Digital Automation for Storyboarding: A Computer-Aided Research Protocol for Studying Dynamic Vision in Urban Settings

Fang Xu (South Dakota State University)

Dynamic vision means the human visual perception of the environment when the observer is in motion. Understanding people’s dynamic visual experiences in the built environment is valuable for architects and urban planners. However, theoretical development and practical utilization of dynamic visual research have been in dormancy since the groundbreaking works by Cullen and Appleyard. The methodological difficulty has been a major hindrance for studying dynamic vision.

This paper introduces a computer-aided research protocol for analyzing pedestrians’ dynamic vision in urban settings as demonstrated in a community-based participatory urban research project based at Watertown, South Dakota.

The Watertown project employs digital automation in data collection and analysis. Student researchers utilized wearable, automated video recording devices to collect massive visual data from research participants’ immersive, first-person perspectives, implementing a fusion of direct and indirect observational methods for visual data collection. With the aid of several software tools for data transformation, compilation, and visualization, student researchers performed computerized storyboarding, a computer-aided cinematic analysis process that transforms multiple research data into visual formats and assembles them in timeline-based diagrams. Posters composing these diagrams were later displayed for public assessment.

The Watertown research project indicated that digital automation could significantly diminish extraneous subjectivity involved in the dynamic visual research process without impeding qualitative interpretation and discussion of aesthetics. Methodically, computerized storyboarding affords a methodological rigor and procedural transparency to help generate trustworthy, confirmable, and transferrable environmental design knowledge. Its diagrammatic outputs facilitate interdisciplinary communication and public engagement. The digital-aided research protocol makes possible immediate utilization of research findings in time-sensitive, community participatory design agendas that promote social sustainability. Future development of the protocol will interweave research and design simulation, advocating user-centered design strategies that extensively utilize environmental design research in planning and architectural design.