To a More Ambitious Place

London Debate / Wednesday 18 March / 6.30 – 8pm

Do we accept the status quo in place?

Speakers:

Warm up for the debate and kick start your exploration of the theme with our Think Pieces written especially for the Series:

Samar Héchaimé, Factors Ltd:

‘We should take the risk to imagine a different place, a better place and stop thinking that it is acceptable to do it in one particular way, since this is how it is done, the ‘Best Practice’. Best practices are what kill any potential inventions and innovations which will lead us to creating places that we only dream of.’ 

Sir Tom Shebbeare, Virgin Money Giving:

‘Our partners, and in particular the developers and planners, are unanimous that the new ‘super bits of village’ which we have designed together are simply better places than if the professionals had been left to their own devices. The ‘amateurs’ may have been aggravating or worse, but the professionals have certainly enjoyed the experience.‘

Alexei Schwab, Future of London:

‘The change in permitted development rights for office-to-residential conversions provides an extreme example of what can happen when placemaking is not part of the housing delivery process: without the need to negotiate with local authorities, developers have no requirement or incentive to meet good design standards.‘

Can’t make the London debate on Wednesday?
We’ll be live tweeting from 6.30pm sharp using the hashtag #GHdebate– add your questions and comments to the discussion!

Local partners:

National partners:

What happens when you bring an idea as simple as getting people back at the heart of the city and invite people to join in the discussion and the exploration? What happens when you remind the city, its governance and its planners that it is all about being human.

What happens is that you get an event that is fun and enlightening and that is aptly named Urban Factorisation. You get an event that opens the door for just one second, you can never close it again. You get an event where you start to hear the stories of the humanity of the city and how we have been stripping it away. You get a place to share, explore and innovate, a space where the outcome is unpredictable, the stories are memorable and where laughter is guaranteed.

This is what happened on Monday the 21^st at the Work Foundation, at the launch event for the Urban Factorisation.

It began with London Fusion telling us how they have been supporting the brain of the city by supporting its emerging small to medium enterprises, its creative and intrepid base that are reimagining the future of London and the UK.

Then MP Barry Sheerman engaged us and reminded us that knowledge is the centre focus for people and cities. He made the case that no city can emerge and compete on the market without a university, a knowledge and research base that engages with the city and its service and industry base. He emphasised the point that transportation and connections can revitalize the smaller cities. He highlighted how the future of the city is in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Ultimately he affirmed that it is about people and happiness.

MP Ben Gummer made the case for the small cities that struggle with loosing talent to London especially when it comes to design and planning talent. He showcased his point by telling the story, in very vivid words and mental imagery, of what is currently happening in Ipswich with a housing development that is needed but is not being designed with the behaviour and preferences of the people who already live in Ipswich in mind, and how a user centred design would have avoided a plan that barely took the people into consideration except to ask them would they like the school to be built “here” or “there”.. A question that is irrelevant without understanding the way of life of the people, the landscape of their lives and their stories. Ben pointed out that in order to release the potential of the small cities, or as he called them the Big Towns, user centred design needs to be brought in to understand the factors that make the place and its people.

Dr. Cathy Garner followed speaking about cities as places for people and the influence of people on the place. She maintained that we need to be ‘Thinking local and acting Global’. Cathy indicated that in order for our city to survive and grow we need to be ensuring the city is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. Putting people back at the heart of the city and making the three legs of the city, society economy and environment, equally strong in order to be able to carry the city into the future. This strong city is the kind that develops, nurtures, attracts and sustains citizens, making the cities stronger and more liveable through its citizens. She emphasised that we should be building social capital not incurring social costs.

Afterwards came Ann Marie Aguilar who spoke of the influence of design on human behaviour. She explained the research work that is being done in collaboration between ARUP, the Department for Communities and Local Government, RIBA and RCA where the challenge was to identify the influence of behaviour on the built environment and vice versa. The behaviour change research agenda focused on the built environment as three categories: the product, the building and the district, crossed by the human interaction on three different levels health and wellbeing, energy and performance and how these two axes affect each other. She took her lead from the way that products are designed – with the needs and preferences of the user and the ways they wanted to use them as part of their lives at heart.

