Municipalities around the world have become increasingly reliant upon digital technologies in their everyday operations. In pursuit of a faster, cheaper, and more efficient local government, service platforms and applications that mediate citizen-government interactions, smart city infrastructures, and automated decision-making systems have proliferated. More recently, digital technologies are also sought to address socially complex issues and foster civic engagement. These ambitions, motivated by both rational and democratic perspectives, however, confront many challenges such as designing with wide heterogeneous groups, navigating organizational structures, and dealing with the political agendas and conflicting perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Designing digital technologies for municipalities, therefore, requires an ability to address the technical, social, institutional, and political challenges critically, practically, and holistically. This hybrid workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to (1) explore how this could be achieved and (2) map the existing and emerging challenges and opportunities for designing public digital services and technologies.
Learning is a lifelong process and the ways of learning and teaching have been changing in recent years, reform traditional classroom teaching to interactive, entertaining, and engaging teaching. Recent years have shown the popularity of educational games as a pedagogical method for children and youth in particular. Games are often employed to engage, inspire and motivate learners, as well as to support teachers in delivering various pedagogical content. Learning and teaching methods are in the transition phase. However, only scarce literature exists on the utilization of educational games with older adults and the elderly. Additionally, the understanding of how accessible educational games are for the senior citizens is still limited. Educational games are often utilized in classrooms, next to traditional teaching methods. In such situations, the accessibility of a whole gaming session must be taken into consideration to ensure inclusion. It is thought that there are general barriers to their use of (game) technology such as psychological apprehension of technology, as well as physiological barriers, e.g., visual, hearing and other bodily impairments. Hence, this article examines the utilization of the educational games of Kahoot! and Quizizz, as well as their perceived accessibility with elderly students. Through surveys and observational data gathered from 27 participants in four different sessions, the results point to several issues in terms of accessibility, game tempo, as well as issues related to the classroom space design, such as lighting and size of the board on which the games are projected. However, similar to younger audiences, the elderly appears eager to engage with educational games, especially with appropriate game design and facilities.
Over the last decade, in acknowledgment of a growing challenge of digital divide, researchers have been partnering with community organizations to explore community-engaged methods to empower under-served communities as they respond to new challenges in a digitally-dominated world. These community-engaged methods show great promise, enabling localized interventions which honor the lived reality of participants, but their highly customized nature also presents new challenges in measurement and assessment for the research community. In this work, we present a case study of a 12-session workshop series focused on digital enablement and describe challenges of applying traditional evaluation methods in understanding the value of the program. As a response to these challenges, we propose a framework for assessment of similar programs that enables us to better understand the ways in which our participants created digital capital and will support cross-study comparison and evaluation in future work.
Diaspora communities, such as the Armenian, who lost their tangible connection to their homeland, tend to carry objects with them that are representative of their roots and create a sense of belonging. Stop-motion animation can bring objects into life through sequential photography. As the objects are manipulated by the animator, directly by touching, or indirectly by accidental physical contact, stop-motion is directly linked to the sense of touch and materiality. Through this, we believe the stop-motion animation process can evoke rich memories. In this paper, we report on an exploratory stop-motion workshop, which was organised in collaboration with five Armenian community members with no prior animation making experience. We learned how the participatory stop-motion animation approach evoked memories through its inherent connection to storytelling and tangible manipulation, and how the creative group process supports a sense of belonging that transcends self-representation and bridges different cultures.
Like other crowdsourcing communities, e.g., Wikipedia, citizen science projects struggle to attract and retain long-term contributors. Long-term contributors are critical to the success of many projects; research about motivational drivers has attracted the attention of many scholars. Prior literature has argued that values are motivational constructs linked to behavioral outcomes, and value orientations differ among demographic groups and cultures. In this paper, we assess the value orientations of volunteers who contribute to Zooniverse - an online platform that connects the public and researchers who collaborate on scientific research. We conducted an online survey (N=5,436) to measure the value orientations of Zooniverse contributors using Schwartz’s’ Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). We found the most salient value orientations of the population were achievement, self-direction, and security. Value prioritization differs slightly among some demographic groups. We present strategies for motivating contributions based on value orientations in the discussion.
