HCI policy and the smart city

While the idea of the ‘Smart City’ has attracted increasing attention from academia, industry, and government this interest has largely had a technical and technological focus. This paper identifies some of the important political and policy challenges facing the idea, the discourse, of a ‘smart city’ as a means to optimise HCI input into the ‘smart city’ debate. It then addresses that gap by detailing a research project that explored how experts in smart city research and development in the UK context responded to this policy challenge. Experts were asked questions regarding their prior experience with the “smart city”, their understandings of what it means for a city to be smart, and what policy potentials they've recognised in the smart city. The paper analyses and offers a synthesis of the responses collected throughout the research with the current policies concerning various smart city proximity, thereby providing a critical assessment of the values underlying the smart city. The paper aims to explore and present some of the policy possibilities for UK smart cities that are potentially useful for politicians, policy makers, planners, academics, and technology companies. I believe that these perspectives for policy development can be used to inform responsible development, spatially and socially inclusive technologies, and ultimately more resilient and liveable cities

Creating sustainability through Smart City Projects

Smart Cities are a key mechanism for facilitating sustainability – be that in the use of resources (e.g. energy, water), the running of city infrastructure (e.g. transport) or in terms of social policy (e.g. politics). Using our experience of a Smart City project, MK:Smart, we describe what role citizen-led innovation could have in promoting long-term sustainable change. Beyond this we detail some of the barriers to success we have identified in the hope that design patterns might help us address these challenges

From Smart Cities To Playable Cities. Towards Playful Intelligence In The Urban Environment

In the last decade, we have seen the rise of urban play as a tool for community building, and city-making and Western society is actively focusing on play/playfulness and intelligent systems as a way to approach complex challenges and emergent situations. In this paper, we aim to initiate a dialogue between game scholars and architects. Like many creative professions, we believe that the architectural practice may benefit significantly from having more design methodologies at hand, thus improving lateral thinking. We aim at providing new conceptual and operative tools to discuss and reflect on how games and smart systems facilitate long-term the shift from the Smart Cities to the Playable one, where citizens/players have the opportunity to hack the city and use the smart city’s data and digital technology for their purposes to reactivate the urban environment

The simplification of complex interactions for more inclusive social communication technologies (position paper)

New technologies, especially smart homes and mobile and ubiquitous technologies have the potential to foster improved quality of life in the older population. Some anticipated benefits are linked to specific applications in areas such as home automation, communication, shopping and health. However, some valuable potential benefits lie in building and sustaining relationships with remote extended family, particularly children and grandchildren, as well as with carers, neighbours and friends. Communication with geographically remote family can play an important role in helping to sustain autonomy, inclusion and independence. Reduction in isolation and improved participation have the potential to improve or sustain quality of life, but in addition they can lead to a reduction in vulnerability and sustained physical health. Another benefit can be to reassure adult children about the viability of their parent's independent living. Broadband "always-on" communications are potentially particularly useful tools in sustaining geographically remote relationships with extended family, as they can support many useful kinds of interaction, using modalities such as voice, video, pervasive annotation, selection, and remote concierging. Unfortunately, many possible new interactions are currently complex to manage, ruling them out on grounds of poor acceptability, accessibility and usability. However, our hypothesis is that a new interaction framework that combines social and technical components could be used to simplify many interactions of the kinds noted above sufficiently to the point where they would be rendered acceptable, accessible and usable. This paper outlines plans to test such a framework

Connected seeds and sensors: co-designing internet of things for sustainable smart cities with urban food-growing communities.

We present a case study of a participatory design project in the space of sustainable smart cities and Internet of Things. We describe our design process that led to the development of an interactive seed library that tells the stories of culturally diverse urban food growers, and networked environmental sensors from their gardens, as a way to support more sustainable food practices in the city. This paper contributes to an emerging body of empirical work within participatory design that seeks to involve citizens in the design of smart cities and Internet of Things, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. It also contributes empirical work towards non-utilitarian approaches to sustainable smart cities through a discussion of designing for urban diversity and slowness

Invisible design: exploring insights and ideas through ambiguous film scenarios

Invisible Design is a technique for generating insights and ideas with workshop participants in the early stages of concept development. It involves the creation of ambiguous films in which characters discuss a technology that is not directly shown. The technique builds on previous work in HCI on scenarios, persona, theatre, film and ambiguity. The Invisible Design approach is illustrated with three examples from unrelated projects; Biometric Daemon, Panini and Smart Money. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of data from a series of workshops where these Invisible Designs were discussed. The analysis outlines responses to the films in terms of; existing problems, concerns with imagined technologies and design speculation. It is argued that Invisible Design can help to create a space for critical and creative dialogue during participatory concept development

Amplifying Quiet Voices: Challenges and Opportunities for Participatory Design at an Urban Scale

Many Smart City projects are beginning to consider the role of citizens. However, current methods for engaging urban populations in participatory design activities are somewhat limited. In this paper, we describe an approach taken to empower socially disadvantaged citizens, using a variety of both social and technological tools, in a smart city project. Through analysing the nature of citizens’ concerns and proposed solutions, we explore the benefits of our approach, arguing that engaging citizens can uncover hyper-local concerns that provide a foundation for finding solutions to address citizen concerns. By reflecting on our approach, we identify four key challenges to utilising participatory design at an urban scale; balancing scale with the personal, who has control of the process, who is participating and integrating citizen-led work with local authorities. By addressing these challenges, we will be able to truly engage citizens as collaborators in co-designing their city

“No powers, man!”: A student perspective on designing university smart building interactions

Smart buildings offer an opportunity for better performance and enhanced experience by contextualising services and interactions to the needs and practices of occupants. Yet, this vision is limited by established approaches to building management, delivered top-down through professional facilities management teams, opening up an interaction-gap between occupants and the spaces they inhabit. To address the challenge of how smart buildings might be more inclusively managed, we present the results of a qualitative study with student occupants of a smart building, with design workshops including building walks and speculative futuring. We develop new understandings of how student occupants conceptualise and evaluate spaces as they experience them, and of how building management practices might evolve with new sociotechnical systems that better leverage occupant agency. Our findings point to important directions for HCI research in this nascent area, including the need for HBI (Human-Building Interaction) design to challenge entrenched roles in building management

Mining a MOOC to examine international views of the “Smart City”

Increasing numbers of cities are focussed on using technology to become “Smart”. Many of these Smart City programmes are starting to go beyond a technological focus to also explore the value of a more inclusive approach that values the input of citizens. However, the insights gained from working with citizens are typically focused around a single town or city. In this paper we explore whether it is possible to understand people’s opinions and views on the Smart City topics of Open Data, privacy and leadership by examining comments left on a Smart City MOOC that has been delivered internationally. In doing so we start to explore whether MOOCs can provide a lens for examining views on different facets of the Smart City agenda from a global audience, albeit limited to the demographic of the typical MOOC user

Characterizing HCI Research in China: Streams, Methodologies and Future Directions

This position paper takes the first step to attempt to present the initial characterization of HCI research in China. We discuss the current streams and methodologies of Chinese HCI research based on two well-known HCI theories: Micro/Marco-HCI and the Three Paradigms of HCI. We evaluate the discussion with a survey of Chinese publications at CHI 2019, which shows HCI research in China has less attention to Macro-HCI topics and the third paradigms of HCI (Phenomenologically situated Interaction). We then propose future HCI research directions such as paying more attention to Macro-HCI topics and third paradigm of HCI, combining research methodologies from multiple HCI paradigms, including emergent users who have less access to technology, and addressing the cultural dimensions in order to provide better technical solutions and support