DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1196027
title: Survey Of Participant Experience In Workshop For Testing Igp Software Setup: Supplemental Dataset For Simaud 2018

description: This is a supplemental dataset for a SimAUD 2018 paper. For the context of the dataset, plots, and description text given here, please refer to the paper:


<strong>Heinrich, M.K., Zahadat, P., Harding, J., et al. Using interactive evolution to design behaviors for non-deterministic self-organized construction. In <em>Proc. of SimAUD</em> (2018). <em>In print</em>.</strong>


These survey results <em><strong>(see attached file dataset_survey-responses)</strong></em>, are regarding the experience of participants in a workshop testing the <em>Integrated Growth Projection</em> software setup, including an implementation of the <em>Vascular Morphogenesis Controller</em>, and the Interactive Evolution software <em>Biomorpher</em>.

The full-time one-week workshop was held as part of the normal coursework of the Master's degree program <em>CITAstudio: Computation in Architecture</em>, in the Institute of Architecture and Technology, at [KADK] The Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark. It was part of the first semester of the 2017-2018 school year. Workshop participants were current Master's students in the <em>CITAstudio </em>program. The workshop teaching was led by Mary Katherine Heinrich and Phil Ayres, with guest teaching by Payam Zahadat and John Harding, overall program teaching supervision by Paul Nicholas, and teaching assistance by Sebastian Gatz.

<strong>Survey method:</strong>

The workshop participants gave survey responses anonymously.

Survey responses were collected via Google Forms (https://www.google.com/forms/about/). At the start of the survey, participants gave permissions for use and publication, and verified that they participated in the workshop and had not previously taken the survey. The platform discourages duplicate responses by requiring an email sign-in (which is not visible to the surveyor).

Although workshop participants gave permission for survey results to be published before taking the survey, the participants were unaware of the specific intended context and purpose of publishing, prior to taking the survey. Authors of the related paper who were workshop participants had no contact with the process of survey preparation, analysis of its results, or writing of related paper sections. 

There were 26 workshop participants. Participants were architects or architectural designers. 

Participants were asked about 1) their prior experience, 2) their understanding of topics before and after the workshop, 3) the helpfulness of specific software aspects for their understanding and their project work, and 4) their likelihood to use specific software aspects in the future.

In addition to looking at the full surveyed group, we compare experience sub-groups. Participants select relevant tasks that they have previously completed, from a provided list. They are placed in the <em>Less Experience</em> sub-group if they select one or no tasks, and in the <em>More Experience</em> sub-group if they select two or more. 

<strong>Survey results:</strong>

Close to two-thirds of workshop participants submitted survey responses (16 of 26, or 61.5%), with at least two respondents per group. One respondent indicated workshop absence; their responses were removed. One respondent indicated that they did not understand two questions, so those two responses were removed. All responses were submitted within 18 days of workshop end.

Attached file:<em><strong> Plot_1</strong></em>, caption:


Plot 1: <em>Participants' scoring of their understanding of the topics "self-organization" and "Interactive Evolution" respectively, comparing scores before and after the workshop.</em>


Attached file:<em><strong> Plot_2</strong></em>, caption:


Plot 2: <em>(Left) Participants' scoring of their likelihood to use certain aspects of the software setup again, if they were to design a non-deterministic self-organizing behavior, and (right) participants' indications of the helpfulness of those same software aspects.</em>


Responses regarding understanding <em><strong>(see attached file, Plot_1)</strong></em> give evidence that the <em>Integrated Growth Projection</em> software setup helped participants of both experience levels improve their understanding of related topics. Those with less prior experience improved their understanding more than others, and understanding of "Interactive Evolution" improved slightly more than understanding of "self-organization." 

Responses regarding the usefulness of certain software aspects <em><strong>(see attached file, Plot_2)</strong></em> give evidence that: 1) Interactive Evolution helped participants to understand and design a non-deterministic self-organizing behavior <em><strong>(see Plot_2, a)</strong></em>; 2) visualization of the environment and simultaneous viewing of multiple results helped them to understand and design such behaviors <em><strong>(see Plot_2, b and c)</strong></em>; and 3) the <em>Integrated Growth Projection</em>'s features of environment visualization and simultaneous results <em>inside</em> the artificial selection preview windows of the IE setup helped them to evolve behaviors to solve their chosen tasks<em> <strong>(see Plot_2, d and e)</strong></em>. 

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The research work involved here is part of EU project<em> flora robotica</em>.<br>
http://www.florarobotica.eu/<br>
Project<em> flora robotica</em> has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the FET grant agreement, no. 640959.
description: {"references": ["Heinrich, M.K., Zahadat, P., Harding, J., et al.\u00a0Using interactive evolution to design behaviors for non-deterministic self-organized construction. In Proc. of SimAUD (2018)."]}