Description

When starting a design or research project, an early step in the work is often a visit to the place that will be studied or that will be the site for a design proposal.  This exercise provides a framework for additional site visits when the researcher wants to learn more about the place.  Akin to a semi-structured interview, come to the visit with a few open-ended questions that arose from your initial site visit and preliminary investigation (see Methodological Primer for more information).

Begin with a preliminary site investigation that might involve: completing a GIS analysis, a historical study of the site, or a review of key environmental, demographic, and social data.  Choose a specific topic of focus that is relevant to the project (design or research) you will be working on.  You will then develop a series of questions that will be explored in the field. Develop a main question, and  below that list a series of sub-questions that refer to specific and detailed aspects that you can observe in the field.  Mark down your observations, take photos and sketches, and then list them in a table for review, analysis, and discussion with other researchers and designers.  Below, you will find some example questions and sub-questions listed in the table.  Draw from these, or create your own in relation to what you would like to explore in the field. 

Semi-Structured Site Visit Exercise by David Ackerman

text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....text from David about the process .....

Steps

1) Begin with an investigation of some aspects of the place you are investigating for a research or design project.  This can include, but is not limited to:

1. Demographic information
2. A study of the history of the site 
3. An exploration of a map of the place/site/ street/neighborhood.  Be sure to also zoom in and look at the street view.
4. The use of other SOCIOARC exercises to investigate the place such as Integrated Social Cartographies or Express Ethnographic Segment.

2) From this initial review, list a few questions related to how people might be using this place/site/street/neighborhood in order to explore a specific topic or topics of interest.

3) Use one of our model questions and sub-questions,  below, or develop your own, to create your unique “Site Interview” form.

4) Visit the site and gather information using the form. 

5) Visualize this data in some way by adding visual information to the table.  This could include photographs or quickly sketched diagrams.

6) Once you have completed the site investigation, emplot any findings that are relevant to your main hypothesis or research question onto the map.  This will make available information that will not be recognizable from the table of data.  By mapping, you might notice that a particular phenomena occurs only at street corners, not in the middle of the block.  By viewing photographs from the neighborhood alongside the data table, you might notice differences in the street trees that appear on each block. Make note of any spatially informed patterns you notice from mapping the data.

7) Write about what you find.  Did your findings match your assumptions?