Conference Agenda

The rate of homelessness is rising, resulting in a need for better-designed services to support those affected. Building on the sector's acknowledgement that personalised support is needed to reverse this trend and based on the psychological concept of the emotional home, we propose a tool that helps those experiencing housing issues feel empowered to better express their housing needs to support teams. The tool breaks down the complex concept of 'home' into tangible components of the feeling of home, developed through qualitative studies. Here, we discuss the process of working in partnership with a local charitable service provider to refine the components, and we present the tool's initial assessment and potential to mitigate the inherited power dynamics in a situation where help is provided for vulnerable individuals. This research will be helpful to those involved in the design of services to support vulnerable people affected.

Understanding the impact on individuals and the socio-psychological effects of residing in continuously developed high-rise and densely populated urban areas is a crucial part of assessing the quality of interior spaces, particularly in how this may feed into a human-centred urban design process. This research offers a novel, neuro-scientific research approach using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to establish a connection between emotions and the spatial conditions of urban environments. The study utilises data collected through fMRI to shed light on the intricate relationship between urban design and psychological well-being, underscoring the value of incorporating neuroscientific approaches into urban studies. By unraveling cognition patterns associated with different emotions, the findings advocate for the leveraging of these insights to improve urban livability and ensure that design practices are centered around human experiences.

Visual communication, particularly realistic visualization, has been found to be effective for facilitating constructive discussion on issues related to the built environment. Here, we make the case that a browser-based, intuitively designed 3D visualization interface could widen access to such approaches increasing opportunities for co-creation. Using this type of easy-to-access tool could allow community members to own the process of creating a shared vision for their city.

The rapid expansion of modern cities has created an urgent need to explore innovative approaches to development to address sustainability challenges. Vertical cities are one of the potential solutions to optimize the lives of residents by using space efficiently and introducing advanced transportation. Leveraging Minecraft's multiplayer online game, we constructed a prototype multi-level city and conducted a behavioral simulation experiment. In this experiment, 30 participants devoted over 5,000 hours to creation, experience, and observation. This study investigates the viability of Minecraft as a collaborative design and behavioral research platform, focusing on constructing vertical cities and exploring their travel needs. It represents a novel approach in multi-user collaborative experimentation through a gaming platform, marks a new attempt in the field of collaborative design and behavioral analysis.

Public transportation in urban environments should be inclusive and accessible to offer this service for all people. This research aims to identify issues in the devel-opment of autonomous shuttle services in future public transportation systems for children with intellectual disabilities. An issue-based information system (IBIS) anal-ysis was retrospectively conducted based on a concept generation phase. Four con-cepts were evaluated by five experts. The findings show that the main tensions in this context can be categorized as interaction, physical, and independence. Interac-tive elements can both create value and lead to confusion for the target group. The physical design of concepts affects feasibility, viability, and perception. Independ-ence is a desired quality for the target group but often comes at a price of less in-dependence for other stakeholders such as family members. Finally, the study sug-gests that there are tensions between the qualities of integrity, cognition, and user experience.