Walk!Man Update (Yari + Geena)
This week we confirmed Stanford's role in the project by solidifying the scope of work. We will be performing research online and through surveys and focus groups, while our Tsinghua teammates will continue to update us about their interactions with CleanAir Asia and specific goals of the app. They have done some research on the benefits of walkability, and they've looked at CleanAir Asia's current walkability app, to see what needs to be different.

They told us that the app will hopefully be used by people in a wide variety of cities, so we hope that through our research we will be able to find some ways to make that realistic. We've begun our literature review, and we've found a wide variety of walkability metrics and surveys, which we're parsing through.  

The Skype session went well and we have a nice group dynamic. 

Click "Read More" to view updates from all project teams.

Yari Greaney, Walk!Man:

• Don't be shy to repeat questions until you get the answer you are looking for.
  
• Get verbal confirmation that everyone understands the next action items.
  
• Follow up conversations with an email.
  
• It's really fun to collaborate with Tsinghua students!

Adriana Baird, Micro-Travel:
It was really helpful to have the email response from our Tsinghua counterparts, but the gap between the information we have and what they have already accomplished with the project is still there.  This has really stressed the importance of holding a videoconference or some sort of direct communication between us and the Tsinghua students that is more immediate than email.  It has also been very helpful to meet and talk frequently among ourselves, either in person, over email, or through messaging. 

Click "Read More" to view all lessons learned.

Micro-Travel Project (Adriana, Alec, Valerie)
Last week, we met and discussed what we thought we could add to the project and what we still needed to know about the project in order to contribute as much as possible.  We e-mailed our Chinese counterparts with an introduction of ourselves and some questions we had about the project.

Our questions were as follows:

1. What is the main purpose of the project? Answer: The purpose of the project is to improve the hostel experience for young travelers.
2. What problem do you seek to address? Answer: Attempting to figure out what people need or want out of their hostel experience through personal user-based research.
3. What milestone are you trying to reach through this collaboration with us? Most importantly, how can we help you reach your goals for this project? Answer: They would like to understand our perspective on the direction of the research and use us, our knowledge, and our connections to develop a more comprehensive pool of research pertaining to youth hostels and user experiences.

The Stanford part of the team will be meeting tonight to discuss where to go from here.  We still need to hold a videoconference with them to get a better understanding of how to move forward with the research and the project.

Click "Read More" to view updates from all the project teams, including groups working on air pollution, green trucking and walkability issues.

One of the texts we use in this course is the highly-regarded book The Last Days of Old Beijing, which chronicles the city from the perspective of present-day hutong residents. The author, Michael Meyer, spent three years living in the hutong, getting to know his neighbors and documenting life in the community. It is our distinct pleasure to announce that Mr. Meyer will be visiting our class next month to chat with our students about Beijing's development.

Originally published in 2008, The Last Days of Old Beijing has just been released in Chinese-language editions in Taiwan (left) and China (right). We look forward to hearing Mr. Meyer's insights when he joins us in May.

Our first video conference between students in the U.S. and China took place in the Highly Immersive Classroom at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). According to GSB technology specialist Bryan McCann, this session represents the first full-scale class-to-class exchange to make use of the HIC, which has only been open a few months. (While the HIC has been used for smaller events, this is the first time two academic Stanford classes have united.)

The visuals and acoustics were excellent, thanks to four large video screens stitched together and microphones installed at strategic points around the room. It felt like the URBANST 102 students in Beijing were sitting in the same room as our class at Stanford!

The connection was largely seamless (just a minor hiccup with getting slides to show), and it was exciting for everyone involved to pioneer this technology for use in educational exchanges. Many thanks to the GSB tech team and the hard-working SCPKU staff for helping us set up this joint experience. We look forward to additional trans-Pacific teleconference sessions in coming weeks!

One of the Stanford students based in Bejing later posted this note about his experience in the combined classroom: