Dave Roberts

Civic crowdfunding research: Challenges, opportunities, and future agenda

Civic crowdfunding is a sub-type of crowdfunding through which citizens, in collaboration with government, fund projects providing a community service. Although in the early stages of development, civic crowdfunding is a promising area for both research and application due to its potential impact on citizen engagement, as well as its influence on the success of a wide range of civic projects ranging from physical structures to amenities and local services. However, the field remains under-addressed in academic research and underdeveloped in terms of the number of civic projects posted to crowdfunding platforms. Acknowledging these issues, we outline the history of civic crowdfunding and describe the current landscape, focusing on online crowdfunding platforms established specifically for the funding of civic projects (Citizinvestor, ioby, Neighbor.ly, Spacehive). The challenges and the opportunities of civic crowdfunding are examined, and its distinguishing characteristics are outlined, including a consideration of the impact of social media and platform features. We then propose a research agenda to help shape the future of this emergent field.

Evaluating e-commerce environments: approaches to cross-disciplinary investigation

In our on-going e?commerce research programme, we are employing techniques from HCI, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and marketing and adapting them to investigate customer behaviour with e?commerce environments. Our aim is to investigate the influencing factors beyond the usability of the website that shape the customers expectations and subsequent experience with e?commerce. In this paper, we propose an empirically-grounded model of customers purchase and consumption behaviour (derived as a part of our research) that supports systematic choice of techniques for the customer-centred design and evaluation of e?commerce environments. Our aim is not to provide a handbook of techniques but to share experiences of applying complementary techniques for investigating different facets of customer behaviour with e?commerce. This paper is meant to serve as a resource for researchers and practitioners who are involved in research, design and evaluation of e?commerce environments.

OVID: object view and interaction design

Several methods are already available for object oriented program design. These methods do not deal with user interface design. The tutorial teaches OVID, a systematic method for designing Object User Interfaces for use by product design teams. OVID is a major step in changing user interface design from art to science. It emphasizes the production of a complete, accurate model that can be used as input to program design methodologies.

Civic crowdfunding: how do offline communities engage online?

Civic crowdfunding is a sub-type of crowdfunding whereby citizens contribute to funding community-based projects ranging from physical structures to amenities. Though civic crowdfunding has great potential for impact, it remains a developing field in terms of project success and widespread adoption. To explore how technology shapes interactions and outcomes within civic projects, our research addresses two interrelated questions: how do offline communities engage online across civic crowdfunding projects, and, what purpose does this activity serve both projects and communities? These questions are explored through discussion of types of offline communities and description of online activity across civic crowdfunding projects. We conclude by considering the implications of this knowledge for civic crowdfunding and its continued research.