the adoption of public urban space as a driving force for third places
DESCRIPTION
Presented at workshop HCI3P within CHI'13 conference, April 2013, Paris.TRANSCRIPT
The Adoption of Urban Public Spaceas a Driving Force for Third Places in the Remediation of Democracy
P. Caianiello & S. Costantini &*F. Gobbo & D. Leombruni &
L. TarantinoUniversity of L’Aquila
HCI3P, Univ. Paris-Dauphine,April 27-28, 2013
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Introduction
Politics 2.0, year 2011
Year 2011 was defined a year of revolutions (Fuchs) where socialmovements, also using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook,occupied the public space (Castells).
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Social networks now: men & machines
These twofold social networks – made by machine and real people atthe same time – arrange ICT-empowered choreographies ofassembly (Gerbaudo): a Third Place is temporary re-shaped, so toget visibility for a specific, focused topic of public interest and protest.
A typical form of choreography of assembly is the flash mob.
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Social networks now: men & machines
These twofold social networks – made by machine and real people atthe same time – arrange ICT-empowered choreographies ofassembly (Gerbaudo): a Third Place is temporary re-shaped, so toget visibility for a specific, focused topic of public interest and protest.
A typical form of choreography of assembly is the flash mob.4 of 21
ICT and flash mobsAdvantages brought by ICT, e.g. using smart phones:
� it is easy to shot a photo and share the action;
� activists can group together using existing social networks;
� all actions are put in time and space, which are recordedafterwards (hyperlocality, see Carroll, here at HCI3P).
Current limits:
� duration: it is difficult to trace the history of actions in time –“how is it going?” (trails, see Walker et al., here at HCI3P) andespecially the end of the story – “issue was solved in dd/mm/yyy”.
� visibility: there is no ICT-empowered environment to put theraised issue to the appropriate government level (e.g., AziendaDiritto allo Studio L’Aquila).
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ICT and flash mobsAdvantages brought by ICT, e.g. using smart phones:
� it is easy to shot a photo and share the action;
� activists can group together using existing social networks;
� all actions are put in time and space, which are recordedafterwards (hyperlocality, see Carroll, here at HCI3P).
Current limits:
� duration: it is difficult to trace the history of actions in time –“how is it going?” (trails, see Walker et al., here at HCI3P) andespecially the end of the story – “issue was solved in dd/mm/yyy”.
� visibility: there is no ICT-empowered environment to put theraised issue to the appropriate government level (e.g., AziendaDiritto allo Studio L’Aquila).
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Emepolis, our proposal
The background: call for ideas
In the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Accentureopened a call for ideas, in collaboration with Fondazione ItalianaAccenture and Alumni Accenture, where “Emepolis – my city” wasthe winning idea in the category ICT for teams (high school students).
Our Dep. of Inf. Eng.,Comp. Sc. & Maths (DISIM) realized theprototype of Emepolis, a smartphone app to foster citizens’participation towards the reconstruction of the damaged city.
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The background: call for ideas
In the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Accentureopened a call for ideas, in collaboration with Fondazione ItalianaAccenture and Alumni Accenture, where “Emepolis – my city” wasthe winning idea in the category ICT for teams (high school students).
Our Dep. of Inf. Eng.,Comp. Sc. & Maths (DISIM) realized theprototype of Emepolis, a smartphone app to foster citizens’participation towards the reconstruction of the damaged city.8 of 21
The method: focus group and brainstorming
We considered young citizens (15-25 years) as our main target, livingin a EU medium-sized city, who want to partecipate to the politicalarena, especially at a local level (city, province, region).
We found some features of the mobile application:
� multilingualism: we prepared the GUI in English, Italian, Albanian;
� citizens can propose issues and vote others’ (C2C level);
� governance representatives should receive open issuesappropriately and close them (when issue is fixed) as special usersof a social network (C2G level);
� the social network should “not be a bad clone of Facebook”.
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The method: focus group and brainstorming
We considered young citizens (15-25 years) as our main target, livingin a EU medium-sized city, who want to partecipate to the politicalarena, especially at a local level (city, province, region).
We found some features of the mobile application:
� multilingualism: we prepared the GUI in English, Italian, Albanian;
� citizens can propose issues and vote others’ (C2C level);
� governance representatives should receive open issuesappropriately and close them (when issue is fixed) as special usersof a social network (C2G level);
� the social network should “not be a bad clone of Facebook”.
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The user-centered design of Emepolis
We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:
� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;
� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.
Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.
Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.
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The user-centered design of Emepolis
We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:
� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;
� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.
Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.
Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.
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The user-centered design of Emepolis
We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:
� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;
� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.
Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.
Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.
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Some screenshots
Further directions of work
Open questions for our workshop
� How to manage ‘sparse information and interaction’(suprathreshold, Carroll, here at HCI3P)?
� How to integrate the historical information of a nurturedcommunity garden, i.e., public or shared pieces of land cultivatedfor a common good storytelling of the community (Calderon et al.,here at HCI3P)?
� Is Emepolis an example of Bannon’s human-centered computing(HCC) (in Thompson and Steier, here at HCI3P)? How to improveit under this aspect?
We are open for discussion and collaboration
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Open questions for our workshop
� How to manage ‘sparse information and interaction’(suprathreshold, Carroll, here at HCI3P)?
� How to integrate the historical information of a nurturedcommunity garden, i.e., public or shared pieces of land cultivatedfor a common good storytelling of the community (Calderon et al.,here at HCI3P)?
� Is Emepolis an example of Bannon’s human-centered computing(HCC) (in Thompson and Steier, here at HCI3P)? How to improveit under this aspect?
We are open for discussion and collaboration
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Do you feel Oldenburg’s definitions are relevant toyour project?
Yes. In what sense? When a natural disaster destroysthe usual Third Places of a given community (citizensof L’Aquila), people feel to be lost, and we have torebuild them not only physically.
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In our work, the most important aspects of socialspaces are
1. public public (not only open-to-the-public) Third Places arise asthe points of interests of sensible issues;
2. the costruction of temporary social spaces doesn’t fit the need ofthe community: they want the original experience again!
3. mobile ICT is considered at the service of technology (tekne ancillasocietatis)
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Thanks for your attention!
Questions?
For proposals, ideas & comments:
Download & share these slides here:
http://slidesha.re/11Jk09h
CC© BY:© $\© C© Federico Gobbo 2013
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