Workshop on engaging the human-computer interaction community with public policymaking internationally

There is an increasing interest in the intersection of human-computer interaction and public policy. This day-long workshop will examine successes and challenges related to public policy and human computer interaction, in order to provide a forum to create a baseline of examples and to start the process of writing a white paper on the topic

Re-Designing Planning Policy Processes and Embedding Technology: The Case of Neighbourhood Planning

Ph. D. ThesisNeighbourhood planning provided citizens with new rights through the Localism Act 2011, empowering them to organise together to produce their own policy which would be adopted by local planning authorities. By December 2020, over 2700 communities had embarked on the neighbourhood planning process with just under 1000 plans adopted. However, challenges remain in the way neighbourhood planning is enacted by citizens with a complex process, uneven geographical take up and a lack of appropriate support for citizens. At a broader level, citizen participation in policymaking processes has shown a contested picture over many decades with calls for more and better participation whilst questions of the level of influence such participation has on decisions have been raised. Furthermore, the configuration of citizen participation has long been questioned, particularly in relation to the methods used to reach out to communities. Alongside this, research regarding digital technology for policymaking and citizen participation has increased but has yet to have an impact in practice. In this research, I explore how digital and non-digital tools could be designed to better support citizens to shape places through the example of the neighbourhood planning policy process. I engaged with neighbourhood planning groups and planners to learn from their experiences, particularly centring citizens’ needs in considering the need for support in the citizen-led policy tool. Using an action research approach, I used a cycle of action and reflection to inform research design, enabling participants to help direct research through their own experiences. To understand how citizens enact the neighbourhood planning process and explore the use of digital tools, I engaged in an exploratory deployment of a participatory media technology, then moved to deliver interactive workshops to explore the neighbourhood planning process in-depth and co-designed new modes of digital and non-digital engagement. Through this research, I first demonstrate the complexity of neighbourhood planning, exploring the nuances of the process from a citizens’ perspective and, second, I identify both opportunities and barriers to the use of digital modes of participation. Through identifying the issues within the neighbourhood planning process, I put forward approaches to designing better support mechanisms to enable citizens to shape places, including two key design principles, cross-disciplinary design thinking and inclusive design, which can ensure an inclusive and equitable approach to the design of policy and support tools. I demonstrate how these design principles should manifest within the neighbourhood planning context and provide recommendations for specific policy changes and the development of digital and non-digital support. Ultimately, I argue the need to design and embed digital and non-digital tools and technologies within a re-designed neighbourhood planning process to enable an appropriate, navigable and sustainable citizen-led policy tool where modes of participation can link directly to policy outcomes allowing citizens to shape places

Exploring Techno-Spirituality: Design strategies for transcendent user experiences

This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences (TXs) — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience (TUX). The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience