News

3rd Place: Uplift

2nd Place: CityShakers

The winners in 1st Place: Trust

Congratulations to all :)

The VoiceYourView Game Competition ran over the Weekend of the 19th and 20th November 2011 at Coventry University. 16 cross disciplinary students from across the country engaged in 4 teams to form and develop ideas for community engagement games. Structured exercises, presentations and feedback sessions on Saturday led to refining the games and finalising ideas on Sunday. Teams worked hard into the night over pizza getting ready to present to the prestigious judging panel on Sunday afternoon.

Read more

Dr. Will Simm has been invited to give a pecha kucha style invited talk at the 2011 Dundee Science Festival. The talk is part of a public session on creative and innovative research in digital technologies. The event will take place on Nov 9th at Dundee Science Centre.

Prof. Jon Whittle has been invited to give a keynote presentation on the Voice Your View work at the 3rd National Architectural Research Symposium in Oulu, Finland, on November 11th, 2011. The talk will be part of a special session on participatory urban design supported by advanced information technology and is affiliated with the PUDAS project: http://pudas.oulu.fi/

VoiceYourView's collaborative project OurCity with Future Everything digital arts festival has been featured on the BBC Technology Newsfront page in video and as an article.

Read more at BBC News or see Ourcity in action in the BBC Technology News video.

Dr Will Simm from VoiceYourView has been working with FutureEverything, artist Adam Nieman and Manchester Communications Academy on an installation for this years FutureEverything festival. Read More ...

I am sorry to inform you all that the first round has been delayed due to insufficient entries. The team will consult this week to determine what action to undertake next to relaunch the competition.

VoiceYourView is recruiting: Research Associate based in the Management School at Sheffield University. See the full job advert for details: http://bit.ly/gz2uQg.

Les Wynn, manager of IDHF and Product User Experience at Xerox (IDHF = Industrial Design and Human Factors) has confirmed to join the judging panel of the ViewKi competition.

Les joins the judging panel of Sebastian Conran (Director S. Conran Ass.), Prof. Paul Ekblom (Design against crime research centre & ex Home Office), Michael Tiffany (Creative director BBC Future Media and Technology) and Rod Plummer (MD Shoothill Ltd).

We are looking for talented young designers to help us design "VIEWKI" - an online interface of the real-time feedback system, which allows people to voice their concerns regarding their surroundings. We strongly believe that public space designs can be significantly improved if the better quality of feedback can be captured from the local communities who live and work in the areas.

Read the full brief here

PI Prof. Jon Whittle presented a Pecha Kucha style update on Voice Your View at the Design in the Digital World (DDW) network meeting in Reading on Thurs Jan 13. The DDW network is an RCUK-funded group of projects all looking into issues concerning the Digital Economy and design. This was the second time the group had met; the last meeting was one year ago. It was great to see the updates from all the projects including Charm, Bespoke, Totem and Digital Sensoria.

The presentation can be viewed here.

We are looking for talented young designers to help us design "VIEWKI" - an online interface of the real-time feedback system, which allows people to voice their concerns regarding their surroundings. We strongly believe that public space designs can be significantly improved if the better quality of feedback can be captured from the local communities who live and work in the areas.

VIEWKI needs appropriate interaction design to make it transparent, engaging and enjoyable to use. It also requires meaningful information design in order to increase users' interests, involvements and emotional connections.

Read the full brief here

Voice Your View has been featured by Italian newspaper Repubblica in an article on mobile reporting of public concerns - read more  at: Repubblica.it - Apps contro incurie e degrado La denuncia si fa al cellulare. For non Italian speakers here is the Google Translate link.

VoiceYourView has been featured in the Times Higher Education supplement.

Read more at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414155

News Flash: David Willetts MP today addressed an audience of 50+ MPs and peers in the House of Commons at an event called "Science in the New Parliament". In his speech, Willetts talked enthusiastically about VYV for about a minute!

Architecture for Everyone Voice Your View

Throughout October and November 2010, Voice Your View will be working with Architecture For Everyone and their workshops in the North West.  Architecture For Everyone is a nationwide project that encourages young people to consider careers in architecture and urban planning.  The organisation is a partnership between the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust and the architecture firm RMJM.  Places Matter! leads the Architecture for Everyone programme in the North West. 