The use of disruptive technologies by the private and public sectors is increasing. With the release of new systems, many have wondered how artificial intelligence may change the world for better or worse. For this, European Commission has created instructions on how artificial intelligence and blockchain should and should not be used in the public sector. On the other hand, private companies are free to utilise these technologies. Many challenges and barriers must be overcome to have the public adopt these technologies. This one-day workshop will explore disruptive technologies from a local community perspective. We will use a case of artificial intelligence and blockchain-enabled electronic ID (eID) for the initial framing and exploration of this problem and compare the differences when the software solution is deployed locally, nationally or internationally. These differences and issues can be looked at, for example, through the lens of trust, usability, security, and privacy.
Trucking industry and truck drivers’ work are undergoing a change as automation is increasingly used to improve the efficiency of transport operations. Despite predictions of trucking work to disappear due to automation studies show human intervention is still needed in trucking. Generally, studies on future of work and changes digitalization brings to work practice focus is often in in-organization issues, leaving the larger context and external actors unstudied. We take the higher-level viewpoint, asking what kind of actors and factors have an effect in the change in the trucking work practice, and what kind of involvement the actors have in the change. We analyzed 40 interviews, utilizing User Involvement Centered Design model as our lens, and created an illustrative case for the trucking industry to make visible how a collection of decisions, designs, and digital solutions affect the work practice of truck drivers.
Based on literature on cross-organizational collaboration and on empirical evidence, this paper provides insights on the perceived barriers that large public bodies encounter when launching and managing co-design processes and on how ICT might help to address these issues. We analyzed the case study of a heterogeneous network composed of multiple departments within an Italian central public body and of several related external stakeholders during the ideation stage of a complex strategic planning software. The preliminary findings shed light on the opportunities for digital platforms to enable cross-organizational collaboration and creation practices within Public Administrations. Impact areas are related to building capacity in co-design, to managing the complex dynamics of stakeholder engagement hindered by the pyramidal structure of public bodies, and to clarifying roles and responsibilities, favoring internal communications and handovers.
Data-driven domains such as public administration, health or mobility have adopted a so-called ‘data ecosystem’ perspective to unify the socio-technical aspects fostering data-driven collaboration. While a data ecosystem is technically able to collect and merge their different datasets, it is yet relatively unable to facilitate meaningful forms of collaboration between actors. Based on previous research on value creation in data ecosystems, we hypothesize that this inability is mainly due to ecosystems not reflecting actor values, i.e. aspects which are important and imply a desirable behavior, often related to goals, objectives, motivations and decision making. This paper therefore proposes a reflective approach to reveal the values in data-driven collaboration by answering the following research questions: What role do values play in the process of developing a data ecosystem? And how can value-led participatory design support data-driven collaboration? We attempt to answer these questions through an exploratory study based on 5 interviews with consortium members of a garden data ecosystem currently in development around a citizen science initiative in Flanders, Belgium. We discovered that the explicit use of values and frictions has the potential to augment the collaboration between actors. This approach can thus be useful to future practitioners who aim to expand the societal impact of their work.
Recent surveys show that citizens worldwide are increasingly worried about the socio-political conflicts emerging around the world and seek new ways to be engaged in democratic and inclusive discussions about how public interest decisions are made, and how social tensions can be prevented, mitigated, and even resolved, in new ways, and by mobilising grassroot collective actions. Still, the deliberative spaces that are available today for communities and institutions to co-create ideas and bridge ideas to actions are highly inadequate. Issues of loss of trust in public institutions, civic disengagement, unequally distributed power and lack of transparency of decisions only exacerbate these issues, and expose a dangerous disconnect between citizens asks and public government's actions, and a fundamental inadequacy of institutional responses to citizens' needs and aspirations. The Critical Deliberative Democracy Tech workshop aims to bridge this disconnect by bringing together a multidisciplinary scholars in social and political science, computer science, and urban planning who can contribute both stories of success and failure of engaging communities and institutions in real deliberative democracy innovations. From there we aim to develop a research roadmap around the key critical questions, tensions, norms and directions that need to be explored for working together with institutions and communities to realise scalable democratic innovations.
