Front Page

Interactive Ranking for Skyscraper Design Teaching
Using 3D-CAD models and Flash MX, the website aims to let the web community establish a ranking list of the individual skyscraper designs by vote casting

	The website "The New Skyline" now showcases the work of the Digital Design Stuido (DDS). We've aimed for a clear content management, achieved by consistent layout and easy to comprehend navigation and information structure, as well as designed content presentation, achieved by appropriately balance mixture of broad and specific information, image and text, animated and static objects.
Dr Stephen K. Wittkopf Dept of Architecture School of Design & Environment

Ranking
This article is focused on the chapter 'Ranking'. The idea is to let the web community establish a ranking list of the individual skyscraper designs by vote casting. This is innovative from three points of view: conceptually, it showcases how public could participate in decision process of architecture design proposals; technically, this showcases how interaction is established using the latest web technologies; as for courseware, this website structure could be used as a template to clearly communicate and rank design in all future DDS.

How it's done
The ranking feature is a successful collaboration between Assistant Prof. Dr Stephen K. Wittkopf, his research assistants Tay Yanling and Leow Teck Lee from Department of Architecture and Melvyn Song, System Engineer from Centre for Instructional Technology (CIT). The fist page of 'Ranking' chapter depicts an overview of all 18 individual designs.

After voting a favourite design the user is presented a result page that puts the projects in ranking order, with the most voted projects appearing with bigger images. The raking is based on a compilation of all user votes. Any user can only vote once per session.

On showcase
The website was used as a showcase for Macromedia Flash MS at Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre on 18 March 2002. The current raking provides valuable feedback of the public view on skyscraper design proposals, which will be well considered for the current teaching studios. It also provides valuable feedback on how design needs to be communicated in order to comprehend and appreciate them. As for courseware development future DDS will adopt this website as template to communicate architectural design proposals.

Software used
The website was developed using Macromedia Flash MX, as it ensures the necessary Server Side Action Scripting. The web server runs Internet Information Server 4 with ASP and Microsoft Access communicating over ODBC. The images are computer renderings of 3D-CAD models.