strives to attain all three and each is explored in more detail through the report. Following is a brief introduction to how they are elaborated: 1) Because people tend to care more for things that they know, raising awareness of birds and their habitats, even at a basic level, could potentially benefit local ecologies if it touches enough people. 2) Regarding the second point, the service is designed to be free, sponsored by strategic partnerships. Joining should be equivalent to taking up a hobby, without expensive specialised equipment or time-consuming lessons. 3) It has been shown by numerous studies that individual wellness benefits tremendously when people spend time outdoors around something green; this contact with nature has proven to be effective even in small doses.

singCity | context & setting the stage

‘Nature and green space can be seen as a great outpatient department whose therapeutic value is yet to be fully realised.’ - Dr.William Bird The theme driving this project was the use of birdsong (meaning the different calls/songs of birds) as a vehicle to engage busy people with their local environment. Technology is explored as a motivator to fit light exercise and relaxation into a packed day, and to encourage interaction with the rich biodiversity accessible to everyone at a local level. SingCity’s ambition is to empower participants and provide them with the tools necessary to make small positive changes in their own lives and communities. This report outlines the process underwent in the design of SingCity as a service, including interviews with experts in the birding world, case studies and user testing. Unless otherwise credited, all photos and sketches are my own.

intro: background lew ish a m This project began with a discussion at the Lewisham Council and initial research was conducted within that area. Over the course of it, the service evolved to reach all of Greater London. Nevertheless, certain things learned in and about Lewisham were quite formative, providing a direction for the project, right from the start. Lewisham is a lively area with an active community that offers an array of green, social and outreach and initiatives. However, it is also one of the boroughs most heavily affected by the current recession and budget cuts. It soon became clear that a low-cost solution benefiting the health and wellbeing of the community was an ideal goal. While the service itself is dependant on technology, it became important to include a low-tech component, independent of smart phones, GPS or broadband. Speaking to people in parks revealed that, despite the positive initiatives taking place in Lewisham, many

residents still enter green spaces to commute, walk their dogs, or to take in the sun on warm days. Most people had little interest or knowledge of their local ecologies (including birds), nor of the benefits of spending time outside. While being aware of these topics may seem insignificant to busy people, they are actually vital on personal and societal levels for a number of reasons: For instance on a personal level, enough studies to make it common knowledge have associated the benefits of regular light exercise (such as walking outside) with increased productivity, wellness and physical health. hea lth & nat ur e A 2007 article by the Sustainable Development Commission, Health, Place and Nature, begins with an introduction to the current health situation in the UK and begs the question of whether we should be stronger intervention on the topic: The health of the UK population

continues to improve, measured in terms of increasing life expectancy and decreasing infant mortality. However, significant problems remain. Health inequalities persist and obesityrelated diseases are increasing. Poor health is expensive to the economy. For example, mental illness costs the UK an estimated ÂŁ76 billion each year, obesity up to ÂŁ3.7 billion per year. Such a statement suggests that better preventative measures would be beneficial to slow down health concerns wherever possible. On the subject of wellness, many studies are being conducted in the UK with frightening results, as one such report describes: The World Health Organisation estimates that depression and depression-related illness will become the greatest source of illhealth by 2020. Mental health disorders affect one in six people. Mental health and wellbeing are not just the absence of disease but a state in which a person is most fulfilled, can make sense of his or her surroundings and has purpose in life. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Natural Health, 2007

Indeed, the “Survey of physical and mental well-being in South East London,” currently being conducted by King’s College, has interviewed and tested over a thousand people in the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. Although the research is still ongoing, the recently published results indicate that only 34% of the people interviewed “reported doing more than 30 minutes of light exercise 2 or more times a week.” This is far from the weekly dose of movement recommended by the NHS: You should aim to do a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate

intensity exercise on at least five days a week (or more). This can be done in one session, or it can be split into a number of sessions, lasting at least 10 minutes each. Moderate intensity exercise is any activity that increases your heart rate, and makes you slightly out of breath, such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming, or cycling. - www.nhs.uk With results of parallel studies being conducted on the benefits of the natural environment on human health and wellbeing, there is a real opportunity to address the topic of mental health indirectly though this project.

singCity | context & setting the stage

The benefits of exercise and natural world on our wellbeing are nicely introduced in this excerpt from an article by the RSPB, called “Natural Thinking:” About 60% of the UK’s population is physically inactive. Obesity, a major symptom of inactivity, is growing rapidly, affecting over 20% of the population, including 16% of children. “Natural Fit” outlines the benefits for the NHS and society from physical activity. Regular moderate physical activity reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, strokes, cancers, disability, osteoporosis, depression, anxiety and sleep problems. It is also a

vital component in preventing and reducing obesity. Walking is the best solution to the public health problems of inactivity. Walking and enjoyment of natural green space is cheap, accessible to the majority of the population, and one of the few leisure activities that is increasing. With walking, the motivation to continue with exercise comes from the natural environment and social contact with walking companions. Drop-out rates for ‘health walks’ programmes are much lower than for people attending gyms, because exercise becomes a secondary motivation, surpassed by the attraction and enjoyment of contact with nature. - Natural Thinking, 2010

wa lk ing

bir dsong

Befittingly, there seems to be somewhat of a walking trend on the rise in London. Organizations such as the NHS and Transports for London, as well as some smaller private initiatives, are offering an increasing number of services, online and otherwise, encouraging people to walk to work, walk in a group, walk for health, walk for fun, walk for 20 minutes and so on. The websites often feature the health benefits of walking as well as different ways and reasons to get started. This reinforces the current momentum for services motivating people to get out and move, and hints at some potential partners who may eventually be interested in joining forces.

While choosing to focus a project on birdsong may seem a far stretch from the information covered so far, they actually fit quite naturally. Birdsong in this case is used as an incentive to go walking outside. Birdsong itself also appears to have therapeutic benefits, as this article from The Independent demonstrates: Dr. Bird also recommended birdsong for the elderly and for those who suffer from high levels of stress. “We have lost our connection with nature,” he said, adding: “By having birdsong, it’s a way of connecting back, and our mental health improves when that connection has been made.” Research has found that ‘ultra waves’ increase in the brain when subjects are shown a natural scene, and Dr. Bird said the same effect occurred with birdsong. – A. Akbar, 2007 The following study shows another facet of this—almost mysterious—calming effect: A project at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, funded by The Foundation for Art and Creative Technol-

conservation ogy, involved playing the sound of the dawn chorus to patients and visitors. The researchers found that children were less anxious about their treatment when the song was playing, and now the idea is to be researched further. It is thought the calming sounds affect parts of the brain involved in emotion and can distract patients from the medical treatment about to happen. Some believe that playing bird songs may result in patients requiring less pain relief, which could help them recover sooner after treatment. -www.topnews.in Although there is still much research to be done on the topic, the idea of combining birdsong with mental and physical wellness in a project, and to facilitate them through technology seemed like a logical progression.

Finally, a major influencing factor for this project was the current state of our local ecology. Amongst the many frightening statistics are the persistent facts that endangered species lists are long and cities are encroaching on the natural equilibrium. Awareness on the part of citizens is important, but it is also intimidating and easily forgotten when the everyday takes precedent. Although a majority of people spoken to for this project may not know exactly what species are in danger, awareness campaigns and guilt trips are so often catapulted through the media that it is impossible to be totally unaware of the current state of our planet.

singCity | context & setting the stage

This projects seeks to involve people at a personal level, allowing them to see positive changes at a small scale and develop a sense of ownership. The drive is an (admittedly Eutopic) idea that if enough people make a small difference, the results can be gigantic; if everyone who votes or pays council tax put out some birdfeed this winter, maybe the Cockney Sparrow would cease to decrease so rapidly in numbers. It is the belief that humans and nature can coexist, need to coexist rather, and that our lives will be better for it.

intro: selecting a user identification A few different user groups were considered in the development of SingCity, knowing that choosing one would greatly affect the final outcome. Some of these groups included the residents of Lewisham, the elderly, bird enthusiasts etc. However, the final decision was reduced to three finalists: 1) people who use iPhones and don’t have time to go outside 2) school children 3) minority groups Each of these had its reasons for being seriously considered, and choosing one was not easy. 1) busy people People who use iPhones and don’t go outside could benefit from contact with nature and taking a break from everyday stress. They represent a large group of active citizens that has not yet been touched by the many ecological initiatives and campaigns that are trying so hard to be noticed. Also, 12

through associations such as work, leisure and family, they could potentially introduce new like-minded users to the service. 2) school children Children, well, “are the future.” They are also enthusiastic, fast learners who should be spending as much time outside as possible. A recent paper by the RSPB outlines why: Some of the strongest findings relate to children’s interaction with nature: a) contact with nature improves children’s concentration and self-discipline, but children have less contact with nature now than at any time in the past b) playing in a natural environment improves children’s social, mental and physical development c) the behavioural symptoms of children with attention deficit disorder (ADHD) are reduced when children play in a natural environment d) children use the natural environment to recover from stress and this helps

to reduce mental health disorders. Also, two of the professionals I interviewed highly recommended I work with children. From their experience, it is extremely rewarding to teach keen learners who are generally fascinated by the topic. 3) minority groups Finally, targeting people who have just arrived in the UK was recommended by some professionals who had done work in some of the poorer areas of London. Their argument was that new immigrants often feel neglected and tend to very much appreciate projects that reach out to them. These can result in a smoother integration with the rest of the community, better-adjusted families and socially responsible citizens. A service such as this one could help introduce them to London, and facilitate a positive integration.

selection process Choosing one target audience came about thanks to a few key points. First, because of the nature of the project (using technology to enhance the experience of going outside) it was important to reach as many people as possible who actually use broadband and smart phones. This unfortunately, eliminated school children from the list; while they are increasing users of technology, most of them do not own smart phones, which are a back bone in the structure of the service. It became clear that reaching as many people as possible from outside of the “green initiative” could potentially have the greatest impact. While tailoring the project to new immigrants and minority groups could be helpful in sustaining wellintegrated communities, the focus seemed to miss the mark. Finally, early research demonstrated that there was a wealth of information about

birdsong and the outdoors (including books, websites, audio, apps etc.) readily available to those who sought it. This suggests that there is no real need for one more motivating factor to compete with the plethora of existing information. The RSPB (Royal Society for Protection of Birds), is a proactive and energetic organization with around a million members throughout the UK. However, for the most part, they are only reaching and being heard by those million members, who, chances are, are already convinced about the cause. Another example is the Big Garden Birdwatch, a much anticipated event that is highly mediatised and boasts almost a million participants a year (britishbirdlovers. co.uk). It is a survey event that occurs over the period of one weekend in January and involves sitting quietly behind a window for one hour. There is an opportunity to use birdsong in creating something dynamic that gets

singCity | context & setting the stage

people together and outside all year round, drawing in those who don’t habitually engage with nature. With the help of technology, ecological surveys could benefit from resulting data. According to the London Datastore, there are 7.75 million people in the city of London alone. This represents a lot of people who have managed to live along side these conservation initiatives and more, without taking notice of them. conclusion Knowing that targeting one group, does not prevent reaching others as well, the decision was made to target regular users of internet and smart phone technologies who are ‘too busy’ to go outside. This decision provided direction in the development of a brand; it did not by any means diminish the perceived need to create a low-tech component for those with no access to these technologies.

intro: design thinking “Design thinking is not about choosing between different options, it’s about choosing options that weren’t perceived in the first place.” – Roy Green on Design thinking in Business. context In March of this year, the Young Foundation wrote a report Innovation and value: New tools for local government in tough times on the importance of innovation in a recession. According to the report, properly anticipated budget cuts can be an opportunity for creativity, resulting in increased efficiency, social benefit and sustainability, amongst other things. Their view of the potential of innovation is described in the following: Innovation has been described as “the creation and implementation of new processes, products, services and methods of delivery which result in significant improvements in outcomes, efficiency, effectiveness or quality”or “the development of new ideas (products, services or models) to meet unmet social needs.” This implies a step

change in how work is done, with a move to radically different ways of delivering services. This project began with a request for innovation (how to use technology to enhance the experience of going outside) and from the very start, design methods were integral in shaping its progress. In Marty Neumeier’s (author of The Designful Company) words: “The fact is, if you wanna innovate, you gotta design.” br ea k dow n of ph ases The SingCity concept evolved through a course of the following steps: - Defining a problem - selecting a user group - observation & understanding - concept development - testing & feedback - conclusions Within each category, different research tools and design methodologies were used to solve problems and further understanding. Following is an introduction to the Design Thinking strategies employed during the SingCity project. The first two catego-

ries, Defining a problem and Selecting a user group have already been discussed, and the others will be described in greater detail within the body of the report. Below is an overview of the methodologies employed through the final four phases. observation & understanding This was a very broad category that lasted a long time and ranged from speaking to people in parks to trying to teach myself birdsong. The design research methods employed included secondary and primary research, questionnaires, expert interviews, participation, as well as photo and video documentation. concept development The first methodology used to initiate this phase was a mapping of all the collected information. This paved the way for brainstorming, sketching, user profiling, storyboarding, identification of stakeholders and touchpoints. Case studies were also examined to explore what similar initiatives are doing, what sort of technolo-

gies are currently being used, how certain ideas could be re-purposed and what sort of partnerships could grow from this. This was the phase where a brand identity was developed, which provided a vision to keep the project on track. testing & feedback These two elements occurred throughout the length of the project, albeit at a small scale, to determine whether an idea was worth pursuing or not. However, testing of the final outcome involved prototyping specific elements of the service and having potential end users try them out. This allowed for the right adjustments to be made in order to make the final outcome more appropriate and enhance the user experience. Right: rapid prototyping of website architecture

singCity | context & setting the stage

chapter 2 observation & understanding

Over the course of this project, I had the pleasure of conducting informal interviews with experts in various fields. They helped feed the research, define priorities and give direction. The meetingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that often took place over a cup of teaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are summarised alongside the work within each section.

singCity | observation & understanding

Lewisham: spark

IN T ERV IE W John Thompson | Head of Green Scene Nick Pond | Ecological Regeneration Manager, Lewisham Council 24.06.2010 My meeting with the Lewisham council’s John Thompson, Head of Green Scene, and Nick Pond, Ecological Regeneration Manager, is what kicked off this project. I arrived at the meeting with some back ground research on the area and on birds, and having spent some time wandering through Lewisham and Ladywell Fields. I was looking to find out about their specific request and to learn more about where they saw this project going. John Thompson had had the idea of creating an iPhone app, much like “Shizam” (which recognizes songs on the radio) but adapted to the songs of birds. He also mentioned another app called “In the park” that involves maps and cartoon characters that tell you what to do, resulting in experiential learning. Some further discussion revealed that he was actually interested in using technology to create “something innovative to enhance the experience of going outside.” They expressed a need to get more people

singCity | observation & understanding

into green spaces, as well as a certain difficulties by stating that the elderly tend to feel vulnerable and people tend to avoid places where they think there has been conflict. Also, they mentioned that school teachers love when others come into their classes and teach kids about the outdoors, but they rarely go an do it themselves. To set a context, I was very curious to hear more about Lewisham and they told me about some of the current projects taking place geared toward health and nature. Some of these included Nature’s Gym, the Healthy Walk Initiative, Clean + Green Schools, and Rivers & People, all of which are making a positive contribution to the borough and its residents. I decided to experience one of these events for myself; it would give me a chance to know the area a bit better and talk to some people. My experience with Nature’s Gym is described further in the report.

urban landscape: parks As everyone seems to be saying these days, London is reportedly one of the greenest cities on earth in terms of parks. I visited some of them as research to get an idea of the public green spaces in London. Some of these included Hyde & St. James Park, Ravenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Court, London Fields, Southwark Park, Surrey Quays and Ladywell Fields.

There is no question that they are very popular in good weather, especially when attention has been paid to the landscaping. Ladywell fields for example, showed an interesting contast between the Northern entrance that has recently undergone a major re-design and the southern half which is essentially a large field of grass surrounded by trees. The northern entrance was teeming with people walk-

ing through the meandering paths, sitting by the creek and using the sports facilities, where as the southern half was utterly empty, with the exception of one man lying in the grass very far away, who probably wanted to be left alone. This got me thinking about what factors in green spaces tend to attract people.

singCity | observation & understanding

urban landscape: people Everyone I spoke to over the course of this project listed the sun as their major insentive for going outside. Indeed itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true; in good weather, Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parks are crowded and lively. However, some of them seem to be more so than others. This could have to do with their location, but as I previously mentioned, other factors such as landscaping seem to motivate as well. A quick analysis of crowded green

spaced indicated that people appear to be drawn to more people. This is a common occurance seen in many areas, for example, I am less likely to choose an empty restaurant, even if other factors ar favorable. It seemed that the more options a place had to offer (ie. a river, sports, seating, coffee, flowers etc), the more likely it was to also attract those just passing through.

singCity | observation & understanding

urban landscape: wildlife While open spaces attract people, they also attract wildlife. This biodiversity can be planned or accidental and spanns across flora and fauna. Biodiversity, like with the phenomenon of people attracting more people, can grow exponentially if given the chance: one species can provide a habitat for another, which in turn would provide food for a third who then may enrich the habitat of a fourth, and so on.

Water is a great place to start as it harbours the ideal conditions for the insects and plants that feed the birds. However, individual plants can attract specific species as well, for example the robin, who can feed off of elder berries in the winter. Not surprisingly, the range of plant and animal life in landscaped areas seemed to have an effect on the number of humans who would flock there as well. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the well-known circle of life; helping the birds, does in fact help the bees.

singCity | observation & understanding

urban landscape: signage The signs I came across in London Parks served many functions. These ranged from communicating wayfinding to wildlife, history to current events. They were of all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and demonstrated a total lack of coherence in the identity of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green spaces. This is not an actual problem; a person

cannot be in more than one park at once, and their experience hardly depends on whether the info board matches the one next door. The variety was more of an indication that green spaces are managed at a very local level. This was something to consider from a service perspective: that adding new information or overhauling the whole signage system of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green spaces would be very costly and complicated.

singCity | observation & understanding

urban landscape: city streets In spite of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famed and abundant park land, some of the finest moments of quietude and exposure to wildlife can be found in residential streets. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a broad-leaf tree on the sidewalk, long grass in a garden or vines spilling over a fence, there are plenty of places for small animals to hide just off the main road. Because these areas are usually well protected from the sound of constant traffic, they are ideal for listening out for birds.

Indeed, several organisations have recognized the untapped potential of city gardens, and are campaigning for people to help the conservation cause by letting things grow. The London Wildlife Trust’s “Garden for a Living London” initiative state the following: “Our gardens can help our city and its wildlife cope with the adverse effects of climat change. There are over 3 million gardens in the capital. They can provide shade, absorb carbon, soak up flood water, retain water and help to cool buildings. A wellmanaged network of gardens stretching across the capital would also help wildlife to move more freely and adapt to climate change.”

singCity | observation & understanding

urban landscape: abandoned Another source of untapped potential for wildlife is abandoned lots. In London, there are many. Inherently wild, if these plots of land could be rid of their rubbish and weeds, they could benefit not just wildlife, but the community itself. Some of these benefits might include: - a sense of accomplishment - help for species at risk - a safe place to be outdoors - self respect and ownership - aesthetic appeal

singCity | observation & understanding

events: green gym

interv iew Jessica Kyle | Nature Conservation Officer Chris McGaw | Lewisham Rivers & People Officer, Lewisham 29.07.2010 In July, I joined The Green Gym team in Sydenham Wells Park. This is where I met Jessica Kyle, Nature Conservation Officer who runs the program, and Chris McGaw, Lewisham Rivers and People Officer, who has a keen ear for birds. Nature’s Gym is a group that comes together every week to exercise by doing groundwork within parks. The tasks and the locations change but always remain out doors, and everyone can ‘work out’ at their own pace. Members come from all walks of life, from retirement to rehabilitation and, as we shovelled sawdust, cleared paths and pushed wheelbarrows, no body was short of conversation. When the few hours were over, I felt great. This experience was not so much bird-related, but it allowed

me to understand how a service could create a winwin situation for all of its stakeholders. Thanks to this program, within a few hours, paths in Sydenham Wells Park had been maintained, we had all gotten some hearty exercise (as well as tea and cookies) and members of the community, some needing it more than others, had spent a good time with friends. I spoke to Jessica and Kyle afterwards and they thought it a shame that people no longer know enough about natural history and don’t tend to go out and look at what is in their own back yard anymore. I asked Kyle how he had gotten into learning birdsong, and he replied ‘Curiosity.’ Recognising different species by ear came from wanting to know what he was hearing around him. Harnessing curiosity is a powerful tool.

singCity | observation & understanding

In active pursuit of mental wellbeing: A similar alternative approach is time banking, a form of mutual volunteering where people exchange skills, helping others and themselves at the same time. Almost 200 time banks have been set up in the UK, with more than 7,000 people offering their skills in return for time credits, which they can then use to "buy" someone else's skills or services. It is part of an emerging community-building approach to health and social care, called "co-production". The model has been adopted by Rushey Green surgery, in Lewisham, south London, one of the most deprived areas of the UK. People can be referred to the time bank by their GP or health professional, or self-refer. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/feb/18/mentalhealthhealth

events: a date with nature

interv iew Dawn Thompson | Events Volunteer RSPB “Date with Nature” 30.07.2010 Visiting one of the RSPB’s ‘Dates With Nature’ where they had some telescopes set up at the Tate Modern for the passerby to observe Paragrin Falcons perched at the top of the tower, I spoke to one of the representatives about how the RSPB as an organisation, reaches out to people. Dawn Thompson is a volunteer and organises various bird-related events. She has found that the greatest impact is made around people who aren’t normally used to this sort of attention. According to her, the most positive feedback would come from events geared at minority groups, schools, women’s clubs and “people in general who tend to feel excluded.”

