We present our interdisciplinary research on gamification as a communication tool in urban planning. Approaching the topic from a user-centered perspective, we combine knowledge from the domains of architecture and human-computer interaction and define domain-specific requirements and areas of interest. To substantiate our findings, we present a prototypical case study of a public participation application, developed in consultation with the urban planning project driver and evaluated on-location with members of the public. Our results highlight the opportunities in pursuing a new sub-field of gamification within urban planning and include concepts of game interfaces and spaces in this research. In our case study, we present a methodological approach to assessing gamification in urban planning participation and provide findings on how gamification changes the users’ relationship to participation as well as evidence that the “avatar” game element can affect the motivational affordances meaning of task, perceived competence, and social relatedness.

Spotting graphical symbols from the computer-aided design (CAD) drawings is essential to many industrial applications. Different from raster images, CAD drawings are vector graphics consisting of geometric primitives such as segments, arcs, and circles. By treating each CAD drawing as a graph, we propose a novel graph attention network GAT-CADNet to solve the panoptic symbol spotting problem: vertex features derived from the GAT branch are mapped to semantic labels, while their attention scores are cascaded and mapped to instance prediction. Our key contributions are three-fold: 1) the instance symbol spotting task is formulated as a subgraph detection problem and solved by predicting the adjacency matrix; 2) a relative spatial encoding (RSE) module explicitly encodes the relative positional and geometric relation among vertices to enhance the vertex attention; 3) a cascaded edge encoding (CEE) module extracts vertex attentions from multiple stages of GAT and treats them as edge encoding to predict the adjacency matrix. The proposed GAT-CADNet is intuitive yet effective and manages to solve the panoptic symbol spotting problem in one consolidated network. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on the public benchmark show that our graph-based approach surpasses existing state-of-the-art methods by a large margin.

This paper presents results of a user study into extending the functionality of an existing case-based search engine for similar architectural designs to a flexible process-oriented case-based support tool for the architectural conceptualization phase. Based on a research examining the target group’s (architects) thinking and working processes during the early conceptualization phase (especially during the search for similar architectural references), we identified common features for defining retrieval strategies for a more flexible case-based search for similar building designs within our system. Furthermore, we were also able to infer a definition for implementing these strategies into the early conceptualization process in architecture, that is, to outline a definition for this process as a wrapping structure for a user model. The study was conducted among the target group representatives (architects, architecture students and teaching personnel) by means of applying the paper prototyping method and Business Processing Model and Notation (BPMN). The results of this work are intended as a foundation for our upcoming research, but we also think it could be of wider interest for the case-based design research area.

Presentations and discussions between architects and clients during the early stages of design usually involve sketches, paper and models, with digital information in the form of simulations and analyses used to assess variants and underpin arguments. Laypeople, however, are not used to reading plans or models and find it difficult to relate digital representations to the real world. Immersive environments represent an alternative approach but are laborious and costly to produce, particularly in the early design phases where information and ideas are still vague. Our project shows, how linking analogue design tools and digital VR representation has given rise to a new interactive presentation platform that bridges the gap between analogue design methods and digital architectural presentation. The prototypical platform creates a direct connection between a physical volumetric model and interactive digital content using a large-format multi-touch table as a work surface combined with real-time 3D scanning. Coupling the 3D data from the scanned model with the 3D digital environment model makes it possible to compute design relevant simulations and analyses. These are displayed in real-time on the working model to help architects assess and substantiate their design decisions. Combining this with a 5-sided projection installation based on the concepts Carolina Cruz Neiras CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE)1offers an entirely new means of presentation and interaction. The design (physical working model), the surroundings (GIS data) and the simulations and analyses are presented stereoscopically in real-time in the virtual environment. While the architect can work as usual, the observer is presented with an entirely new mode of viewing. Different ideas and scenarios can be tried out spontaneously and new ideas can be developed and viewed directly in three dimensions. The client is involved more directly in the process and can contribute own ideas and changes, and then see these in user-centred stereoscopic 3D. By varying system parameters, the model can be walked through at life size.

The early design phase for a new building is a crucial stage in the design process of architects. It has to be ensured that the building fits into the future environment. The Collaborative Design Platform targets this issue by integrating modern digital means with well known traditional concepts. Well-used styrofoam blocks are still cut by hand but are now tracked, placed and visualized in 3D by use of a tabletop platform and a TV screen showing an arbitrary view of the scenery. With this demonstration, we get one step further and provide an interactive visualization at the proposed building site, further enhancing collaboration between different audiences. Mobile phones and tablet devices are used to visualize marker-less registered virtual building structures and immediately show changes made to the models in the Collaborative Design laboratory. This way, architects can get a direct impression about how a building will integrate within the environment and residents can get an early impression about future plans.

We present the conceptual design and implementation of the Collaborative Design Platform Protocol (CDPP), a communication protocol that offers the synchronisation of virtual worlds between two mixed reality peers. The CDPP is applied to connect the Collaborative Design Platform (CDP), a design tool which supports the architectural design process in an early stage, with the immersive Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) display, where the design is visualised in life-size. This creates a prototype which enables a cost-efficient and easily comprehensible presentation of the early-staged design, and thus significantly simplifies the incorporation of laypeople in the early design process. By this means, the creative capabilities of laymen are exploited to a greater extent.