Samar Héchaimé concluded the talks by introducing the concept of Urban Factorisation, its origins and its emergence as a counterbalance to the effects of built environment, bad planning and modernism. She spoke of the influences of culture on behaviour in the built environment and how legacy can help balance impact of badly designed places and cities. But legacy is not enough and eventually it adapts to the influences changing ways of life and places. She mentions the crossovers between our physical environment and our digital environment and how we should be building cities that combat the isolating that is emerging from too much digitisation and bringing life back onto the street level. She brought all together by talking about how Urban Factorisation can point people back into the heart of urban design, policy and strategy building frameworks that allow cities to grow in a sustainable manner and create positive experiences and happier citizen. Building utopias rather than dystopias.

After lunch the Urban Factorisation Lab took place with everyone in the audience taking part in an interactive walk/ workshop around the St James’ area. This workshop was designed to allow participants to visualise and understand the city through the eyes of its citizens and visitors.

The walk was wrapped up with a download session identifying the challenges of the users and coming up with tactical recommendations that crossed the board from service, to built environment to digital. These recommendations would enhance the holistic experience of the area for its citizens.

The day ended with a networking event where the participants continued the conversation with wine and lots of excitement on how to take the ideas and methodologies to the next step within their own councils, cities and organisation since the methodologies are applicable to all spaces where people live and spend time.

#UrbanFactorisation

On Monday 21st July the London Creative and Digital Fusion Steering Group, National Centre for Universities and Business and Factors will host Urban Factorisation; an interactive event to celebrate user centred design.

Urban Factorisation will look at the interaction between the multiple factors involved in the design of environments and the experiences of those who work, live, visit and travel in them. The centrepiece of the event will be the launch of “Urban Factorisation”, an interactive case study of how these factors create harmony or clash in one particular city. Delegates will have the opportunity to participate in a workshop focused in the area around St James, London.

The following speakers have been confirmed:
• Barry Sheerman MP (Co-chair of APDIG) who will speak on the challenges and opportunities in the creative industry as it applies to policy and the economy.
• Ben Gummer MP who will speak on the case of small cities, its ambitions and development, and the connection between the inhabitants and the process.
• Cathy Garner, Strategic Director London Fusion and Non-Executive Director of Places for People who will speak on cities as places for people and the influence of people on the place.
• Jeremy Watson, Professor of Engineering Systems, UCL who will speak on the influence of design on human behaviour.
• Samar Héchaimé (Principal of factors) who will speak on and illustrate “Urban Factorisation”.

The event will be well suited to those interested or involved in city governance and in all forms of city development such as design of the user centred city and the city as a centre of modern innovation fusing the disparate cultures, of academe, business and civic society.

Samar Héchaimé (Principal of factors) says “People interested in making cities more liveable on all these levels should attend, whether they are in policy, in design, in services, in citizen engagement, in digital, in economy, in history and culture or in tourism.”

“All attendees will be able to see the city from a different perspective and imagine a better future for it from the perspective of its people, its unique essence and culture”

Please register your interest in attending this event by clicking here . There are limited spaces available so please register ASAP. If you are successful we will confirm your place via email with joining instructions. If you have any questions please email: factors@loriho.com.

If you are unable to join us on the day but would like to contribute , follow the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #UrbanFactorisation.

Further details
Date: 21st July 2014
Time: 09.30 -16.30
Venue: The Work Foundation, 21 Palmer St, London SW1H 0AD

factors – urban factorisation

Rationality, the refuge of the intellectual mind, has been a driver to many endeavours from economics to creativity. Rationality has driven the international style and modernism in early century architecture and still drives the field today. It is the centre of the neoclassical economics. It governs the fields of branding and advertising. Not to mention medicine, politics, law, engineering…

The centre of all these endeavours should be people. People are local beings, cultural beings living within communities, falling to the herd mentality, governed by habit, emotion, shifting states of mind, therefore intrinsically irrationality.

In order for our creative endeavours to be more inherently adoptable they should, think locally, culturally, humanely, in essence capture our irrational beings.