Her advice for reaching and touching people was to know what you are talking about and to be enthusiastic as you can about your subject. She reinforced that being around somebody knowledgeable is very motivating. She was encouraging about the project, claiming it was appropriate for one of the greenest cities in the world.

singCity | observation & understanding

birds: RSPB

interv iew Tim Web | Connunications Manager RSPB 23.08.2010 Once again at the Tate Modern, I met with Tim Web, Communications Manager at the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, of which I had recently become a member. I was interested in getting their perspective on my project, and also to hear similar initiatives taking place with their organisation. Tim Web got involved with the RSPB because he realised that helping birds actually has an impact on a vast range of ecological and conservation issues. When I asked about how they promote themselves, he was quick to mention that negative campaigns don’t work, and that the only way to win people over is to “pass on the message to love nature.” He also mentioned that birdsong has proven to be very popular in the past through such mediums as birdsong raido and wakeup alarm calls. Apparently the RSPB is relatively slow with jumping on board of new technologies, but they have tested a first attempt by sending updates of their recent Albatross Campaign directly to phones. It was quite successful. He did express that using smart phones, GPS locators, photo uploads and live surveys could do a lot to boost their education initiatives. For him, technology such as the

use of iPhones and social networking, is a good and cheap way forward and not seen enough in the conservation realm. The RSPB has a new person in place to take charge of this but the project is in its infancy. When I asked about choosing a target audience, he agreed that if the service relies on smart phone technology, that I should target its users. Also, there are quite a few initiatives taking place at the moment for children and minority groups. For the latter, he spoke about the “Wild Place Your Space” project for communities around the Lee Valey area. The following is an excerpt from the website: Lee Valley Regional Park is working with the RSPB to deliver a three year social inclusion project: Wild Place, Your Space. The project, currently in its first year, aims to encourage people living within easy reach of the lower Lee Valley Regional Park to engage with the nature on their doorsteps. Research has found that some of the diverse communities in East London feel excluded from parks and open spaces and are therefore missing out on the health and mental wellbeing benefits that visits to green spaces can provide. The project aims to introduce these communities to the rich variety of plants, animals

singCity | observation & understanding

and insects found along the Lee Valley, from Enfield down to Tower Hamlets, where it meets the River Thames. For children, he recommended I look at a website called ‘Mission Explore’ by The Geography Collective, consisting of “geography activists, teachers, academics, artists and guerrillas, come together to encourage (young) people to see our world in new ways.” (www.missionexplore.co.uk) They have provided a service that consists of a book, a website and now an iPhone app that encourages kids to go out and explore the cities through fun challenges. The RSPB itself also has a rich, fun site for children: www. rspb.org.uk/youth, complete with games, quizzes and awards all centred around wildlife. He thought that the RSPB’s “Dates with Nature” could fit in nicely with my project. These are low-tech events where RSPB volunteers set up some equipment and go interact with the public, like the telescopes aimed at the Peregrine Falcons on the Tate Modern tower. He also mentioned that photo competitions were a good way of getting people engaged. This is something I intend to incorporate on the SingCity website.

sound: birdsong Being fairly new to the subject, I decided to become more familiar with birdsong by pairing the audio with sketching and writing of mementos. My personal experience was that I would learn the song quickly by associating it with the size, shape and beak of the bird. Learning names was more difficult. Mnemonics help a lot with the name retention and anecdotes made it more engaging. This was something to keep in mind for games and quizes, as well as getting people generally interested in birdsong.

singCity | observation & understanding

sound: recording Deciding that learning from mp3s and web sites was a bit confining, I decided to try my hand at amateur recording. The images are screen shots of videos taken in some of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parks, some as early (or late) as 4:30 in the morning. There is no question that certain times of day, like dawn for example, are much more conducive to a fulfilling birdlistening experience. Factors such as city noise, air traffic, and the fact that birds focus more on finding food once itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s light enough, all influence how much a person can hear. However, whenever I really tried, I was always able to find something, even if it meant walking a few hundred meters to a quieter place.

singCity | observation & understanding

sound: listening to cities

Max Dixon and Helen Stanforth, RSPB volunteer managing telescopes at the Tate Modern this summer.

“Evolved without earlids, hearing hardwired for fight or flight, we now live our lives largely in a learned unlistening. Where once the world spoke to us in a thousand voices full of meaning, our global megamachine now drones with scant regard for us and without purpose. We have tuned out from nature and into culture, but we don’t quite have the right hardware and software for coping with what is now waste, but could be resource.” - Max Dixon Introduction for ‘Scapeshift’ currated by Angus Carlyle and Irene Revell singCity | observation & understanding

interv iew Max Dixon | Consultant 30.07.2010 Max Dixon is a city planner who has done much work around soundscapes. During his time working at the GLA, he drafted the Mayor’s “Sounder City Report,” and now advises independently. I was given his contact by Andrew Jones of the Urban Greening for the Greater London Authority, whom I never actually got to speak to. We met at the TATE Modern and discussed projects he has been involved with, people who could be useful for SingCity, as well as the impact of soundscapes. Before I continue, his definition of a Soundscape is as follows: “All the sounds in an environment at a particular time, in context with the human perspective. Sounscapes are vital to cities and contribute to the value of certain areas and the wellness of the people there.” He was very interested in SingCity, stating that climate change means we have to rethink our relationship with the environment and that sound is a very powerful way to do this. He also stressed that people get inspired when they take a chance to listen to things that they don’t normally choose to hear. One successful way of doing this is to actively listen and “see sounds as sounds, not as information.”

I explained the three-part nature of the service (website, app, physical locations in parks) and he helped brainstorm the different levels of it. He suggested a service such as this could potentially could go so far as affecting the cost of life insurance for users, through a system of eco-banking that runs independently of currency: “I wondered if you were making a broader connection between ‘service design’, and the need for more of our behaviour and consumption to be set within the framework of ‘ecosystem services’ – what we currently tend to count as valueless because we get it free, but much of which is actually more essential to life than what is within our economy? If you are able to include options for various components of service design, could one option for the points system be ‘Banking for Real’ – participants accumulating signifiers of ‘natural capital’, affirming that they value nature for its own sake, as well as demonstrating ‘investment’ in their own, and the planet’s, health?” Another suggestion which has now been incorporated into SingCity, had to do with the low-tech option in parks throughout the city: with a standard mobile phone, people could dial toll-free

numbers to listen to the different bird calls common to that area. Because a majority of people now own mobile phones, this option would be accessible to a wider age group including tourists, and act as a form of advertising to help promote the service. One of his later emails touched on a topic that I was already quite adamant about: to make wildlife accessible to everyone, everywhere in London, and have people recognize that you don’t need a park to interact with nature: “I wondered if you might consider offering, as one additional option in the project, community-generated trails local to participants’ homes? One of the problems is that many workplaces are sited in the areas where there are fewest birds, and the most traffic noise making it hard to hear the subtle calls of smaller species, and midday is often not the best time. Also, it may be hard for newcomers to ‘tune in’ their hearing on short breaks. Some larger parks and nature conservation sites offer regular guided birdwalks, of course, but I think there is great potential for technology to assist in generating local trails rich in more unusual species – linking smaller open spaces, green corridors, and past private gardens which are good for birds. Core content can, of course, be kicked

off by enthusiastic local birders, but expanded by surveys by morning joggers, evening and weekend walkers, etc. Such survey input, promoted in other contexts by BBC, RSPB etc, is, of course, particularly important for improving understanding of the seasonal impacts of climate change. One message I try to stress at conferences is “Climate change, the century’s greatest challenge, demands that we live in greater harmony with other living things. Reconnecting with our sound worlds could play a pivotal role in the cultural transformations this will require.”

the concept of soundscapes. It is from the book Hearing History: a reader by Mark M. Smith.

He recommended I visit Surrey Docks (which I did), an unexpected green haven within the city. I was also given a long list of contacts and references that came to me subsequently via email (see appendix). Among these were contacts of Angus Carlyle and Peter Cusack, sound artists and faculty of the London College of Communication, whom I met with later on in the project.

- Walt Whitman ‘Song of Myself’

One of the most important things I took away from my conversation with Max Dixon was the importance of sound within our cities and how it is so often overlooked. Below is an excerpt written by a Canadian Composer he referred to, R. Murray Schafer, who is credited with introducing

Chapter 1 Soundscapes and Earwitnesses R. Murray Schafer Now I will do nothing but listen… I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night.

The soundscape of the world is changing. Modern man is beginning to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment radically different from any he has hitherto known. These new sounds, which differ in quality and intensity from those of the past, have alerted many researchers to the dangers of an indiscriminate and imperialistic spread of more and larger sounds into every corner of man’s life. Noise pollution is now a world problem. It would seem that the world soundscape has reached an apex of vulgarity in our time, and many experts have predicted universal deafness as the ultimate consequence unless the problem can be brought quickly under control.

singCity | observation & understanding

In various parts of the world important research is being undertaken in many independent areas of sonic studies: acoustics, psychoacoustics, otology, international noise abatement practices and procedures, communications and sound recording engineering (electroacoustics and electronic music), aural pattern perception and the structural analysis of language and music. These researches are related; each deals with aspects of the world soundscape. In one way or another researchers engaged on these various themes are asking the same question: what is the relationship between man and the sound of his environment and what happens when those sounds change? Soundscape studies attempt to unify these various researches. Noise pollution results when man does not listen carefully. Noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore. Noise pollution today is geing resisted by noise abatement. This is a negative approach. We must seek a way to make environmental acoustics a positive study program. Which sounds do we want to preserve, encourage, multiply? When we know this, the boring or destructive sounds will be conspicuous enough and we will know why we must eliminate them.

design research: perspective

www.stby.eu

interv iew Geke van Dijk | Strategy Director at STBY Design Research for Service Innovation July.2010 I spoke to Geke van Dijk at a service design event early in the summer. Her and her husband Bas founded a design research company called STBY in Amsterdam, and now run a parallel studio in London. They specialise in user-centered design research and their clients range from large corporate service networks to small social innovation projects. While our conversation was not specific to my project, her advice on user-centered research was very helpful: As a company, they cannot interview the same people for two separate projects. This means that depending

on the nature of the assignment, they usually begin with a few participants and end up creating their network sample end users from scratch, through word of mouth. They now have a very large network of people they have worked with and claim it keeps life exciting. Apparently choosing the right people to observe is as much a part of the job as the research and documentation that comes after. Interviews with potential end users involve prompts, observation through video, photography and conversation, asking people to document something specific for

singCity | observation & understanding

a certain amount of time (like taking photos of their breakfasts every day for a week for example). She recommended, for the sake of personal fulfilment, to choose a focus group that is different from my self, whether through age, ethnicity, interests etc. She said that you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to speak to a lot of people either; that getting good discussion from five to ten participants can provide more than enough useful information. The conversation was very helpful in giving me insight on how to understand potential users.

design research: motivators

To acquire a general understanding of motivators for going outside, common knowledge of local birds and to gauge the role of some technologies, I spoke to a sample of just over 70 people and had them write down a few answers. In the interest variety, I went scouting at school, in parks, at an outdoor music festival and at a service design event. A majority of the people spoken to were in the 13 to 39 age range and do not actively listen to birds. The most commonly recognised species were the crow, owl, pigeon, robin and blackbird. An average of the time they

spent outside was 19 hours per week, which works out to almost 3 hours per day. It is important to note that this was during the summer and that most of the people I spoke to had already made the conscious decision of going outside. They did not need convincing in good weather. Most of them were fairly social and stood apart from a potential user segment that stays in and does not understand the benefits of going outdoors. This being said, very few people were able to identify 3 endangered bird species. To my surprise however, the electronic games section also remained curiously blank,

singCity | observation & understanding

relative to other questions. This changed slightly with the 40% who were users of iPhones and Smart phones. 15% of the people interviewed had participated in the Great Garden Birdwatch or a similar conservation survey, however most people seemed to really appreciate birdsongs, as seen from the comments left at the question: â&#x20AC;&#x153;What does listening to birds make you think of?â&#x20AC;? (Check the back page of this report). A transcript of the questions and tallied results can be found in the appendix.

design research: lunch breaks

In an attempt to understand my intended user group, I contacted some busy people I know to find out about how they spend that one moment of spare time that most of us make room for: lunch. Again in the interest of quantity, I also spoke to some contacts in other countries, the idea being that relatively cosmopolitan cities have similar dynamics when it comes to the work day. I asked them to send 2 pictures of their daily lunch routine, and to answer these three questions:

Their replies are on the following pages; for the most part (except for the odd language clarification) they are un-edited. I did not ask for permission to publish this information, so names have been removed, but a list of participants will be provided in the bibliography.

1. How much time do you take for lunch? 2. Where do you usually go? 3. What do you do when you have finished eating?

i | Consultant, London 1) Usually between 30 and 45 minutes. 2) I try to find a park or other open space nearby to sit outside, unless the weather is too bad. 3) I usually take a short walk for some fresh air and exercise, and to experience a bit of connection with nature, even if it is only through trees and sky. ii | Architect, New York 1) generally 20 mins-half hour 2) closest place to grab cheapest food, then eat in lunch room 3) go directly to the computer oh no!! I see the pattern, I am not doing what WE design for (movement!!!) but i do walk 30 mins in the AM and 30 mins after work, minimum everyday....and then my practice...I guess that may not be what you are testing for... iii | School Teacher, Paris 1) It takes 45 minutes because I am a talkative person ;) and I like to chew slowly and like to talk ;) 2 ) In the teachers lounge, packed with other teachers :) 3) When I’ve finish, well I have a cup of tea or coffee with my colleagues and chat, and then I prepare my afternoon class…. if there are things to finish up. iv | Engineer, Paris 1) 1.5 to 2 hours 2) at a restaurant with col-

leagues, or on my own at home 3) I go back to work v | Music Marketing, Munich 1) If I go with collegues to the canteen, about 30-45 minutes. If I cook something at the office, about 30 minutes. Sometimes I even just warm something up (microwave) and eat it in front of the computer - so no break at all when I am really busy. 2) The media park where I work at has a canteen called Casino. You can choose between 4-5 dishes each day. In the beginning I liked it a lot. But after a while it’s not that satisfying anymore. Sometimes I stay at the office. And very very seldom we go to a restaurant near by. 3) Have a little chat with collegues, surfing in the internet or going straight back to work ;). vi | Designer, London 1) Where possible enough time to buy and eat my food at my desk :( Tho sometimes I do meeting up for work lunch meetings which would be for an hour as that’s the max in UK normally tho we never seem to get it due to the feeling of work related pressure. 2) Anywhere around where I am freelancing so it always changes. 3) Make a coffee or tea and start back at work. vii | London Borough Biodiversity Forum 1) half an hour

singCity | observation & understanding

2) we have a small dark dingy “kitchen” area where I end to go (working in a park service, if I go out to enjoy the park all I see is problems and more work so its not really a break! 3) read the paper / chat to colleagues (not always about work) Pics are harder to get to you due to restrictions on how we can download stuff to the network but if I get a chance I will send then later. viii | Lewisham Council, Parks I’m sorry but I don’t take a lunch break. ix | Lewisham Council, Green Scene 1) 1hour 2) Home or Stay in the office 3) Spend time in the garden or carry on working x | Film Editor, Montreal 1) 15 minutes on a crazy busy day, 30 minutes is what i take on average, 1 hour when I have a chance, depends if I am on set or working as an editor. 2) I usually walk and eat. I like to bring my lunch or grab something at a nearby resto, I always try to get a walk during my lunch break 3) Usually take a stroll, maybe grab an espresso or green tea. xi | Green Space for Greater London 1) It varies from day to day. Sometimes I miss it altogether, other times an hour. It’s usually 30 mins or so though

2) I walk to a local sandwich shop or supermarket, and will go and sit in a local open space if the weather’s ok, if not, I come back to our lovely beige office 3) If I’m in a park I’ll stay there till I’ve had my full break. If I’m in the office I tend to go back to my desk soon after. Well, that’s a useful exercise in realising I don’t use my time properly!

xii | Marketing Research, Toronto 1) An hour, pretty much always 2) To a restaurant, cafe, somewhere to buy my lunch. Sometimes I will pack a lunch and eat outside in a rooftop garden if the weather is nice 3) take a small walk, go to a book store, buy a coffee xiii | Scientist, Vancouver 1) 30 min - 1 hr (I thought this was a lot but I see Clemence takes 1.5-2h!) 2) I eat in the lunch pod next to the lab with some other students. Every day, we check out the progress in the construction site right out the window.

3) If I have time, afterwards I go for a short walk to check out the nearby community garden. xiv | Comunications RSPB, London 1) Between 20 to 40 minutes 2) I sit at my desk. 3) I resume work... but more often than not, I didn’t stop work to eat. Sometimes I do take breaks and go for a stroll around Victoria Street; window-shopping. Very rarely, on sunny days, I may head for St James’ Park. If I’m not working in the office, I’ll try to take a break but there is no typical pattern to this.

xv | Designer, London 1) between 10mins-1hr, pends on the days allowance 2) quick run to the shops, the fridge. Then sit at my desk or if lucky relax in the park. 3) Work. xvi | Design Management Grad, London 1) 60min (i’m effectively on holiday right now!) 2) Everywhere and anywhere! ranging from cafe, restaurants, sometimes home, m&s. 3) either out browsing the streets, to the movies, back home.

xvii | Manager, Rennes 1) 30 minutes 2) To the basement! There’s a rec room set up, but it’s not at all convivial. 3) Usually I’m finished eating pretty quickly so I read the paper, or check facebook on my iPhone! xviii | LSE Student, London 1) 1hour 2) Cafe on campus 3) Go to my next class.

singCity | observation & understanding

case studies: outreach

interv iew Mark Pearson | Head of Cockney Sparrow Project 09.09.2010 Mark Pearson is a passionate birder and, as his colleague told me, amongst London’s most knowledgeable people in the field. He became interested at a young age when his dad spontaneously decided that the bathtub could be put to better use, and turned their family home into a bird rehabilitation center. Currently, Mark is heading the ‘Cockney Sparrow Project,’ launched by Peabody housing association, in partnership with the London Wildlife Trust. He had actually forgotten about our meeting and I had to be escorted out to find him, perched in an observation hut and overlooking pro-

tected wetlands in Tooting, where he was keeping an eye out for migrating species. It was a beautiful day and we stayed there to chat. According to Mark, the Cockney Sparrow Project is a catchy title acting as an umbrella for social activism (involving the physical and mental wellbeing of residents) as well as for deeper ecological issues. The Sparrow itself is at a rapid decline in numbers, and he his working closely with a handful of estates, organizing events and training people to make these places friendlier to wildlife. The following is from an interview Mark gave on the WFT website:

The main challenge is loss of habitat. Conserving what we have on a large scale (green spaces, wetlands, woodlands etc.) in London has to be a priority – whatever we have left needs robust protection. But isolated sites are of limited value in the grand scheme of things – the idea that wildlife can be ‘boxed up’ on reserves just doesn’t work, and it’s all about looking at conservation as a part of all our lives and neighbourhoods. In London, and especially on housing estates, there’s so much we can do; planting native hedges and shrubs (and protecting those we already have), reseeding unused amenity grassland and lawns with colourful wildflower meadows, making sure birds like

house sparrows and swifts have the nooks and crannies they need under our houses’ eaves to raise their families in, putting up bird and bat boxes…. There’s plenty we can do, and you don’t need fancy qualifications or pots of cash to make the difference. Like SingCity, he is trying to empower people so they can make positive change a part of their lives. His advice with this kind of work is to always tailor your message to your audience, mentioning that it is also crucial to know what you’re talking about and to be enthusiastic and excited about it. Other tips include: - involve people instead of preaching to them - paint and decorate to show some physical evidence of

what has been done, make it fun - provide participants with a sense of ownership - spread the word and plan well in advance for each event - strongly engaging 10 people is better than barely reaching 100 Mark highly recommended working with children, saying that “the 6 to 9 range are smart enough to fully understand, but young enough not to be jaded.” He mentioned that working only with birdsong might be a bit tricky because, while they do call all year, actual singing occurs from March to June, with the peak time being in April and May. This being said, he claimed the project could be interesting

singCity | observation & understanding

as long as I “aim low with common bird’s and don’t try to be exotic.” I asked him for the 10 most common birds in London, and off the top of his head, he gave me this: balck bird / chaffinch / goldfinch / green finch / dunnock / robin / mistle thrush / magpie / carrion crow / wren The sparrow is not in there. Similarly, alluded to testing by recommending to start with a microscopic example of the service, so that I could see how it would be applied at a larger scale. As we were walking back to the office, he identified a few birds as we heard them through the trees and told me a fun trick is to always have an mp3 player at hand because birds call back.

case studies: websites

Style: BirdBox, the iPhone cuckoo alarm clock is witty and charming, and the Guardian has a lively section on wildlife.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Trendyâ&#x20AC;? music websites that constantly feature new artists and offer streaming, user accounts and free downloads.

Popular social networking sites that feature user-generated content.

