international urbanization
  • About
    • Support
  • News
  • Faculty
  • Projects
    • Autumn 2016 Projects >
      • City of Cupertino
      • Menlo Spark
      • Sustainable San Mateo County
    • Autumn 2015 Projects >
      • Beijing Hutong Neighborhoods
      • City of Cycles
      • Clean Air Campaign
    • Autumn 2014 Projects >
      • Bicycle Urbanism
      • Cultural Preservation
      • Electric Vehicles
      • Food Systems
      • Land Use
    • Spring 2014 Projects >
      • aWalk
      • BreatheChina
      • Green Cloud
      • Micro-Travel
      • Walk!Man
      • Wukong
    • Human City Workshop
  • Expo
    • 2016 Human Cities Expo
    • 2015 Human Cities Expo
    • 2014 Human Cities Expo
    • 2014 Urban Sustainability Expo
  • Apply
  • Blog

Project Updates (4/21)

4/21/2014

0 Comments

 
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.
BreatheChina (Casey + Noelle)
We established email communication with [our Tsinghua teammates] where we introduced ourselves and our initial thoughts on the project. Some research we’ve explored so far:
  • Air Quality Asia and their air monitoring platform (doesn’t source data).
  • AQICN’s platform – Ronan Jezequel (does source data).
  • Beijing Environmental Ministry website and air quality monitoring.
  • US Embassy air quality monitoring.
  • Corporate environmental responsibility in China.
  • Bay Area Quality Management District

From our initial research and brainstorming, we presented three suggestions for improvement concerning how the data is collected and interpreted, and then the specific platform for this work. Moving forward, we want to gain a better understanding of their goals, deliverables, and scope of work. We’re aiming to set up a Skype session for the end of this week or coming weekend.

Green Cloud (Caroline + Laura)
  • We both have downloaded WeChat and are using it to schedule meetings with our Chinese partners.
  • We Facetimed with our Chinese partners this past Thursday. During our session we went over an in-depth presentation of the Green Cloud project.
  • We learned that our partners have already conducted user interviews and framed the problem surrounding China's trucking industry: essentially, the trucking industry is very fragmented and inefficient, and it also contributes to 1/3 to 3/4 of China's air pollution. Our team proposes a solution that allows truck drivers to connect with one another and share information related to trucking.
  • We are sending our partners a list of questions we came up with based on our first video call. We plan to have our second video call with them this Thursday at the same time.

Wukong [Green Trucking] (Christina + Steven)
  • Got in touch with partners through WeChat - this seems like the best mode of communication
  • Confusion over scope and collaboration approach for scope of work
  • Video is main focus of partners right now (no mention of an app or anything like that)

Walk!Man (Yari + Geena)
  • We Skyped with our Tsinghua teammates and gained a better understanding of the project. We gained a better understanding of the timeline and scope of work, as well as an idea of what the app could look like. 
  • We clarified our team roles (though this will be an ongoing process). Geena and I will be performing research and figuring out the components of the app. Our Tsinghua partners will communicate with Clean Air Asia and work with us on designing the app, and they will code the app.
  • We brainstormed ways we can best develop the app, and considered different ways we could get information and feedback.
  • Moving forward, we will perform a literature review and explore other similar apps, and we will get more details about what components of the game our Tsinghua partners have already come up with. 
  • We had a successful Skype session, and we have a regular Skype meeting time.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Cities + Spaces

    Documenting the process of cross-cultural design and collaboration for sustainable development.

    Archives

    March 2017
    March 2016
    February 2016
    August 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    Class
    Collaboration
    Lessons Learned
    Project Update
    Technology
    Teleconference

    RSS Feed

  Program on Urban Studies  |  Civil & Environmental Engineering  |  Earth Systems Program  |  International Policy Studies