In recent years, extended reality technologies have gained momentum [3] and are being used in sectors such as healthcare, e-commerce, education, tourism [18], and heritage. This paper investigates the co-production process of an augmented reality application titled EfutaLetu SidaHurib (Translation— 'Our ocean, Our ocean' in Oshiwambo and khoekhoegowab) that showcases ocean knowledge, relationships, and culture of communities residing in Namibia's coastal towns, for posterity and preservation. It includes inputs and benefits from the workshops and co-production process. The research employs the scholarship on participatory design coupled with co-production synergies and engages residents of coastal towns to explore and reveal the relationships that the communities share with the ocean and how these diverse relationalities can be supported and preserved using augmented reality.
Data Exploration remains an untapped area of research, and as of yet few guidelines exist for how to design a data exploration tool. In this paper we conduct a qualitative study of a data exploration tool that has been created using a series of principles for designing data exploration systems for non-expert audiences. In the course of this study, we both evaluate the tool, dubbed the Data Explorer, and refine the design principles that it was based on.
Digital equality, entailing access to the Internet and digital devices as well as a set of diverse digital skills, has been recognized as a crucial factor in the creation of just and sustainable smart cities. However, there remains gaps between smart city research and studies focusing on socio-digital inequalities and digital literacy. The aim of this article is two-fold: first, it explores the focal intersections of smart city development, socio-digital inequalities and digital literacy based on literature. Secondly, through an interdisciplinary exploration it aims to demonstrate that there is a need to align the current understanding of digital inequality with the conceptualizations of ‘smart citizenship’ which underline competencies related to critical thinking and resistance. For this purpose, we formulate a tentative, practice-oriented framework for understanding digital inequality in the context of smart cities. The framework is based on previous prominent definitions of digital inequality and digital literacy, but it intends to open new horizons for solutions and services that would increase peoples’ awareness on societal dimensions of digital technologies, and eventually, their digital agency. For the most part, the paper is theoretical, but it also draws examples from the research fieldwork conducted in Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona has been highlighted as one of the rare examples of a city that intends to center people in its smart city policies: We explore how Barcelona approaches the people-centric smart city in practice and introduce Canòdrom, a center for city inhabitants promoting open technologies, participatory democracy, and digital culture.
Energy communities are emerging around Europe with a vision to transition the traditional centralised energy system to one where individual households can collaborate to become energy producers. Although the vision of energy communities is still in a formative stage, it seems members of such organisations will need digital technology to manage and organise renewable energy together. The design of eco-feedback designs appears as a digital means to create awareness of this need. Yet, until recently, eco-feedback has been designed to target the individual householder. The research presented in this paper aims to identify design characteristics of eco-feedback systems aimed at collaborative energy communities. We explore two different concept designs that are evaluated in a focus group session with prospective energy community members to establish design characteristics. The findings show that participants not only identified characteristics related to different eco-feedback design characters but also identified a set of properties related to the collaborative and social nature of the community.