Behavioural Economics

Behavioural economics has emerged as a blend between the world of economics and psychology. It has found its way into the world of advertising through the application of the same methodology in the development and creation of systems aimed at consumer behavioural change. Manifestations of this emergence are seen through a number of TED talks (the global conferences for innovation and excellence), industry lectures, treaties, as well as the establishing of a behavioural economics unit at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) and publishing of papers on the subject. One of the most vocal advocates of Behavioural Economics is Rory Sutherland, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, whose TED Talks I have recently come across (http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html) . Rory is not a behavioural economist but he wants to popularise it and get it into the mainstream. Even though Behavioural Economics is more prevalent now, he says his goal for true mass popularisation would have been reached when Daniel Kahneman (winner of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic in 2002 for his work in developing the  Prospect Theory in Behavioural Economics) is be mobbed by a tour bus filled with enthusiastic star struck Japanese tourists. Maybe having it in songs sung by Justin Bieber pop star types to overenthusiastic teenagers is the answer. What excites me about such lectures is that it backs what I have been advocating, working on and developing with regards to user experience design and how it can affect behavioural change. I have been arguing for holistic & multidisciplinary strategies as the way to approach our designs and creative endeavours in all their forms. Those strategies then manifests themselves through all the various applications and user touchpoints that we can develop. These touchpoints could be either tangible or intangible or both.  Our holistic strategies should be human centred in order for them to render the necessary changes in behaviours and attitudes.

As it stands, when we design we seem assume working in a rational world, guided by pure Euclidean principles and inhabited by perfectly rational human beings. We count upon the notion that the conditions are going to always be optimal to experience our designs whether tangible or intangible. We think that we can choreograph these experiences to fit our ideal predefined pathways.

This is certainly untrue. The reason is that we suppose that rationality and instinctive ‘logic’ are congruent and that everyone will be able to reach the same rational conclusions we did. Nevertheless instinctive ‘logic’ is actually the driver of quite a number of decisions, not rationality. Instinctive ‘logic’ is idiosyncratic.

As an example it is irrational to think that Star Wars is anything beyond a fantasy world created by the fertile imagination of George Lucas and his team. Yet for the fans it is completely logical to unite under the banner of Star Wars, identify with characters, join conventions and even spend huge amounts of money buying paraphernalia that reference or are part of the Star Wars franchise. Therefore in order to influence any behaviour within this group it is important to appeal to the instinctive self rather than the rational self and weave the intended change within the story and timeline of Star Wars so that this behaviour change can become more intuitive and be adopted effortlessly.

Building frameworks

Seeing the importance of our instinctive ‘logic’ in our daily decision making, we should not focus so much on the rationality of our end users. We should help our clients build strategic and experience frameworks that account for the local taste, the element of choice and the shifting nature of our the user’s sense of belonging and decision making state of mind.

Whenever we cater to our global network of clients, whether they are large multinationals or local businesses, we need to think about the frameworks we develop and how these frameworks interact with the end user. The end user is inherently a local with local tastes and local frames of references. Nevertheless the design industry, seems to focus on the ‘human universal’ (the hypothetical person with behavioural traits that are only universal) rather than the human local (the more realistic person whose behaviour is coloured by local cultures, traditions and mindset). The shift in that design framework towards the human local might mean the difference in the adoption and the emotional attachment towards a brand, a corporation, a system, a product or an entity.

McDonald’s has successfully done that by first focusing on developing habit. Its burgers are certainly consistent in their quality and taste around the world. Second it focuses on local taste by adapting its menus slightly differently in different locations, again focusing on habit, whether it is a McKrokette inspired by the kroketten in the Netherlands or McFalafel based on the pervasive deep fried grain balls in the Egypt or the Nürnberger hamburger based on the local speciality in Nuremberg.

The service is also consistent, while catering to local preferences. For example McDonald’s offers valet parking in Beirut, the McExpress walkup window in China serving drinks in malls or 24hr delivery service in Singapore. Therefore McDonald’s focuses on creating a framework within which its end users are comfortable. The framework encompasses the global availability and readiness that McDonald’s is known for, with a local twist to the customer interaction, as well as the famous product accompanied by some local popular street food specialities.