Various walking initiatives in London. Includes TFL, the NHS. Walkit.com specialises in planning circular walks.

The RSPB has an easy-to-use bird indentifying tool and a fun website for kids, full of games. Geocache and Mission Explore are adventure games that use GPS coordinates.

Sound maps are becomming increasingly popular amongst bird enthusiasts, artists and others. AuioBoo is â&#x20AC;&#x153;a mobile & web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and upload audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear.â&#x20AC;?

singCity | observation & understanding

development: practicality Meeting with Valerie Selby gave me an interesting perspective on how this project would be viewed by city councils. It took me a while to find the place, hidden in Battersea Park, but once I did she was very welcoming and we spent a lovely afternoon discussing in the shade of the trees growing on the other side of her office window. After I had explained my project, I asked her opinion on selecting a user group. She said that from a council perspective, working with ethnic minorities to integrate them in the community would be quite beneficial. She admitted however that as long as there is one main target group, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a matter of making small modifications to reach the others. In terms of the low-tech component of the service, she suggested I stay away from constructing new signs, in particular (for I had mentioned this as a possibility), ones with buttons to press

interv iew Valerie Selby | Chair of London Boroughs Biodiversity Forum, Wandsworth 24.08.2010 and audio built in. From past experience, she stated that they tend to be very expensive to install, so they would not be widely available They also tend to break down a lot and require maintenance. She liked the idea of texting/calling a number to hear a song and her recommendation was to contact a company that creates sign inserts or ‘interpretation pannels.’ These are durable signs that can be created according to the desired size, and inserted flush into existing structures. I saw this as a lovely, non-invasive (and non-expensive) approach to getting the message around town. She also said that these companies often work together with certain clients for co-promotion and may be able to offer some sort of discount or mail-out advertising of the service as part of their own promotion. Shellysigns apparently has done this with bins and benches; this sort of partnering could bring the cost down for local councils if they are the ones funding it.

Concerning the website, she said that if I wanted to work with city councils, to pay close attention to how it is hosted, who does the maintenance and who the administration. She mentioned that due to the economic circumstances, people are now vacationing inside the country and that there may be an opportunity to expand the service through massive scale park organisations such as the National Trust, the biggest out-door charity in this country. When staying in the city however, she suggested contest ideas such as ‘Where is your nearest open space?’ At the time I was interested in creating a component of the app where users can choose to become visible and see if any others in the community are out doing the same thing. She liked this idea and told me to looke at the “Cruising” app that is apparently very popular right now among gay men.

singCity | observation & understanding

We discussed contribution to local ecological surveys, and interview ended with her recount of Peter White, who—granted in analogue— has been recording daily and contributing to ecological surveys for a quarter of a century (see image, left). Out of sheer passion for birds, Mr. White has been doing the same walk for the past 25 years and diligently taking note of what species he hears/encounters along the way. Despite the statistical content, his writing betrays a lively sense of humour that make his contribution a pleasure to read. Over the years he has gathered a following, and the information is now being distributed to a variety of delighted conservation initiatives. She said that once the project was more under way, to contact newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, who may be interested in doing an intro feature for it.

development: culture

interv iew David Lindo | Urban Birder 24.08.2010

I came across David Lindo’s work as ‘The Urban Birder’ over the internet. I emailed him a summary of my concept and he agreed to meet with me in Notting Hill, late August. David Lindo (pictured, second from left) is a bird enthusiast who was allegedly born clutching a pair of binoculars. He is also a rising media figure, avidly determined to change the face of ornithology. I was intrigued by his work because, as he puts it, “My whole vibe is about getting urbanites to realise that there is a world of wildlife under their noses within cities.” The homepage of his website puts it like this: From an initial rustic beginning, the vast majority of 21st Century mankind now live in cities. It’s estimated that by 2050 at least 75% of humankind will be living in cities and there are already about 3,400 cities with populations of more than 100,000 in the world today.

But within our sprawling cities there is birdlife to be found — sometimes in surprising abundance. If we open our eyes, look up and listen it will make itself known to us. Urbanisation is the necessary result of the population expansion that our species is experiencing at an unprecedented level. What we have to do is learn how to appreciate the nature on our doorsteps and then we will fully understand the importance of worldwide conservation. One of the first things he spoke about when we met was that, even on a slow day, there is always something to look at. He had taken a group of families on a tour recently and there weren’t many birds around. His solution to this was to turn over a rock, under which the kids were delighted to find a colony of insects that apparently kept them entertained for the rest of the hour. He was adamant to say that anyone can be an explorer in a city; “it’s just a matter

singCity | observation & understanding

of breaking boundaries and finding / seeing things that no one else has.” He gave me some information about birds, like the fact that they mostly sing only once a year, but insisted that in London there is always so much to see; his first advice to people is always: “Look up.” His second word of advice is to forget people and see the city as an animal would, as a habitat: “See buildings as cliffs and mountainsides.” On this note, he told me about the Tower42 Bird Study Group that he has started leading. It involves meeting other keen birders before sunrise once a week, being escorted to the top of the Tower 42 sky scraper and trying to spot migrating birds. It takes place during the spring and fall, and is free for those who are willing to get up that early. He added me to the mailing list, and one morning in September, I followed him and a motivated, shivering crew of six, to well above the roofs of London.

I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say that we saw many (any) migrators if not for a couple seagulls and pipits, but the experience in itself was quite meditative. We were there for three hours, during which we witnessed the morning fog turn white and the moving lights of the city change colour until the sky was bright enough to drown them out.

singCity | observation & understanding

I took a lot of pictures of buildings, the Thames and the sky. One of the problems I will run into with SingCity is how to motivate people to go out in bad weather. Perhaps this material can be used to show it is worthwhile.

chapter 3 concept development

“I try not to listen to my iPhone – every time I plug it in, I’m reminded of what David Hockney said about people who do, which is that they are wasting their time, because they may look but they don’t see. So I stare hard at the trees and the changing sky and I breathe fresh, grassy air.” - Rachel Johnson, for The Guardian singCity | concept development

analysis: brainstorming

Pre-brainstorming: a gathering, categorization and analysis of all collected information.

Brainstorming, from top: Idea generation, Work breakdown structure 1, WBS 2, Mapping Brand Values.

singCity | concept development

branding: creating cohesion Creating a strong brand for SingCity was important from the very start. It is what gave the project a vision and filtered all decisions made along the way. The goal in branding SingCity was to create an atmosphere that users could identify with and feel good being a part of. Because I was designing for an audience that is not necessarily an avid participant in bird & conservation issues, it was important that the tone differentiate itself from that usually categorizes these. I deliberately chose to stay away from earth tones and solemn or sombre imagery. The style had to be bright, up-beat and catchy. Technical terms are secondary because this is a service about getting people out and enjoying themselves, not about projecting a daunting onslaught of information, when it was not asked for in the first place. If users develop a keen interest in ornithology, SingCity will

provide them with the basic tools to find out more, and users are assumed to be bright enough to conduct further research independently. Much inspiration was taken from The Guardian website, which features intelligent articles and relevant information, yet is easy and fun to navigate. It also demonstrates a strong marriage of images, text and multimedia, making learning a little more fun. Constant updating of information keeps the site alive and keeps users coming back to check it on a regular basis. These are all things I intend to apply for SingCity.

organisations who tend to err toward browns, greens and sometimes navy blue. The service is meant to make a step towards a certain way of life feel natural and enjoyable. For this reason, communication does not focus on the negative. While some areas of the site, for example, may mention that certain species are endangered, it will only do so in a context that demonstrates that the user is actively helping. Anything to do with guilt, preaching or tugging at heart strings does not belong anywhere within the communication.

The Logo is stylized, again for the sake of being fun and light-hearted. Magenta is a very bold and friendly colour that also happens to go very well with green. Despite its frequent occurrence in nature, it is seldom used in the identities of nature-oriented

singCity | concept development

It was also important to evoke the presence of natural sounds within an urban context. Again, existing conservation initiatives encourage people to go to nature reserves, often well outside the city. The fact that this service is immediately local is reflected in the name, but also in the choice of imagery, in which buildings and evidence of daily life are always present.

Furthermore, the service is not a showcase of wildlife photography. There are many websites on this topic with an impressive array of stunning shots and rare birds. In order to reach people who may not have the time or equipment required, photography falls under the umbrella of diary-style snapshots of common birds within an urban setting, the setting often taking precedent over the animal.

On a parallell note, imagery is not limited to idealised sunny days, as one of the goals of the system is to get people to enforce and appreciate nature at their doorstep all year round. The reference to Marvel Comicsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Sin City is intentional, providing an underlying note of grit, edge and adventure to a sometimes overwhelmingly benevolent subject.

strategy: partnerships One advantage of technology is the ease with which information can be shared. Hence, this project also explores potential partnerships with organisations, such as GiGL (Greenspace Information for Greater London), that use wildllife data for conservation and development purposes. For example, the service is designed to send collected data—obtained through GPS locating and user input—to wildlife surveys. A wide usership could contributing to a better understanding of London’s wildlife and green spaces.

interv iew Mathew Frith | Deputy CEO London Wildlife Trust Mandy Rudd | Director of GiGL 23.08.2010 Nick Pond from the Lewisham Council suggested I contact Mathew Frith and Mandy Rudd; I met with them at the London Wildlife Trusts office. After filling them in on SingCity, I was interested in hearing their perspective on birds and conservation, get some realistic feedback and, having briefly looked into the idea behind GiGL, to see if they might be interested in a potential partnership.

working with the innovative design firm thomas.matthews, the Trust is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their membership numbers. When it comes to birds, they run a 2 day conference called “Birds of London” but apparently (and surprisingly enough) the birding and conservation communities have a history of not getting along so well. They did mention that things were getting better though.

The London Wildlife Trusts are a conservation non-profit organization. According to the website, it is “one of the 47 Wildlife Trusts which form the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a nationwide network of local nature conservation charities which also operates a separate grants unit. [It is] the largest UK voluntary organisation dedicated to conserving the full range of the UK’s habitats and species, whether they be in the countryside, in cities or at sea.”

When I asked them about selecting a user group, Mathew Frith said that working with children was very fulfilling but it is unfortunately only “a drop in the ocean.” They were both keen on reaching avid users of technology, saying that, although there was still a lot to be done, people were beginning to record and share a lot of useful conservation-related information thanks to it. Recording indicator species of birds for example, could potentially give a better idea of urban garden structure.

Despite initiatives such as publishing a seasonal magazine (Wild London) and

singCity | concept development

The London Wildlife Trust is also an expert in wildlife gardening and places a lot of value in public interest. A 2008 article on their website describes the power of harnessing private yards: Never before published figures show that there are over three million gardens in Greater London – 3,267,174 to be precise. That’s an area of 37,942.09 hectares. In the face of climate change and habitat fragmentation, this massive expanse of green space has enormous untapped potential for both people and wildlife. Their campaign, “Garden for a Living London” makes use of bright colours and friendly icons to encourage people to pledge one of 7 gardening actions. The tag line optimistically reads: “Help transform the captial’s 3 million gardens into a network of nature reserves.” Partnering with such an initiative or drawing inspiration from it could be beneficial on many levels.

