This paper presents an essay aimed at prompting broad discussion crucial in keeping the interaction design discourse fresh, critical, and in motion. We trace the changing role of people who have advanced from consumers to producers, from stationary office workers to mobile urban nomads, from passive members of the plebs to active instigators of change. Yet, interaction designers often still refer to them only as 'users.' We follow some of the historic developments from the information superhighway to the smart city in order to provide the backdrop in front of which we critically analyse three core areas. First, the issue of echo chambers and filter bubbles in social media results in a political polarisation that jeopardises the formation of a functioning public sphere. Second, pretty lights and colourful facades in media architecture are increasingly making way for situated installations and interventions fostering community engagement. And third, civic activism is often reduced to forms of slacktivism. We synthesise our discussion to propose 'citizen-ability' as an alternative goal for interaction designers to aspire to in order to create new polities and civics for a better quality of life.

/pdf/from-users-to-citizens-some-thoughts-on-designing-for-polity-1ys49k1q8u.pdf

From Users to Citizens: Some Thoughts on Designing for Polity and Civics

Media architecture's combination of the digital and the physical can trigger, enhance, and amplify urban experiences. In this paper, we examine how to bring about and foster more open and participatory approaches to engage communities through media architecture by identifying novel ways to put some of the creative process into the hands of laypeople. We review technical, spatial, and social aspects of DIY phenomena with a view to better understand maker cultures, communities, and practices. We synthesise our findings and ask if and how media architects as a community of practice can encourage the 'open-sourcing' of information and tools allowing laypeople to not only participate but become active instigators of change in their own right. We argue that enabling true DIY practices in media architecture may increase citizen control. Seeking design strategies that foster DIY approaches, we propose five areas for further work and investigation. The paper begs many questions indicating ample room for further research into DIY Media Architecture.

/pdf/diy-media-architecture-open-and-participatory-approaches-to-45n9qmii6m.pdf

DIY media architecture: open and participatory approaches to community engagement

This paper presents an essay aimed at prompting broad discussion crucial in keeping the interaction design discourse fresh, critical, and in motion. We trace the changing role of people who have advanced from consumers to producers, from stationary office workers to mobile urban nomads, from passive members of the plebs to active instigators of change. Yet, interaction designers often still refer to them only as ‘users.’ We follow some of the historic developments from the information superhighway to the smart city in order to provide the backdrop in front of which we critically analyse three core areas. First, the issue of echo chambers and filter bubbles in social media results in a political polarisation that jeopardises the formation of a functioning public sphere. Second, pretty lights and colourful facades in media architecture are increasingly making way for situated installations and interventions fostering community engagement. And third, civic activism is often reduced to forms of slacktivism. We synthesise our discussion to propose ‘citizen-ability’ as an alternative goal for interaction designers to aspire to in order to create new polities and civics for a better quality of life.

From users to citizens: Some thoughts on designing for polity and civics

This paper explores the wider contexts of digital policy, transparency, digitisation and how this changes city administration and the role of the (digital) publics, using City Bug Report as a design case. Employing a mix between design research and action research, the authors exemplify and analyse elements of both the design process, the organizational, the political and technological contexts. They point to the role of researchers and designers in exploring and understanding digital elements of public space as not merely registering structures but also actively engaging in public discourse, providing critique and alternatives as much as solutions. Further research and challenges are discussed.

/pdf/city-bug-report-urban-prototyping-as-participatory-process-1yixajisb5.pdf

City bug report: urban prototyping as participatory process and practice

Walking trajectories have been used to understand how users interact with public displays. However, it has not yet been studied how displaying them in-situ could affect users' awareness about others' presence and activities. We present the study of an interactive public floor-projection called Traces. Traces projects the walking trajectories of individuals as they pass through the lobby of a university building. We investigated Traces through a 6 week in-field study. Our results outline how different uses and understandings of Traces contributed towards its appropriation as a glanceable display for social awareness. We outline design suggestions that future designers should consider to support social awareness with public displays.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3173574.3174061

Traces: Studying a Public Reactive Floor-Projection of Walking Trajectories to Support Social Awareness

Media facades (often characterized as a building's digital skin) are public displays that substitute dynamic details and information for usually static structures. SMSlingshot is a media facade system at the confluence of art, architecture, and technology design in the context of urban human-computer interaction. It represents a participative approach to public displays that enlivens public spaces and fosters civic and social dialogue as an alternative to advertising and service-oriented information displays. Observations from SMSlingshot's implementation at festival exhibitions provide insight into the roles of scale, distance, and the spatial situation of media facade contexts. The lessons learned apply to most public-display situations and will be useful for designers and developers of this new medium in urban spaces.

Christian Zollner

Papers

Beyond information and utility: Transforming public spaces with media facades