Vision Mapping is a research project aimed at extend the sphere of pedestrian simulation and crowd analysis in the planning and design of buildings and precincts. Using our MassMotion software we have been analysing the science behind people’s field of vision and the impact this has on their decision making. Preliminary research has focussed on the representation of pedestrian’s cone of vision in retail contexts.  Currently retail layout and placement with shopping centres and terminals/interchanges is undertaken with an intuitive approach. The value of adding science and a methodology to the approach is in reducing the risk and cost of spaces that just don’t work, that people seem to ignore or plainly don’t see prior to construction.

As simulation tools continue to increase in their sophisitication, mapping a persons cone of vision will be a valuable tool when offered in conjunction with people modeling skills in 3D environments. This study includes a client focus to identify needs and markets for the research. We have been meeting with designers as well as retail centre owners and operators, leasing agents and airport or station operators and commercial managers to identify the needs and current best practice in the market place.

Next is the use of cameras to film actual fields of vision in poor and good performing retail environments. The footage will be used as part of a calibration process.

This video shows that over time, and with an increase of population going through the same fields, areas will become highlighted showing as ‘hot’ which indicates the line of vision, therefore the interest/ influence locations.

Links – MassMotion. http://www.oasys-software.com/products/engineering/massmotion.html

For further information on this project please contact David Young.

One of the key themes for this year’s Victorian State of Design (SoD) Festival is mobility and a focus of events on Tuesday 20th July. Susan de Vere, Adam Leggett, Dan Hill and I participated in the workshop on the Mobility New Thinking Demonstrator and we then attended Chris Bangle’s public talk on the Future of Personal Mobility.

SoD director Lou Weis convened the group from industry and research to consider four components of our urban journeys; initial choices, waiting, the journey experience and arrival.

Storyboards were provided for three mobility scenarios for discussion and interesting discussions were really the result of this three hour workshop. One of the most interesting discussions were from the group who adapted all three scenarios to reflect mobility difficulties confronted by someone in a wheelchair. What if we all used wheels as personal mobility devices and transport was designed for people to roll on and off?

The group Leaders were – LtoR above – Robyn Healy (RMIT),  Chris Bangle, (former BMW and now Chris Bangle and Associates), Soumitri Varadarajan (RMIT) and Michael Trudgeon (Crowd Productions). Robyn spoke about clothing for mobility, how do you make all modes accessible through clothing transformation, Chris followed with strategies to rethink journeys, Soumitri pulled the premise apart – as only Soumitri can and Michael inspired us to think about the future and where these changes can be best sited in the city.

Each table had a digital scribe – fantastic drawings that I hope we can link to sometime.

In between the workshop and Chris Bangle’s public talk we visited the Creating Liveable Cities exhibition. Greg More told us about his Flowing Data visualisation project for Melbourne Water in which the last ten years of water catchment and use data has been presented to illustrate patterns of use. Its particularly interesting as Melbourne is still under water restrictions from the longest drought in living memory and Greg had us watch one dam when seasonal rains failed to fall and the after effect of never really being able to catch up were evident in the visualisation. Fantastic link between the graphics and sound design.

Below is the Fortune 5000 installation – thousands of suspended test tubes filled with water and messages. Take one to read and reflect. Mine ended up in a bar later on. A lovely piece.

Back in November 2009 we ran the first Arup HackDay. During HackDay people from around Arup gathered to create new tools and mash data over a 24 hour period. One of the tools created at HackDay by Andrew Tsakmakis was re-purposed to create the Secret Lives of Projects.

I’ve long been interested in project-based organisations and how new knowledge can be transferred from one project to another. The Secret Lives of Projects is a visualisation of the content created during an Arup project. It is a thought piece around the question “What is the shape of a project?” and an attempt to visualise some of the patterns of content creation as we work on projects.

The original tool was developed to index data with several features for quick searches. We did some more work after HackDay and pointed it towards a project directory. We then extracted meta-data from email archives and files. People in the email archive were identified and their business units and locations matched. We then linked billing data.

In the excerpt from communication network (below) the nodes reflect a pattern of communication through the project as people email each other. Nodes with yellow or blue dots grow as they bill time and so a picture emerges of who is speaking with whom and who are the key players working on the project. If this tool ran in real-time on your desktop could you tell if people were in the loop or not?

We worked with Greg More from OOM Creative to build an application using Adobe AIR and Flex. The video shows some of the visualisations from the AIR application.

We have been developing MassMotion, a unique 3-D simulation software application that can be used to predict human behaviour within virtual built environments. The people, or agents, in MassMotion models are intelligent and can retain information about their virtual environment. The agents are able to recognise congestion and to consider alternate routes based on their familiarity with an environment. The inclusion of the kinds of emergent phenomena that occur every day in the real world – such as lighting – allows us to analyse crowd behaviour in all kinds of buildings, transit areas and public spaces and landscapes.

The really nice feature the 3-D environment in MassMotion offers is the ability to import design geometry so with very-early-stage schematic models, designers can watch and observe how a space might perform and then make changes to the proposed space before running it again.

MassMotion was originally developed for transport planning by a team in Arup’s Toronto office, and has now been adopted by Arup’s pedestrian planning team in Australia. During 2008, Arup funded a project called Extending MassMotion to investigate how other engineering, planning and design disciplines could add information to models about phenomena that influence human movement. During this period, we spoke with clients and academics to further develop the research and business applications of MassMotion, and developed ways to better communicate the work – for example, using software engines and peripheral devices such as Nintendo Wii controllers to navigate the environment.

One of the outcomes was to introduce influence maps, as above. These can be used where there is not hard items defining a path like furniture or walls, but transient elements such as smoke.

If you’d like something to print, click the image above for a pdf on MassMotion.

July 2011 Update

MassMotion has developed. It has been taken on by Arup’s software house Oasys and has now been released as a commercial product.