McDonald’s has also been the master of nudging (term used from the book ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness’ written by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein) by combo packaging its products, to super-sizing, to cues and to visual stimuli within the store and beyond. This nudging has become so powerful that now the moment its customers see the golden arches they immediately start feeling hungry.

McDonald’s has been able to bridge the borders between the instinctive ‘logical’ and the rational, the system 1 versus system 2 of its consumers (terms defined Daniel Kahneman in the Dual Process Theory). McDonald’s might not be healthy, but our intuitive ‘logic’ justifies our choice by focusing on the salad we purchased and forgetting the rest of our order: the coke, the burger, and the fries.

Therefore the concept, as demonstrated by McDonald’s, and other such successful brands, is to create frameworks that are flexible enough to allow each user to write their own story within the brand framework. The brand story becomes the culmination of the multitude of their users’ stories constantly changing, growing and overlaying each other to come and represent the brand story as a whole.

The strengths of the user interaction frameworks we develop (whether it is a brand, a communication campaign, a business framework, a digital environment or a physical environment) are thus with the element of choice we offer the end user, whether it is a true choice or the illusion of choice. We all believe we are individuals with complete control over our choices and decisions. Yet our choices and decisions are culturally conditioned by the societies and the groups we belong to or identify with and our inherent ideologies. Some of these belongings are more encompassing and large scaled like national belongings. Others are more shifting whether it is throughout the day or throughout or lifetimes.

For example throughout her day, a woman can be a mother, a business executive, a health-conscious shopper, a community activist, and then again a mother and a wife.  Her mindset, the group of people she is surrounded by, and her objectives change throughout the day depending on the role she is playing at any one point in time. This shape shifting, and focus and refocus from micro to macro and back, determines her behaviour throughout the day. .

The designers in all disciplines, creatives and advertising account executives should concentrate on understanding the context of our multiple beings which is what will allow them to create effective experience design on the strategic level and convincing nudging on the tactical level.

User centred strategies

It is imperative not only to keep in mind the dynamic nature of our end users and target them in frameworks that encompass advertising campaigns and branding strategies for consumer goods and institutions, but also to think within that mindset across all disciplines and market sectors, whether it is a service design, a spatial design, a package, a digital realm and others.

My experience has included designing complex experiences and brand strategies and systems, for entities such as universities, healthcare systems, airports and transportation systems as well as the smallest product applications and touchpoints. It has always been primordial to understand who I was communicating with and who is going to experience the brand or system. From that user perspective I am able to create frameworks of multileveled touchpoints that allow each user to engage and interact with the system according to their own pathway of choice which is flexible and ever-changing. This goes against the idea of choreographing experiences since that type of design forces the user into predesigned pathways which are not flexible and biomorphic. The pathway of choreographed experience forces us into certain behaviours in a more overt manner which users tend to resist. In order to have the users change their behaviours and adopt new ones it has to be more subconscious and operate along gentle and persistent nudging which plays upon the preexisting mental frames of reference of the user as well as their memories allowing them to build new cognitive experiences.

User experience design, is a combination of design creativity, problem solving, anthropology, sociology, psychology, behavioural finance or economics as well as business understanding. The strength of good and successful user experience design is its multilevelled experiencing. It is not only about the communication strategy and advertising, it is definitely not restricted to the digital realm, it surely encompassed the brand, its architecture and its messaging, it absolutely manifests itself in the service design and business model of the client, and naturally expands into the built environment and architecture whether it is as small as a package or a sales touchpoint, or as big as a city.

Therefore we should not only focus on nudging and its effects on a momentary basis, at the point of purchase and from a consumption perspective. Nudging can also be effective on a long term basis to change societal and cultural behaviours, like a small stream of water painstakingly shaping the shape of a rock. The focus here is the ‘system 2’ and the deliberate learning of a behaviour to turn it into a ‘system 1’ which is intuitive action.