The workshops are unique in that they involve a specific demographic within the public; young adults (16 -19) with a significant representation from BME communities.  The 2009 Architecture For Everyone programme resulted in participants spontaneously and organically using social networking sites to discuss the workshops.  With Voice Your View, the 2010 workshops aim to build on this by coordinating and encouraging comments and discussion about neighbourhood, community and design through the Architecture for Everyone Facebook group and blog.  The discussions will be themed on the thoughts and comments emerging out of the Manchester workshops.

Dr. Will Simm will be demo-ing the latest version of VoiceYourView software in the House of Commons on Tues October 26th. This is part of an event called "Science in the New Parliament".

VoiceYourView allows semantic navigation of a body of comments, such as those entered into social media sites such as facebook or twitter. The demo will illustrate the use of the software for intelligent navigation through public comments entered into fixmystreet.co.uk, a website where people can report local problems. The software clusters comments according to theme, sentiment and actionability; it can be used by local authorities, government, and the public itself to quickly and easily peruse a database of comments and to look for other comments with (e.g.) opposite sentiment on a similar theme.

The event will be attended by 50 MPs and peers.

The VoiceYourView iPhone App is now live in the App Store.

The free download has been designed so that people can pass comment on any public space where they are. So, whether that's about litter in the street, poor lighting or a recommendation feel free to let us know.

The trial at Coventry University takes place during the Autumn Term. Students, staff and visitors to the campus have the opportunity to voice their ideas, suggestion, concerns and opinions on the current as well as future Coventry University campus.

1. Send a text message beginning with ‘vyv’ to 60777 (standard network rates apply) 
2. Send an e-mail to vyv.cucampus@coventry.ac.uk 
3. Fill in a short online form here
4.  Use one of the touch screens located in the Lanchester Library, Students’ Union Priory Street or Alan Berry building 
5. Download a free VoiceYourView application from the iPhone App Store

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On Saturday 17th July 2010, Katerina and Laurence from the VoiceYourView team, together with Miles (external to the project), attended the Stoke Aldermoor Summer Fete.

Full Story here.

VoiceYourView has been highlighted in LU News: "'Twitter-like' technology could make cities safer." 

Full story

Delegates participating in the Guardian Activate Summit please follow this link to Voice Your View on topics arising from the summit:

http://cs-vyv.lancs.ac.uk/activate/web.php

Keep an eye on the VoiceYourView screen for a live summary of commentry and to see your view!

Have you ever noticed anything in a public area or open space that captured your attention because you liked it or because it concerned you? Do you know how you can currently report your concerns, ideas, suggestions and opinions regarding public spaces? Or do you have suggestions how you would like to report such issues?

The VoiceYourview project is interested in finding out how people’s knowledge of public areas and open spaces can be captured in order to create safer and more inclusive spaces. Please fill out our questionnaire and voice your view!

Survey now closed, thanks to all respondants!

Monday 2nd November marked the first day of vYv five-week trial at Lancaster Central library. The Library has recently reopened following a £640,000 refurbishment from the Big Lottery Funds.

In the next few weeks the general public will be able to share their views about the library new look and services through a range of channels. These channels include speech to text recognition tools as well as more traditional ones such as postcards.

Read More (Full Story)

VoiceYourView has been highlighted in LU News: "Researchers are harnessing developments in technology to help us feel safer in public."

Full story

VoiceYourView held its official kick-off meeting at Lancaster University on June 23. Representatives from all partner universities were in attendance as well as a member of our advisory group -- Professor Paul Ekblom from the University of the Arts London.

Take a look at our group photo below.

The VoiceYourView website is now up and running, providing all kinds of information on the project. If you want to know more, email us at shout@voiceyourview.com.

A group of three Ohio State Masters students (Travis Pentz, Emily Lott and Megan Witt) undertook a six week project at Lancaster University in the summer of 2009. They went out onto the streets of Lancaster, Morecambe and Blackpool to ask members of the public how safe they felt in public spaces. The aim of the study was to collect comments on public space design that would be similar to the kinds of comments that VoiceYourView technology would eventually collect.

You can see a selection of the comments collected on our twitter site. The sidebar to the right also contains interesting comments provided by members of the public.

Here is the full report (note we have changed our name from uTELLus to VoiceYourView).

Thanks to Emily, Travis and Megan!