Speaking with Mandy Rudd, Director of Greenspace Information for Greater London, was quite motivating. She was excited about the idea of getting people to learn to listen to their surroundings and almost ‘tricking’ them into spending time outside. She told me a bit about how GiGL functions as a “one-stop-shop records centre where data is collated, managed and made available for London’s wildlife, parks, nature reserves, gardens and other open spaces.” They work closely with the city as well as private clients and are a nonprofit organization.

In order to input data for a useful survey, let’s say on birdsong, GiGL only needs the most basic amount of information: - the species - the place it was heard - how many were heard - the date

does not matter because individual discrepancies tend to cancel one another out on a large scale. Eager for GiGL to begin employing technology in new ways, Mandy said they could be quite interested in partnering with such a service.

If SingCity users could identify bird species when they hear them and record it in their smart phone, the app and GPS locator could automatically fill in the rest of the information. This information could be sent to conservation data bases such as GiGL. If enough people participate, 100% accuracy

Left: print promotion of ‘Graden for a Living London’ over the RSPB’s November 2010 issue of BIRDS. Above: a garden in Southwark.

singCity | concept development

service: storyboards

When the idea for SingCity began to take shape, storyboarding helped visualise how the service would function in sequence, and how it would be coordinated between its different components. Early storyboards

singCity | concept development

were a way of testing, in a sense, and permitted to clarify certain elements and eliminate others. These two pages contain early story boards, and the next two show a final one for the iPhone app.

Kim Majkut | 31 years In-house designer for a kid’s television company in central London. Recently opened a SingCity Profile page online. Has just eaten her lunch while working in front of the computer again, but today has programmed her phone to remind her to take a break, get some oxygen and focus on something different.

Hearing bridsong, she picks up her iPhone and enters that she has 15 minutes to spare.

She tags someone’s garden as a green spot and the coordinates are uploaded to a live map.

Selecting one of them, she plays the song and a blackbird calls back. She selects “heard it.”

The app generates a 16 minute walk for her by linking several “hot spots” in the area.

In a park, she zooms in on the map and sees what birds are commonly heard there.

Back at the office, she logs her walk and sees the ‘rundown’ newly added to her profile.

singCity | concept development

service: how SingCity works !!!"#$%&'$()"'*"+, !!!"#$%&'$()"'*"+,

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collect

autumn on the move

SingCity is an interactive network, consisting of 3 major components. The first two are virtual and require new technologies, but the last one is physical and can be used for free by anyone with a simple mobile phone. The three components are: 1) a website 2) an iPhone app

SIGN ME UP!

@ABC#DE#9FG#HGGI

BIRDSONG RADIO

HOT SPOTS

DOWNLOAD APP

definitions

d . i . y.

ABOUT

!!!"#$%&'$()"'*"+, !!!"#$%&'$()"'*"+,

home

sort by: sounds | photos | video Oct. 10th 2010 black bird | Bermondsey | 37 sec

profile

Oct. 6th 2010

Kim Majkut quiz results

friends

what kind of birder are you?

view all recordings strolling in the neighbourhood

ear test

Sept. 29th 2010

live map

messages

black bird | Bermondsey | 37 sec

d . i . y.

DIY

3) badges & hot spots trail They work together as well as individually to provide, as the mission states: A quick, uplifting break for busy people by re-acquainting them with birdsong in the streets of London. Following is a breakdown of the role these components play within the service. Left: Samples of the online home and profile pages.

1) w ebsite

of recordings and photos, as well as other items more specific to the topic of birds. It differentiates itself from social networking sites however, because the profile page acts as a personal archive and is not the main attraction of the site. For the most part, the profile page can only be updated by actions that take place away from it such as walking, recording or taking an ‘ear test.’ Friends can send one another messages and view each other’s profile pages, but cannot, as with facebook, post public messages on them.

As SingCity does not require any printed material, the website is the main hub for information. It is visually upbeat and constantly updated, often featuring user generated content such as anecdotes, recordings, contest entries and urban wildlife photos, just to name a few. There are interesting things to do and learn for members and nonmembers alike. Membership is free and once a person has signed up, they can download the smart phone app, also free of charge. The app adds another dimension but is not essential to the service, as most of the information can be found within the website, and progress can be updated manually by the user. Membership means that a user is given a profile page where they can keep track of their activity. Much like with social networking websites, this page will contain a profile picture, a list of ‘friends’ (selected fellow members), a message box and an archive

The website is divided into five tabs: i. home page Where users begin. Like with a newspaper, feature stories change every day. An overall theme (such as a specific bird, an event or seasonal phenomenon) changes every week. Featured usergenerated content, chosen by the website administrators, changes several times per day as new information

singCity | concept development

comes in. The home page also provides a link to a mini-site for kids. ii. profile / sign up Where members can track their activity and those who wish to can sign up. iii. a live map A map of the city that updates sounds and ‘hot spots’ in real time as they are being identified. Sounds are recordings made by users on their Smart Phones. Anyone online can then click any sound icon on the map, listen to it and know when and where it was recorded, thanks to GPS locating. ‘Hot Spots’ are a similar concept, but they have no sound attached to them. They are a record of green spaces in the city, where one would be likely to hear a bird. These do not have to be parks, as a matter of fact, it is expected that a majority will be found within residential areas as an increasing number of users walk down calm streets and by green gardens. Hot spots expire after a month, thus forcing the information

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home profile

add a hotspot live map

add a recording rate a hotspot sound map

ear test d . i . y.

to remain relatively accurate and seasonal. The more people vote for a particular spot, the higher its rating, the more likely the service will be to direct people toward it. In public locations, hot spots will be labeled by the ‘hot spots trail,’ further explained in that section. Both members and nonmembers can plan circular or destination walks (a feature of the iPhone application) by entering their location and the amount of time they have available, next to the map. The map then links the most popular hotspots in that area to plan a route corresponding to the given amount of time.

iv. an ear test page

v. DIY (Do It Yourself )

This is the section devoted to discovery and learning. Within it are games, quizzes, tutorials, mnemonics, photos, info and audio files to help users learn their British birdsongs. There is also an open source component where users can help one another by answering peer questions and contributing to discussions. It is colourful and fun but runs fairly deep in terms of how much birdsong a person can learn if they so choose.

If users get frustrated by always having to walk by someone else’s garden to hear a bird, this is the page to help them. Whether they have access to a bathroom window or concrete lot, this page is full of information that can turn any outdoor space into a bird magnet. Projects run from being very quick and easy, such as putting up a bird feeder, to quite complex, such as digging a proper pond. They can also be chosen according to what bird a user wants to attract. To assist in this decision, certain species with declining numbers, like sparrows and starlings in winter for example, will be featured with easy tips on how to help them survive the cold.

When a member plays a game or completes a quiz, results are updated to the ‘ear test’ section of their profile page. This allows them to see their progress as they move through different levels.

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listen record walk

2) sm a rt phone a pp

to the “plan a walk” page. From here, all they have to do is enter exacly how much time they have available, and the app, using GPS locating, plans a route within this given window.

To the user, the app is primarily a vehicle for taking a breather within their day. As mentioned, when a new member joins the online community, the app can be downloaded for free. It is then automatically synchronised with that particular user’s profile page. Relevant changes made on the profile are automatically updated to the app, and vise versa, to avoid a dispersing of information. It facilitates the process of finding somewhere peaceful, in any given neighbourhood, within a constrained amount of time.

Like with the live map, walks are planned by connecting the most popular ‘hot spots’ in an area that other users have tagged. There are default hot spots throughout London for areas with low activity. Depending on the season or how often new hot spots are discovered, it is possible that a 20 minute route from one location could vary from one day to the next.

If they choose to, users can set the birdsong alarm call as a reminder. When they respond to the alrm, the are automatically directed

singCity | concept development

Once given a route, all the user has to do is follow it. If they choose to, they can tag other hot spots along the way, or even vote for the

ones they like by doing the same thing. Again, the GPS does all the work and again, the information is immediately updated to the website. By zooming in to their location on the map, they can view a list of the birds one can expect to hear in that location, the most common appearing first. Like with the hot-spots, default lists would be provided in the beginning, in the hopes that increased user activity would allow access to real-time data updating. Selecting the image beside the name rotates the screen and provides a brief description of the bird and its song. There is a large photo, and a few mp3 tracks to play. Users can use the tracks for reference or to play out loud, prompting birds to call back.

free time

00:15

linking hot spots…

01234 56789

When a user hears a bird they can identify, they simply select ‘heard it’ either on the info page or beside the photo on the list. They also have the option to take photos and/or record the bird, uploading the track to SingCity’s sound map. All actions are updated to their

start turn right on Lewisham Road

17 minute walk | see next | go

Bird photography from www. theguardian.co.uk, iPhone body from www.apple.com, maps from www.google.com

blackbird play | heard it

robin play | heard it

robin play | heard it 3

wren play | heard it

wren play | heard it 1

start turn right on Lewisham Road

updating profile…

profile page and will appear on the user’s ‘rundown’ at the end of the walk. Real time information uploaded about birds and hot spots would be sent to organisations such as Greenspace Information for Greater London, who manage conservation surveys. This would provide a current and global understanding of London’s ecology, to this day unobtainable without large-scale participation. The information could help in making better informed decisions in areas these organisations advise, such as city planning. It would not be a revenue stream as these are often nonprofits, but could in part (and in theory) help fund the service. Finally, if a user has a bit of spare time, they can decide to go visible and see if any of their contacts from the website are out doing the same thing. This gives the option to meet up in person and listen to some birds, or simply go for coffee, instead of chatting in virtual reality. If the service gained a wide enough usership, members might be more likely to run

record | menu | rundown

into someone they know on the street than behind a screen (lunch hours and weekends, of course). For safety issues, only other members confirmed as ‘friends’ can see another’s ‘visible’ status, and it is possible to block contacts. 3) hot spots tr a il This part of SingCity is available to anyone, including tourists, in possession of a standard mobile phone.