Algorithmic decision-making and big data systems are increasingly being used to provide innovative and essential services in the public sector. Such public services that utilize AI entail many related risks and responsibilities for citizens and public sector providers. Furthermore, the distinct regulatory demands and responsibilities of public sector services require crucial consideration of inclusiveness and civic empowerment. In this empirical study, we examine practitioners’ attitudes, practices and challenges of implementing inclusive AI services in the public sector that can empower greater civic agency. We conducted in-depth interviews with ten practitioners responsible for managing, developing or designing AI-enabled public services across three big public organizations in Finland in domains relating to the municipality, taxes, and social insurance. The results show that the discussion on inclusion and civic empowerment is just in its beginning in the public sector. Practitioners perceive the concept of inclusion as devising accessible public services for all members of society. Civic empowerment was understood as 1) institutional transparency, 2) civic participation in shaping the services, and 3) easing the use of the services for their users. The research suggests two distinct socio-cultural constructs emerging among practitioners that may influence (or hinder) how civic empowerment is manifested in such services: expert cultures and risk-averse cultures. The contributions of the study are twofold. First, we describe the practitioners’ perspectives on empowerment and inclusion in regard to public sector AI. Further, we recognize how expert and risk-averse cultures among practitioners explain their actions and restraints in devising public sector AI services.
In response to changing climatic conditions and the increasing need for more inclusive and participatory municipal service provision, many municipalities are undergoing a dual transformation process, one digital and one socio-ecological one. However, municipalities are at different stages and with different paces, often neither know what each other’s transformation processes look like nor have the tools and resources for meaningful cooperation. To foster knowledge sharing and mutual learning, we use a network approach for designing a transdisciplinary knowledge community for municipalities undergoing such transformation processes. This research in progress serves to improve the transfer between science and practice.
This paper is about an ethnographic journey into traditional agropastoral practices in the region of central Italy called Abruzzo, which brought the researcher close to human and non humans inhabitants and their natureculture entanglements, and informed a participatory design process on how to nurture socio-ecological relationships in order to support local biodiversity. Two ethnographic accounts relating to the new rural generation are unfolded, showing how traditional agropastoral practices have been taken up by young farmers and shepherds, as well as the challenges and opportunities that arise. The paper suggests two different ideas of updating natureculture practices: one leading to the creation of a co-existence relationship among the shepherd, the sheeps and the newts, all revolving around the drinking trough as a common; one leading to the (re)activation of people care for wild plants as potential crop wild relatives (CWR), a source of genetic resources for food and agriculture.
The integration of novel technologies in built environments has increased the complexity of designing cities and spaces with citizens. Unobtrusive and invisible interfaces can lead to new forms of spatial experiences, but also form a black box which is not comprehensible to a wide audience. To address this challenge, we present the results of a study where we employed co-design fiction. By engaging 66 citizens in the critical assessment of futuristic designs of spaces, we reveal their needs and concerns about possible futures. Our findings show that citizens are concerned with the ecological limitations of urban technology, reliability, and data privacy. They also welcome the positive implications of adaptive environments and technological advancement. Participants were also reflective of how urban technology can change human experience, more generally. Our findings point to the need for flexibility, privacy, and adaptability to changing contexts, stimuli, and users in human-building interaction.
With this workshop, we aim to provide a forum for participants populated by researchers, urban planners, co-creation facilitators, and representatives of municipalities to share their experiences with co-creation tools and methods in urban planning. We focus on reflecting on key issues based on CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) and PD (Participatory Design) concepts and approaches regarding engagement, participation, and consensus-making in technology-supported co-creation processes. By concentrating on spatial and urban planning practices, we will connect above mentioned actors to discuss different participation and co-creation processes among disciplines. After briefly introducing state-of-the-art co-creation techniques, Design Thinking approaches connected with supporting technologies will be examined and evaluated in group discussions by informing the presented practices with theories and concepts from CSCW and PD research.
Within the context of Lebanon, certain youth-led and grassroots organizations are fertile spaces of social innovation. Through a participatory action research (PAR) approach and using participatory design (PD) methods, we explore the possibility of creating the conditions for technology-supported social innovation within such a contested context. We present the case of our long-term engagement with “4-all-causes,” a youth-led group that aims to challenge existing hierarchical organizational structures and redefine health service provision in the country. Our observations and participatory workshops led to insights concerning the application of PD in such contested and uncertain spaces. In addition, we discuss the roles that we, as design researchers and digital technologists, can play in creating conditions for social transformation and a new health narrative through the infrastructuring of social innovation.
