During the month of October, Emmet is preparing a theirwork framework that can be taken into a first workshop with the community. This framework will be a map of Loe Pool. The community will be able to add data, comments and stories to the map. During October, I will initiate the groundwork for the workshop - looking at ‘who, when, where’ and how the ‘what’ - the map - gets used. Emmet has just made clear our approach to the ‘what’ in the last post.

Vitally, the methodology of the workshop, and subsequent workshops, will assist in the development of theirwork, creating a ‘check activity’ of what we are up to, as well as being a place in which to request, observe and develop new ideas. For instance, it should help to stop us from falling into the trap of defining ‘the tool’s functionality through interface design’. The workshops, whose methodology will focus on qualitative fieldwork, will assist in determining how the framework will turn into a tool for the community; the interface will emerge and grow in the course of these workshops. One to one interviews and online community presence will partner workshop activity.

As Emmet previously explained, ‘we discussed how for any new user, the function of the tool will be implied by the existing content’ and how this means we will be concentrating on the collection of soft cultural data in the first workshop. Hard flora and fauna data will not be presented. We know that as time develops -

the wiki could become the database that drives the map
the interface could allow soft data to get added
the tool could start revealing hard data

But for the moment, we are just concentrating on a framework that seeks to build a tool, which in turn will emerge with an interface.

This decision then led on to further brainstorming and questioning. What is the tool about? Will ecology stay in the picture? Is the tool about appreciating what’s there? Is the tool about revealing what’s there and what’s not there? What kind of walking is the project about - ‘armchair walking’ or ‘out in the field walking’? Where do cars fit into the picture? How does the urban fit into the picture? About trolleys in different terrains…

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