It consists of small circular magenta signs (or ‘badges’), dispersed throughout the city’s public green spaces, for people to fall upon accidentally. Some might be inserted on existing signs, some on city structures, and some may even be fastened to trees (without causing them any harm).

singCity | concept development

They will not all be equally easy to find, and some will require some venturing into urban wilderness. The signs are minimal. The idea is that the bright colour would draw people, and that a limited amount of information would raise curiosity. Below the logo, content would read as follows: SingCity, the name of a bird, a number to dial, ‘free local call’ and finally the website. Calling the number simply plays a recording of the aforementioned bird. Different signs have different numbers, and each plays its own species. Throughout the city, the ‘badges’ that are easy to find revolve around

10 common birds. In green spaces that are less obvious or harder to get to, users may be able to hear some less common ones, both on the phone and off. It was important to have the name of the bird on the badge so people can become familiar with the name in that area and maybe look out for it, even if they don’t use the phone. When a smart phone with the SingCity app is added to the equation, the ‘hot spots trail’ becomes more of a scavenger hunt, and provides a real opportunity to get to know the city. The GPS locater is able to spot the user’s coordinates when they

singCity | concept development

tag the spot, and keeps track of it on their profile. This is called ‘capturing.’ Users can keep track of the badges they have captured on their profile page map. Challenges can be set, like uncovering all of them in a certain area. Contests can eventually be based on this concept, or races to capture the most in the shortest amount of time. Because not every badge is on a park entrance, different locations are allotted a value. The harder a badge is to capture, the higher the value. When a player has accumulated enough value, they move to the next level and are given clues on how to find some of the more rare badges.

badges can only be captured once, but like with hotspots, theis expires after a month. This keeps users capturing their local ones and makes it very difficult to have the entire city’s badges captured at once. Badges act both as an incentive for users to go out and discover new areas. They also play a role in creating exposure for SingCity and attracting new users to the service.

prototyping: test 1

In order to test the notion of discovering urban green spaces, I took the MDes ICI group on a sample walk through Elephant and Casltle. It was designed to take 11 minutes, using google maps, but took about half an hour as we were walking slowly, looking at things along the way and ended up stopping for a little while half way. We were all surprised by how beautiful the area was, so close to the infamous roundabout, and by the little green square, theoretically just 6 minutes from the school, that no body had known existed. Reactions at the end of the walk were positive, although people were quite adverse to the prospect of walking in the rain. A transcript of the feedback video is available in the appendix. I learned that it is very difficult to anticipate the time a walk will take, when pausing to listen for birds. The SingCity app and walk generator will have to take this into consideration.

singCity | testing & feedback

prototyping: test 2

For round two, I eliminated a couple of the previous hot spots, because they had been loud the previous day, and one within an estate had been harder to get to. At the square, where the most birds could be heard, we found that a simple iPhone app such as “Chirp!” was very useful in identifying the birds we heard. However, the speaker wasn’t loud enough for them to call back. While being out alone is meditative, being with another person is also fun because of the conversation it prompts and the little spark excitement it generates by being able to ask someone ‘Did you hear it?’

Out-door photos and video by Iolanda Spataro

singCity | testing & feedback

prototyping: test 3

route 1 | Kirkman House garden travel: 6 minutes

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mark Avery, director of Conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said that bird sounds were a "tonic" for people's general wellbeing.â&#x20AC;? http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-andfamilies/health-news/mental-health-helped-by-birdsong-432885.html

Prototyping SingCity | 30 Oct. 2010 | Annah M. Kassen

introduciton take a break. go outside.

“We have lost our connection with nature. Listening to birds is a way of connecting back, and our mental health improves when that connection has been made.” -Dr. William Bird

instructions - designate 3 days in your week - choose one route PDF for each - set aside a time to go walking right before you eat your lunch - when you reach a green space, take a few minutes to tune out from city noise and listen - can you hear any birds? - can you spot any of them? - take simple notes of your reactions to the experience things to know - each walk should not take more than 20 minutes - if you don’t hear any birds, it’s okay. The important thing is to have moved, seen some green, breathed some oxygen, and focused on something different. - feel free to repeat

“Walking is the nearest thing to perfect exercise - at least as effective as exercise at a gym.” tfl.gov.uk/walking

Prototyping SingCity | 30 Oct. 2010 | Annah M. Kassen

route 3 | Flitcroft Street Garden travel: 14 minutes

“Learning birds’ songs gives an in-depth understanding. It gives you a calming peace while you walk, because listening forces you into complete silence. Knowing what birds fill the trees gives you an amazing feeling of satisfaction.” http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-listen-tobird-songs-a73962#ixzz13lEGLOpM

Prototyping SingCity | 30 Oct. 2010 | Annah M. Kassen

route 2 | Bedford Square travel: 12 minutes

“Birdsong is a high frequency sound - around 5,000 hertz. Any sound between 5,000 and 8,000 hertz has been found to recharge our brain’s batteries.”

For the third test, three walks were designed and sent to the busy 31 year old motion designer Kim Majkut, who works for a television company in Soho. An introduction page stated two quotes, one about birdsong, and one about the benefits of walking. instructions - designate 3 days in your week - choose one route PDF for each - set aside a time to go walking right before you eat your lunch - when you reach a green space, take a few minutes to tune out from city noise and listen - can you hear any birds? - can you spot any of them? - take simple notes of your reactions to the experience things to know - each walk should not take more than 20 minutes - if you don’t hear any birds, it’s okay. The important thing is to have moved, seen some green, breathed some oxygen, and focused on something different. - feel free to repeat I met with her for one of them, to see how it went and get some feedback.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Stimulate-Your-Brain-withClassical-Music&id=175638

Prototyping SingCity | 30 Oct. 2010 | Annah M. Kassen

singCity | testing & feedback

interv iew Kim Majkut | Motion Graphics 11.11.2010 “I love walking around Soho, but unfortunately, the only bird you’ll hear around here is a pigeon. Having worked here for 3 years now, I know this area pretty well and I can tell you that Soho has very few residential areas. In the walk you planned near Goodge Street though, there is a really cute alley, you really don’t feel like you are in central London. I was able to hear some birds there. It’s also really nice around the British Museum, it has a good atmosphere and it’s more quiet. When you go there I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something.

singCity | testing & feedback

If I decided to make this a habit, I would definitely go out in the rain... as long as it’s not torrential with violent wind; the experience really does break the office day up and gives you time to breathe. It’s really nice, especially if you’re stressed out. If there’s somewhere green around here though, the minute it’s nice out, I guarantee you, people swarm there in a second. Usually if I plan a walk, I’ll look for an excuse to do it like a nice place to eat / get take-out, or a coffee at the end for motivation.

Sometimes it’s not possible to get out of the office, but if you could use this service to plan for your commute, for example on your way back home, it would be really nice. I go out of my way to walk through Raven’s Court Park whenever I leave my house. It refreshes me, it’s a good way to start the day. Cafés in parks are also really nice and a good reason to go out, there are some set up in Garden Centers, you’re more likely to hear a wider variety of birds there. Ben and I will often make tea and bring it with us to the park for a change of scenery.”

scouting: quiet in Soho

singCity | testing & feedback

feedback: instalation

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interv iew Angus Carlyle | Sound & Media Arts, LCC 10.10.2010

The following are quotes from our discussion as I showed a presentation of the SingCity idea. On using the service all year: “Pay attention to what birds you can hear because they usually vary according to the season.” On playing a sound and the birds call back: “be careful because you might get some conservationists on your back saying that you are disrupting their natural habitats. Birds are where they are for a specific reason and they also call/sing for a specific reason. Playing a recording might make them think that an intruder has arrived and have its repercussions.

singCity | testing & feedback

I was at a conference in Finland where an artist proposed to blast highly amplified sounds though a wild area that had never been exposed to civilization. The feedback he got against it was tremendous, with conservationists claiming that he would go as far as gravely disrupting feeding and mating patterns.” On song recognition: “It takes a long time to get accustomed to birdsong, and some say the best kind of recognition is through sight. You could have a more speicific selection process, when a user hears a bird, they could go through a series of key feature questions that would help them narrow down the list. Although this veers away a bit from the origin of birdsong, maybe the idea of tying to spot a bird once you’ve heard it is edging more toward the meditative side of the process.”

On ideas for the show: “Well, I’ve had this idea for a while now but you’re welcome to use it if you wish. You could have a series of bird boxes with some very cheap speakers inside, hung up on the wall. When viewers approach, they can hear different birdsongs from inside. You could have some information beside them, and even eventually use these as part of the project down the road. They could be taken to schools for educational purposes, kids could get involved in making their own etc. I would stick to the cheapest mini speakers you can find, and the cheapest mp3 players, the kind that cost 2£. Test them out in your house as you are working so that you become familiar with how they sound.”

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feedback: poetry in sound

Ji Young Shonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s instalation at the 2010 RCA show: leaf-shaped speakers playing birdsongs. Photos by Nicola Sherry.

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interv iew Peter Cusack | Sound & Media Arts, LCC 10.10.2010

Once again, I showed a brief presentation and we talked as the slides moved forward. On the birds I chose in the iPhone app: “Is this information fictional? (yes) You certainly won’t be hearing a bullfinch at this time. You could change it to a chaffinch or a blackbird, those two are pretty common in London all year round.” On seasons: “Is the service going to be adapted to the season? Oddly enough, August is the quietest month. The best time of year for hearing birdsong is when they start up around beginning of January, and they usually go until June. On finding birdsong references: “You could check out the Greater London authority website, Max Dixon was instrumental in getting it up. They should have bird recordings up there; I haven’t checked it in a while though, at least I know they used to.”

singCity | testing & feedback

On birdsong recognition: “grouping the birds on the website according to what you would be most likely to hear in a specific area. The iPhone application that recognises songs on the radio is hit and miss at best, so I agree with the people who said that developing an app that would recognise the songs of birds would be really difficult at this point. Maybe taking the time to look for a bird would be beneficial. Maybe you could also communicate that identifying a bird is not the important thing. What matters is to have listened and don’t feel short changed if you don’t know what it is. Also, even if you don’t hear any birds, you could also focus on other natural sounds that you don’t normally pay attention to in the city. People could start paying attention to the sound of the wind in the trees, how different leaves make a different rustling as the wind passes through them. There are also water sounds and the

sound of your clothing, the sound of your footsteps... It’s about tuning out from the sirens and airplanes and consciously tuning into something that we want to be hearing. Birds are indicative that there are other quieter natural sounds going on.” On mapping sounds: “This is a website I have been working on for some time: www. favouritesounds.org. You should also have a look at aporee.org/map, a German website where you can upload sounds directly from your iPhone. There are already 6 to 7 thousand sounds uploaded on the site; they should have a section for London available already. To help birdsong regognition: “maybe you should organise the information on the site according to how common the birds are”

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where the service could go: schools, community events, introducing revenue streams partnerships. things to change / keep in mind: element of looking, strategic use of quotes / info, outreach, multi-generational contact, time of year… notes: final considerations Although not designed to reach such a massive scale, like facebook and google, SingCity would not require traditional advertising. It would gain exposure through its partnerships with organisations that benefit from the service. This include the NHS, TFL, GiGL and possibly tourist info centres. It would also establish a visual presence in the city through the badges on the Hot Spots Trail. Certain businesses like outdoor cafés could benefit by becoming bird friendly and being tagged as hot spots.

singCity | conclusions

Features could appear on news websites such as the BBC, The Guardian or The Independent, and contests could be followed in free papers like Metro. Revenue streams could be introduced such as a minimal amount of carefully chosen advertising on the website, or an online shop of items that help the user in their SingCity quest. If the service gained enough momentum, it could be used to organise community events and in partnering up with existing ones such as

the Cockney Sparrow Project, that reach minority groups. It could also be developed as an educational model for school children, using fun hands-on methods such as building their own bird boxes, making ‘food balls’ as Christmas presents, and learning how to record and identify birds. Such workshops could even facilitate cross-generational contact by being conducted with groups of elderly people for example, who may have a thing or two to share about wildlife and the birds.