Take for example the massive transformation in the Brazilian city of Curitiba lead by the mayor at the time Jaime Lerner, who was an architect/ urban planner by trade. The changes that he has implemented, through his three tenures as a mayor starting in 1972, with very small budgets, has created a framework which turned Curitiba into the most liveable city in Brazil. 90% of its inhabitants would not trade living there, whereby 70% of the inhabitants of Sao Paolo want to live in Curitiba. The changes in behaviour that have been instigated by that framework raised the GDP, the quality of life and the population’s attachment to their city leading to intuitive continuous enhancement emerging directly from the population.

Jaime Lerner focused on developing the city development framework around three issues: Mobility, Sustainability and Tolerance and Social Diversity.

The first issue was tackled through the invention of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) a bus system that operates like an underground, with its dedicated stations (not shelters), lanes, and triple bendy buses. The way it was achievable was through co-responsibility. He approached the private sector asking them to fund the fleets while the city funded the routes and planned the itineraries. Residential development and businesses started developing around the system building a more dynamic and engaged city. The co-responsibility meant that the population, the private sector and the city all had a shared sense of partnership, pride and responsibility in the growth and upkeep of the system. Lerner understood that everything has to work together and that it is about successfully combining living, working and leisure. The transportation system should not act only as the link between those different facets otherwise the public transport will end up being used mainly twice a day at peak hours. ‘If you have a system that works always and connects living and working activities as well as leisure it is more of a city than a corridor of public transport.’ In Curitiba the BRT is the vein system that pumps vitality into the city. It has even lessened car ridership and usage since the cars get stuck in traffic but the buses never do.

In terms of sustainability he made sure to balance ‘the equation between what we save and what we use’. Focusing again on co-responsibility and shared partnership he did multiple interventions that have transformed Curitiba into one of the most sustainable cities. Teaching children how to separate garbage in school has transferred this behavioural shift to their parents who separate household rubbish, bringing down to a minimum the amount of separation needed to be done at the refineries. He engaged with the inhabitants of the slums and again made them partners in the system. The slums were too narrow for the garbage trucks to be able to efficiently collect trash. The inhabitants were throwing their garbage in the streams and on the small roads, the same streams and roads where their children would play. In order to stop that from happening Lerner started an exchange program. For every bag of garbage the inhabitants would take to a specified collection point where the trucks could go, they would receive either bus tokens or grocery bags. Not only has it stopped garbage from being thrown, but it was an incentive for the inhabitants to pick old rubbish and exchange it, creating a second stream of income for the families and getting the streets and streams clean in the process.

Another project was to engage with the fishermen. The deal was any fish the fishermen caught it were theirs to sell, but any garbage they fished from the water was bought by the city. On days where there was no fishing, the fishermen would fish garbage. The more they fished garbage, the cleaner the bay became. The cleaner the bay, the more fish there were. It was a win win situation.

The tolerance and social inclusion was manifested through all of these projects as he did not focus on gentrification and areas of specific income levels. The city was for all Curitibans. One of the projects that demonstrated this point the best, was the creation of new parks. Instead of building concrete walls to try to manage the floods, a method that has demonstrated its inefficiency namely in places like New Orleans, he built parks. These parks have made Curitiba more liveable and green, with nature accessible to all its inhabitants. To reduce the cost of the park upkeep the mowing of the lawns is kept to herds of sheep. Not only is it cheaper but it engages people with more nature in the city and it provides the city with another source of income.

These and many other interventions, whether long term plans or short term ‘urban acupuncture’ interventions engaged the population of Curitiba and changed their behaviour into one of co-partnership with the city, a shared responsibility and a sense of interconnectivity which allowed more grassroots interventions to emerge from within the population operating with the framework (physical and mental) that has been set.

The example of Curitiba demonstrates how a holistic strategy creates a framework which encompassed the different interventions and application, interconnecting them, thus bringing into existence multileveled experiences which constantly engage the users and grows with them.

Experience and its memory

There is value in helping our economic system to become more sensitive to human behaviour, and thus increasing its overall efficiency.  We cannot ignore individual choice, its dynamics and cultural references when analysing decision-making, whether in the simple context of shopping for consumer products, or in the larger context of developing societal systems.

