Ian McArthur

Vote as you go: blending interfaces for community engagement into the urban space

This paper presents a series of studies on situated interfaces for community engagement. Firstly, we identify five recurring design challenges as well as four common strategies used to overcome them. We then assess the effectiveness of these strategies through field studies with public polling interfaces. We developed two very different polling interfaces in the form of (1) a web application running on an iPad mounted on a stand, allowing one vote at a time, and (2) a playful full-body interaction application for a large urban screen allowing concurrent participation. We deployed both interfaces in an urban precinct with high pedestrian traffic and equipped with a large urban screen. Analysing discoverability and learnability of each scenario, we derive insights regarding effective ways of blending community engagement interfaces into the built environment, while attracting the attention of passers-by and communicating the results of civic participation.

Digital Pop-Up: Investigating Bespoke Community Engagement in Public Spaces

This paper presents findings from a series of iterative field studies on the use of interactive, situated digital technologies deployed within a pop-up style format used for the purpose of community engagement. Based on observations, participant interviews, and a focus group with representatives from the local government authority, the contribution of this research is twofold. First, we propose five elements to guide the design of digital pop-up interventions for community engagement. Second, we demonstrate the effectiveness of combining digital interfaces and a physical pop-up within a civic space equipped with a large urban screen to engage wider cross-sections of the public. From that, we derive insights about the utilisation of this approach in attracting the attention of people who do not generally attend traditional community engagement events, and provide a more seamless consultation process by enabling citizens to submit their responses on the spot.

Situated interfaces for engaging citizens on the go

Insights Live screening and playfulness of the interactive space can be effective strategies for attracting the attention of passers-by and turn them into active participants. While urban screen interfaces increase participation by encouraging group interaction, privately-oriented tangible user interfaces give people a longer time to reflect upon their answers.

Trust and Relationship Building: Critical Skills for The Future of Design Education in Online Contexts

AbstractCould you trust someone you had never physically met to successfully collaborate with you on a design project?As online communication technologies rapidly evolve, the creative industries continue to move towards globally networked and interdisciplinary modalities of practice. These inescapable shifts in the ways designers work have challenged many long held assumptions about the nature of individual design processes.Such revolutionary changes mean that designers must increasingly master new skills to effectively communicate and collaborate in online environments with colleagues from different cultures, disciplines and locations world-wide. Since they may never meet face-to-face, the success of this new working methodology relies on high levels of trust between practitioners, both personally and professionally in order to achieve effective design outcomes.In turn the need for design educators to equip students with skills to thrive in the face of this new industrial paradigm is highlighted. Trust i...

The Role of Digital Screens in Urban Life: New Opportunities for Placemaking

Large digital screens are becoming prevalent across today’s cities dispersing into everyday urban spaces, such as public squares and cultural precincts. Examples, such as Federation Square, demonstrate the opportunities for using digital screens to create a sense of place and to add long-term social, cultural and economic value for citizens, who live and work in those precincts. However, the challenge of implementing digital screens in new urban developments is to ensure they respond appropriately to the physical and socio-cultural environment in which they are placed. Considering the increasing rate at which digital screens are being embedded into public spaces, it is surprising that the programs running on these screens still seem to be stuck in the cinematic model. The availability of advanced networking and interaction technologies offer opportunities for information access that goes beyond free-to-air television and advertising. This chapter revisits the history and current state of digital screens in urban life and discusses a series of research studies that involve digital screens as interface between citizens and the city. Instead of focusing on technological concerns, the chapter presents a holistic analysis of these studies, with the aim to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of the socio-cultural potential of this new media platform, how the digital content is linked with the spatial quality of the physical space, as well as the place and role of digital screens within the smart city movement.