Data Collection Plan

Anya Diamond

Fall 2013

TA: Kathryn D.

USP 186

Part One: The TQAK Challenge

a)  Title: Does Good Design Promote Social Interaction?: An Investigation Into Public Spaces at UCSD

b)  Question: How have urban design principles shown to promote social interaction been applied in the construction of public gathering spaces at UCSD, and how successful are they?

c)  Answer: UCSD’s most frequented gathering spaces are those that have design features which theory predicts will encourage use of the space and socializing, demonstrating the importance of investing thought and capital into the design of our public places.

d)  Key Terms:

a.  Social Interaction: In this study, social interaction is defined as two or more people engaging with each other in the same physical space. Engagement can be verbal or non-verbal, but must occur in person (thus excluding phone conversations).

Part Two: Evidence

Source of Evidence: Access / Strength/Weakness / Timeline
Metric by which to measure UCSD’s public spaces: Created through my literature review; access to literature granted to UCSD students through library resources / Strength: Metric created from multiple sources of evidence
Weakness: Selection bias / Completed in SRP, November 2013 (see table in SRP, page 8)
List and map of public gathering spaces at UCSD: I will conduct this inventory personally – all spaces considered are outside and open for public access / Strength: Clear site boundaries – specific and unobtrusive
Weakness: Selection bias / Completed by Friday 12/13/13
Observations of use of space in public gathering places: As above, there is liberal access to the spaces in which observations will be conducted / Strength: Immediacy of watching actions as they unfold
Weakness: Selection bias due to the presence of only 1 researcher / Completed by 1/17/14


Part Three: Timeline

November 2013

·  Completed: Create metric from literature to measure the design elements of gathering spaces

December 2013

·  12/13/13 Complete walking inventory of public gathering spaces at UCSD

·  12/20/13 Complete coded map of public gathering spaces

January 2014

·  1/17/14 Complete three rounds of three observations of social interactions in public gathering spaces

·  1/17/14 Begin draft of SRP and analysis of data collected from observations

·  1/30/14 First Draft of SRP due

February 2014

·  2/1/14 Begin 3-minute video

·  2/5/14 Begin revising draft of SRP

·  2/12/14 Begin poster design

·  2/27/14 Video due

March 2014

·  3/6/14 Print out poster

·  3/13/14 URBAN EXPO

Part Four: Spatial Component

My senior research project is an investigation into how the design of public spaces influences human behavior – as such, it is firmly rooted in spatial analysis. This research measures quality of design at key locations at UCSD and links those measurements to human behavioral outcomes. This is done in order to test the hypothesis that spaces designed according to what is welcoming and comfortable to human beings will be more heavily used by those human beings, thus encouraging social interaction and building social capital. As such, this research falls under Janelle and Goodchild’s fifth example of spatial reasoning, “measuring spatial associations (and space-time associations) for testing hypotheses,” because of the way I am investigating design (the essence of spatial association) to test a hypothesis.

The field of environmental psychology has been mentioned earlier in this assignment as an emerging area of study, mixing urban design and behavioral psychology to investigate the effect that surroundings have on peoples’ lives. Central to these investigations is the idea that space is not neutral, that the spaces we create and inhabit produce real outcomes, from human health to potentially even effectiveness and efficiency in learning (see Paul Temple’s 2008 piece in the London Review of Education, “Learning spaces in higher education: an under-researched topic.”) This foundation of this research project is inquiry into how space functions in our daily lives, firmly rooting the research in the domain of spatial analysis.