Therefore we should focus on the development of holistic frameworks for our clients through which the end user can interact with their brands, consumer products, systems, policies or environments. These frameworks help change behaviours through a multifaceted experience and gentle nudging which will operate on creating memories that will help shift the user’s mindset. Building memorable user experiences is achievable though a holistic approach, with a cross-pollination of disciplines, under a centralised unifying umbrella, which acts as the facilitation in this multidisciplinary approach.

I believe that our experiences are made up of a continuous string of moments. Each one of these moments is an intersection of what I call the four cardinal points of experience. These four cardinal points are the individual, the community, the physical and the virtual. In order for these moments and intersections to leave a memorable impression and be effective in instigating behavioural change, the user experience should be the junction between human intuitive behaviour and rationality. Most importantly each interaction with the user and each experience they have has to end on a memorable positive note. As Daniel Kahneman reminds us, our experiences are as memorable as the way they end and that their time sequence is not linear but determined by the end of the experience which is what will or will not affect any change in our behaviours.

read the report of the 13 trends breaking through in 2013 by Patricia Martin, including a contribution by Samar Héchaimé of factors ( see trend number 13 – cities become more human by design)

‘The 2013 report focuses on cultural trends poised to break through in the year ahead. It’s designed to inspire anyone wanting to communicate more effectively across touch points.

While the impact of the Internet can be felt in nearly every aspect of consumer life, our focus revolves around its impact on the fabric of society—families, communities, business, education and civic life. This report presents key trends and macro themes that reveal deeper shifts in how people are making decisions and adopting new behaviors that affect how your brand is perceived. On every page is a glimpse of the turning tides that a rising generation of digital natives portends.

Our research yielded 13 break-through trends that open opportunities to build stronger bonds between people and brands: customer loyalty, knowledge transfer, digital rituals, media consumption and consumer expectations around a healthy planet. LitLamp’s consulting team spoke with experts including top researchers, pollsters, designers and creative technologists to better understand the implications; their representative comments are included.

The report wraps up with seven clearly stated ways to use the findings to advance your brand into the future. Progressive, motivated marketers should find inspiration on every page.’

13ThingsBreakingThrough.htm

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands – Rotterdam/ Amsterdam- based urban planning firm, Stipo B.V., just released their new book ‘The City at Eye Level: Lessons for Street Plinths’ and will be available for free download or hard-­‐copy via website on 11 January 2013. The book, a collaborative effort of five editors and 43 professional contributors from the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Demark, USA, UK and Germany, (including Samar Héchaimé of factors) delves deeply into the concepts, philosophy, and strategies behind planning the ground floors (“plinths”) of urban environments. Interviews, case studies, and first-­‐hand stories highlight important examples of best practices from cities in the Netherlands (in particular, Rotterdam) as well as Copenhagen, Antwerp, San Francisco, and elsewhere.

This books shows that good plinths require a smart strategy supported by many players including the city, the owners, the renters and the users, and introduces a host of new vocabularly to help define this innovative planning strategy. A great city at eye level requires a strategy based on three domains: software (use, the experience, the functions), hardware (design of plinths, buildings, streetscapes, hybrid zones and principles of sustainability) and orgware (organisation of functions and portfolio maintenance). The 215-­ page book offers ideas, solutions and examples of the best ground floors and ground-­‐level planning from cities across the world. The concluding chapter proposes 75 specific lessons for good plinths.

On 11 January, 2013, Stipo launched the book to the world in the city where it all started: Rotterdam. About 230 guests, including urban planners, entrepreneurs, housing associations, local civil servants, neighbours, and interested parties, all came together to celebrate. Hosted by several partners (EDBR, AIR, Deltametropool, Gemeente Rotterdam) the launch was open to the public and included a Plinth Safari for all guests-­‐-­‐parallel visits examining the best plinth planning practices in Rotterdam-­‐-­‐as well as a chance to meet a few of the book’s co-­‐authors who were also present for the evening. John Worthington, co-­‐ founder of DEGW and Director of The Academy of Urbanism in London, gave the keynote speech. He focused on how the book is relevant in an international context, in international cities.

The book is available through the publishing house Eburon and will be on bookshelves and Amazon.com in the coming weeks. It is also available for download at www.thecityateyelevel.com.