PocketPedal Now

Facilitating communication and cooperation is a challenge

for anyone who seeks to achieve change and reform in
architecture and other disciplines. This article discusses
a project that seeks to overcome this problem through a
participatory design process enhanced by mobile gaming.
Deployed on smartphones, the projects custom-built game
- PocketPedal - is designed to accompany conventional
participatory methods. The toolkit created through this work
can be used in design workshops to facilitate communication
across habitual divides and to support imagination and
creativity. The current iteration o f the project applies its
methods to the challenge o f reforming urban cycling in
Melbourne. More specifically, it investigates one o f the citys
characteristic and intractable cycling challenges: St Kilda
Road.

St Kilda Road is a notoriously dangerous route for cyclists.

PocketPedal recasts the complex interactions between
cyclists, motorists and road infrastructure occurring in this
intense setting, where the players objective is to cycle the
route w ithout crashing.

The inadequacy o f the cycling provisions along the road

is a telling example o f urban problems that resist change.
When embedded in a typical road environment, urban
cycling is characterised by a complex assemblage o f bodies,
infrastructure and behaviours. This assemblage involves
interactions o f many diverse stakeholders. Such complexities
often lead to conflicts on the road, as well as impasses in
achieving design goals.

For the past several years, influential stakeholder groups

and local government representatives have campaigned
for an infrastructure upgrade; namely, segregated bike
lanes. Despite the many serious cycling accidents along
the route, this modification has not been implemented
for typical reasons: objections from the local community,
bureaucratic complications, and resentment arising from
perceived preferential treatment o f one group over another.1
Like in many situations, St Kilda Road stakeholders have
different values, different objectives and different daily
routines. In such situations, design propositions for any
physical construction w ill not be widely supported w ithout
a cultivation o f fertile social infrastructure; a process known
in participatory design as in frastructuring.2This preparatory
work is necessary for the transition from improbable to
possible.3

