Worcester Waterfront Project
Using Multimedia to Inform and Consult

Worcester Waterfront is an exciting 2 year project to improve the city’s riverside. It will provide more seating and paving, suitable lighting, interpretation of the natural and social history of everything along the route and linking up all sorts of places and stories along the way. The idea is to also achieve the building of another bridge across the river for pedestrians and cyclists at Diglis Island, to form one of the best two and a half km circular walks in the country.

We are using a new form of multimedia visualisation to help develop the Waterfront proposals, both to illustrate the route online, and to gain opinions about the area to inform the design. The method, which involves satellite (GPS) tracking, heart rate monitoring and listening to audio commentaries is helping to show how individuals both utilise and react when out travelling along the riverside paths near Worcester’s City Centre.

The system is being developed to help the progress of the design and to see how stretches of the riverside can be most effectively enhanced for all users.

One of the participants showing some
of the measuring kit used

The resulting interactive online ‘Emotimap’ allows the viewer to access details of how individuals ‘feel’ when they are moving through a particular part of Worcester’s Riverside. The route shown is on both sides of the river from the main bridge down to Diglis Island and weir, which will be greatly improved by the City for walking and cycling over the next two years.

It’s a bit different from the usual way of getting to know how people feel about an area, a method we hope to expand and use more as time goes on in this and other projects.

Participants so far have included a 10 year old boy, a man, a woman and a cyclist. The hope is that more participants will be added to the ‘map’ as time goes on - thus enriching the feedback further.

The prototype system is being developed in partnership with the University of Worcester's Digital Arts Centre.

To see the multimedia ‘Emotimap’ in action, please click on the link below. You’ll be able to see and hear about the route through someone elses journey, and then if you want, add some feedback.

If you want to add your own thoughts on how further improvements could be made to Worcester’s Riverside, or the “Emotimap” itself, just click on the other link below the map to pass on your comments. We’d really like to hear from you.

To See the ‘Riverside Emotimap’

[Click Here]

An image taken from the map showing
the coloured ‘mood’ markers.