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conclusions: systemic change lev er age points Leverage Points, Places to intervene in a system, by Donella Meadows is a paper that I have been picking up to read every once in a while for over a year now. Every time I do, I learn something new. It is a breakdown of systemic change into 12 categories, and despite it’s 1999 copyright date, the ideas are still astoundingly relevant. This article was also a major influence on my project and, while I can’t claim to have unlocked the secrets of systemic change (on the contrary, I have barely scratched the surface), it provided a compass and a goal to work toward. It also has me now on a perpetual hunt for leverage points, as defined in the introduction below: Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. This idea is not unique to systems analysis—it’s embedded

106

in legend. The silver bullet, the trimtab, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the single hero or villain who turns the tide of history. The nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power. The article lists these 12 places to intervene in a system and ranks them in increasing order of effectiveness. The list is very interesting, but for the purposes of this report, I will focus on the items that resonate with SingCity. 7. positive feedback loops A negative feedback loop is selfcorrecting; a positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more. The more people catch the flu, the more they infect other people. The more babies are born, the more people grow up to have babies. The more money you have in the bank, the more you earn,

the more money you have in the bank. The more soil erodes, the less vegetation it can support, the fewer roots and leaves to soften rain and run-off, the more soil erodes. The more high energy neutrons in the critical mass, the more they knock into nuclei and generate more. Positive feedback loops are sources of growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse in systems. That is why there are so few of them. Usually a negative loop will kick in sooner or later. The term ‘positive feedback loop’ can probably be replaced by ‘exponential growth’. In the article, it is described as a frightening thing, ultimately leading to chaos: ‘Control must involve slowing down positive feedback loops;’ the only way to use them as a leverage point is to slow them down. It is true that when seen as chain reactions or as ‘success-tothe-successful’ loops, the connotations can be horrifying. However, I would argue that if properly harnessed, exponential growth can indeed be ‘positive’ and may even be what we need

in order to sustain life. As a rudimentary example, endangered species need exponential growth in order to make it off the Critical List. Going back to earlier in the report: when the right elements in the food chain are enforced (I spoke of elderberries for robins, p.25), it ends up benefiting much more than the animal who eats them. This kind growth is exponential as well. If a large enough number of people contribute part time to nudging a strategic positive feedback loop in favour of a species at risk, results would be exponentially more powerful than those of a smaller group, entirely devoted to the cause. In the same vein, positive feedback loops could be applied to problems like inactivity and mental health. To start again at a basic level: if someone holds the door for you, you are more likely to hold it for someone else. If this sort of exponential growth led to everyone on earth always holding the door for the person behind them, the world might be slightly less productive, but the loop would not result in chaos. If a positive feedback loop resulted in everyone on earth speed walking outside for 20 minutes a day, the streets of Delhi might get a little crowded, but again, no apocalyptic chaos. I won’t go into detail as to what these loops could be,

singCity | conclusions

but rather conclude the topic with a story: I worked at a company in Vancouver for a couple years, where a majority of the 300 odd employees at head office were young, marathonrunning, dynamic people. Of course, hiring and policies played a major roll respectively as to who got in and how many years they decided to stay, but every once in a while, someone new would arrive, who didn’t fit the mould. There are many ways of not fitting the mould, but for these purposes, let’s say the new guy was ‘unhealthy.’ While the status of ‘unhealthy’ was long and hard to shed (these were yoga-expert-marathon-runners afterall), it was never long before this new guy was attending three Pilates classes a week and never forgetting his new aluminium water bottle to a meeting. My point here is that, like a virus, like national debt, like all those bad things, positive influence also grows exponentially. 4. self organisation When you understand the power of system self-organization, you begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even more than economists worship technology. The wildly varied stock of DNA, evolved and accumulated over billions of years, is the source of evolutionary potential, just as science libraries and labs and universi-

ties where scientists are trained are the source of technological potential. Allowing species to go extinct is a systems crime, just as randomly eliminating all copies of particular science journals, or particular kinds of scientists, would be. Self-organization is basically the combination of an evolutionary raw material—a highly variable stock of information from which to select possible patterns—and a means for experimentation, for selecting and testing new patterns. [...] For technology, the raw material is the body of understanding people have accumulated and stored in libraries and in brains. The source of variety is human creativity (whatever THAT is) and the selection mechanism can be whatever the market will reward or whatever governments and foundations will fund or whatever meets human needs or solves an immediate problem. In short, this section says that a knowledge base is a source of potential which allows for flexibility in a changing environment. This means that the richer the knowledge base, the more patterns can emerge from it, the higher the potential to adapt and survive. It is pertinent on many levels, beginning with the importance of seeing wildlife as one such knowledge base that needs protection: as this accumulated stock of genetic information weakens, so does our potential for flexibility in time of need.

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The mechanics of self organisation are a plight for knowledge. If innovation is fed by bodies of understanding, then we should be striving to gather as much of it as possible, especially when we attempt to tackle a problem. This applies to the collection of data within SingCity. Sending bird and green space statistics to GiGL could also be extended to sending user walking patterns to health organisations attempting to tackle obesity. More concretely, with a steady stream of usergenerated content, SingCity would inherently be a self-organising system. For example, walks would not be predetermined but subject to the opinions of others who have tagged or neglected to tag green spaces in an area, to the seasons, to construction etc. With the rate at which cities change, it was important to have this sort of flexibility built in. In terms of the user, it allows them to know, for example that their own garden could become part of the network, creating an incentive to take action. The individual user is an important ‘knowledge base’ as well, with a powerful influence on their immediate circle, whether they are conscious of it or not. As their ‘knowledge base’ broadens through the use of different senses and exposure to new things, so too would be their potential for making

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new connections and finding innovative solutions in their lives. Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning. Cuts back resilience. Any system, biological, economic, or social, that becomes so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet. 3. system goals The goal of a system is a leverage point suuperior to the selforganizing ability of a system. [...] Whole system goals are not what we think of as goals in the human-motivational sense. They are not so much deducible from what anyone SAYS as from what the system DOES. Survival, resilience, differentiation, evolution are system-level goals. Behind user satisfaction, health and wellness, behind exploring technology, fun for free, saving the birds and combating climate change, lies SingCity’s ultimate goal: Coexistence. Coexistence follows the thinking that contact with nature is not ‘beneficial’ to humans, as many articles claim it to be, but more that lack of contact with nature is detrimental. It is a belief that we are as much a part of the ecosystem as any other living thing, and that the habitats we have built for ourselves, cities, can and need to be a living part of

this ecosystem as well. 2. changing paradigm You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second to highest. But there’s nothing necessarily physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from the eyes, a new way of seeing. Whole societites are another matter. SingCity attemps to start small in the means of paradigm shifts. It focuses on things like seeing your neighbourhood differently and realising there are nice parts of it you didn’t know. It’s noticing small things you didn’t before, and the gratification that comes from that. It’s realising that you can make wildlife come to you and that you can help it in the process. So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about the great paradigm shifts of science has a lot to say bout that. In a nutshell, you keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you keep speaking louder and with assurance from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast

middle ground of people who are open-minded. Contrary to this statement, SingCity will not attempt to “point out the anomalies and failures in the old program.” Indeed, it does not see itself as a “new program” to replace the old. To use a simile, it is more like vitamins for the existing one. It does, however, call for people to be open minded. 1. transcending paradigm There is one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that NO paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own world view, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. I won’t pretend for a second that SingCity transcends or expects to transcend paradigms. I included this last leverage point because maybe people can only do that for them selves. There is a quote I often repeat, whose author I unfortunately do not know: ‘Our greatest downfall as humans is that every generation thinks it knows the right way to live.’

If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe [...]. It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, found religions, get locked up or “disappeared” or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia. a final caution Having had the list percolating in my subconscious for years has not transformed me into a Superwoman. The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that is why societies tend to rub out the truly enlightened beings. Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work at it, whether that means rigorously analysing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that power has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go. - Donnella Meadows

When a person takes a moment to really listen and tune in with their surroundings, the mind lets go of the superfluous and is drawn back to what is essential.

singCity | conclusions

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Still shot of a starling http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Common_starling_in_london.jpg

A small personal victory came when I was walking through Central London and spotted a Starling. While a fairly common bird in this part of the world, I never would have been able to identify one prior to this project, and I think it was my first time actually noticing one. When I saw it perched on the side of a bin, much smaller than I had imagined, I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but smile and, knowing what

song noise it would make if it called, feel like I was seeing an old friend. I reached for my camera, but I think the excitement startled it and as I pressed the shutter release, it flew away leaving me with the smear of colours and tip of a wing pictured above. Nevertheless, I was left with a small feeling of accomplishment as well as the smile, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m waiting for the day Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get to spot another one. A note on the font: SingCity was entirely set in NuSwift, a typeface by Dutch designer Gerard Unger. In addition to its versatility, the name was uncannily appropriate.

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early morning quiet sunshine my home in ireland relaxing countryside woodlands (peace & tranquility) peace peaceful tranquility sleep mornings wildlife the sea (gulls) new dawns peacefulness summer rain morning music birds morning the countryside outdoors morning calmness spending time outdoors the sky childhood countryside timelessness waking up in my fairly home I simply relax freedom and the importance of nature countryside

tranquility morning peace nice environment early morning chillin out it reminds me the early mornings relax peace not sure being outdoors sky trees flying song the countryside freedom summer whistling joy of living peace in the countryside and garden waking up peacefully in the morning wonders of nature music music (natural) release of tension atmosphere/ambience of a landscape birds! ‘that’s a ____!’ or ‘what is that?’ yesteryear countryside when i first moved

out of London to the

country peace nature at it’s best life nature relaxation quality peace nature being away from the city the time i was a kid and was breeding birds not being in London nature relaxation outdoors peace summer holidays my parents house in Cornwall how diverse is the nature nature and being out in the bush summer growing up as a kid holidays summer first thing in the morning greenery peace nature anti-stress calming calm relaxing atmosphere

Answers to the question: What does listening to birds make you think of?

Annah M. Kassen | 22 November 2010 Masters of Design Innovation & Creativity in Industry Service Design Thesis Report