O pposite: C rossing Princes S tre e t B rid g e , a v ir t u a l

c y c lis t approaches th e end o f the stage.
Alex H o lla n d , PocketPedal, 2015.
From D isciplinarily to Ubiquitous Expertise
Transdisciplinarity, including the understanding of
architecture as a transdiscipline, is intended as an advance
on the work done through discrete disciplines.4The
PocketPedal project seeks to advance this commitment
to participation beyond disciplinary interactions and
towards the inclusion o f non-disciplinary stakeholders. The
participation o f these stakeholders is essential i f the design
outcomes are to be accepted and judged as successful by the
community. People that can be seen as lay specialists are
expert in their own behaviours and circumstances.5Typical
design methods, however, do not support the utilisation of
such expertise.
How can these non-disciplinary experts be made more active
in a collaborative design process? What tools are available
for the productive use o f the contrasts in experience and
knowledge that are typical o f any design situation? This
project is focused on developing such a tool through the
experimental use o f mobile gaming deployed as one part of
an integrated participatory design process.
Games fo r Participatory Design
Participatory design is an approach that recognises that
architectural and urban problems cannot be solved by
designers alone. Instead o f relying on technical expertise,
it seeks to develop practical strategies that can support
broader stakeholder engagements. Consequently, it has
been characterised as both fairer and more intelligentthan
specialist-driven design.6 Its use is particularly appropriate in
urban settings where m ultiple and diverse agents are made
to operate in close proximity. Among these agents, opinions
and needs vary: what some m ight see as visionary is dismissed
by others as short-sighted or selfish. In such conflagratory
situations, the progress o f projects using conventional design
approaches can stall.
Architects can contribute to the resolution o f such stalemates
by facilitating social exchange. But conventional participatory
methods position designers as filters for community need.7
Filtering diverse and potentially conflicting input gathered
from stakeholders is difficult, especially when looking
at the situation as an external expert.8 Furthermore,
participants often need help to discover their needs and
views, requiring collaborative exploration o f ideas through
active conversation. Games allow participants to experience
simulations o f urban events or scenarios in social settings that
diminish inhibition, and encourage open experimentation
and engagement. Therefore, games are a key tool that
architects can deploy to provoke and support such design
conversations.
Common modes o f design representation such as
architectural renderings produce descriptions o f propositions
that are already known. Games, on the other hand, are tools
that can lead to new discoveries. This occurs as designers and
stakeholders shape their own experiences in these interactive
systems in ways not envisaged, or at least not directed, by
the original game designers.9 Games allow designers to
initiate scenarios, and then let stakeholders investigate
and experience possible outcomes for themselves. Reward
and feedback mechanisms (objectives, points, high scores)
can be used to focus a participants attention on significant
events. Lars Albinsson et al. observe that the more diverse
participating stakeholders are the less common is their
language.10
This article proposes that such differences can be overcome
through interactive play that creates safe settings and can
diffuse potential tensions.11When successfully deployed,
games can support the exploration, testing and interrogation
o f complex ideas in a collaborative environment that
encourages even potentially combative stakeholders to
engage w ith challenging design scenarios.12The powerful
capacity o f games as design tools can be seen in their
application to urban cycling; an area o f design and public
policy-making that often resists change when approached
w ith conventional design methods.
Urban Cycling Sim ulation
PocketPedal is a game o f urban negotiation - a playable
simulation that attempts to support the design process
behind the provision o f urban cycling infrastructure along
St Kilda Road. The game recreates a segment o f the route,
simulating the dynamic interactions that occur between
traffic participants and road infrastructure. Events that
commonly impede safe cycling - high traffic flows, lack
o f separation between travel modes, dangerous driving
behaviours - are translated to the smartphone screen.
A series o f statistically weighted events, informed by the
real-world conditions o f St Kilda Road, allows participants
to experience the psychological complexity o f urban cycling
w ithout its physical dangers. The opposite images show two
sequential states o f the game as they appear on a smartphone
screen. The image on the left shows a virtual cyclist following
the bicycle lane obstructed by the doors o f parked cars. The
image on the right show how the game reacts when the
cyclist leaves the lane: the players score is reduced and a
warning is displayed as the cyclist is in immediate danger of
being hit. Players interact w ith digital bikes, cyclists, cars, Above: S e q u e n tia l s ta te s o f th e game
tram tracks, bollards, bike lanes, buildings and trees in a as th e y appear on a smartphone screen.
process o f urban negotiation. Alex H o lla n d , PocketPedal, game s t i l l s , 2015.
They must be alert: a distracted motorist m ight veer into
the bike lane, or a car door could open w ithout warning. A
double-parked vehicle m ight block their path, or the bike
lane could disappear entirely. But players lose points for
cycling outside the bike lane whatever the reason, making
a high score hard to reach. Importantly, PocketPedal allows
non-cycling participants to experience the challenges o f being
on a bicycle on a busy urban road. By navigating the virtual
route, players from all backgrounds - including motorists,
cyclists, planners and health professionals - can explore
infrastructure typologies and discuss possible upgrades in a
collaborative environment.
A ll design representations are subjective, be they drawings,
specifications or narrative texts. Simulations are similarly
contingent because designers have to make value judgements
when choosing what parts o f reality are to be included
and how they are to be represented. Though judgements
may be motivated by previous expertise, background
research, or consultations w ith relevant stakeholders, they
are necessarily incomplete and compromised by multiple
constraints. By contrast, interactive simulations can alleviate
such shortcomings by provoking participants to challenge
their preconceptions. They allow stakeholders to expose
and question ideological assumptions embedded in other
design tools.13 For example, Pock etPedals visual style is
deliberately non-realistic, in an attempt to support m ultiple
interpretations o f the game environment and to allow
subsequent discussion to focus on the essential characteristics
and experiences o f urban cycling.
Playable Sim ulation in Participatory Design
PocketPedal runs on smartphones, and can therefore be
readily integrated into other forms o f participatory design
activities. The ubiquity o f smartphones means that most
participants are already fam iliar w ith the games interface
and can easily access its virtual world. But it is difficult
to create a digital game that can support the unknowns
o f a design workshop; unknowns in the form o f the new
environments imagined by participants in the process o f
design deliberations.
To overcome this challenge, the PocketPedal Workshop mixes
games in multiple media, resolved at differing fidelities.
When high-fidelity digital simulations like PocketPedal are
combined w ith low-fidelity board games, also known as
cardboard computing, immersive virtual environments can
be opened up to on-the-fly improvisation.14Digital simulations
do not have to be visually realistic or complete i f supported by
other participatory design methods. Accordingly, PocketPedal
is designed to be played collaboratively in a workshop setting.
PocketPedal is a 'socio-material assemblage' that seeks to
encourage players to reconsider their habitual behaviours.15
Its effectiveness was demonstrated by the pilot PocketPedal
Workshop run in August 2015. When playing PocketPedal, the
group o f nine stakeholders not only interrogated situations
w ith in the game, but also engaged w ith each other. They
compared scores, challenged each other, gave advice and
received guidance from their fellow participants; they
explored and learned together. In an example o f collaborative
play, the actions o f the virtual cyclist are controlled by vocal
instructions given by the rest o f the participants. The image
at the top o f the opposite page shows this in action during the
PocketPedal Workshop. In an alternative mode, participants
play side-by-side and are encouraged to exchange remarks
on their in-game experiences. The image at the bottom of
the page shows workshop participants interacting during
individual play.
Follow-up interviews w ith PocketPedal participants revealed
that playing the game influenced their attitude toward the St
Kilda Road environment in relation to urban cycling. A fuller
appreciation o f the challenges o f cycling, o f cycling road-
behaviours, and o f the legitimacy o f bike riders as road users
also emerged from the workshop.
Beyond PocketPedal
Immersive participatory gaming on smartphones is relatively
new, as mobile devices have only recently become powerful
enough to accommodate fully interactive three-dimensional
worlds. The implications o f this new widespread availability
o f immersive simulations may be substantial, especially in
terms o f the exploration o f ideas and promotion o f debate
in urban design. Approaches that appear under the names
air-tagging, spatial computing, optical internet, mixed
reality, physical gaming, synthetic environments and situated
simulation enable productive design engagements that can be
staged on demand, at arbitrary locations. These experiences -
overlaid onto the environments o f everyday habitation - can
reach large numbers o f people in most places and situations.
The PocketPedal case study demonstrates how designers
and planners can deploy games to disrupt urban design
stalemates. I f participatory processes that are typically limited
by scale and penetration are augmented in this way, what
other design stalemates could be solved?
O pposite above + below: C o lla b o ra tiv e and in d iv id u a l
p la y , provoking p a r tic ip a n t in te r a c tio n and engagement.
Alex H o lla n d , PocketPedal, 2015.

O pposite: A car attem pts to p a rk, suddenly b lo c k in g the
c y c l i s t 's path - a common occurence in urban c y c lin g .
Alex H o lla n d , P ocketP edal, 2015.
V ol 03 New Order
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