‘Probing with the prototype’:using a prototype e-participation platform as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth engagement with the environment

This study describes how we used a prototype e-participation plat-form as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth motivation and engagement strategies. This is a novel way of considering digital cultural probes which can contribute to the better creation of e-participation platforms. This probe has been conducted as part of the research project STEP which aims at creating an e-participation platform to engage young European Citizens in environmental decision making. Our probe technique has given an insight into the environ-mental issues concerning young people across Europe as well as possible strat-egies for encouraging participation. How the e-participation platform can be utilised to support youth engagement through opportunities for social interac-tion and leadership is discussed. This study leads to a better understanding of how young people can co-operate with each other to provide collective intelli-gence and how this knowledge could contribute to effective e-participation of young people

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation

Connecting environmental action to e-participation design for young people

The paper offers a conceptual analysis and a case study research on the design of e-Participation in environmental policy-making for young people. This is achieved by connecting the concept of environmental action with e-Participation design. Through a literature review, four core dimensions of environmental action for young people are identified: ownership, participation, stakes in the future and experience. Through a case study of research conducted for an applied project aimed at designing and piloting a novel e-Participation solution, the paper shows how young people, implicitly see the connections between these four dimensions of environmental action and the e-Participation process. The dimensions of environmental action have, then been used as the basis for co-creation activities and for a subsequent evaluation of e-Participation. The results support the position that environmental action can underpin the design and can increase e-Participation capacity in environmental policy-making for young people

Full spectral fitting of Milky Way and M31 globular clusters: ages and metallicities

Context: The formation and evolution of disk galaxies are long standing questions in Astronomy. Understanding the properties of globular cluster systems can lead to important insights on the evolution of its host galaxy. Aims: We aim to obtain the stellar population parameters - age and metallicity - of a sample of M31 and Galactic globular clusters. Studying their globular cluster systems is an important step towards understanding their formation and evolution in a complete way. Methods: Our analysis employs a modern pixel-to-pixel spectral fitting technique to fit observed integrated spectra to updated stellar population models. By comparing observations to models we obtain the ages and metallicities of their stellar populations. We apply this technique to a sample of 38 globular clusters in M31 and to 41 Galactic globular clusters, used as a control sample. Results: Our sample of M31 globular clusters spans ages from 150 Myr to the age of the Universe. Metallicities [Fe/H] range from -2.2 dex to the solar value. The age-metallicity relation obtained can be described as having two components: an old population with a flat age-[Fe/H] relation, possibly associated with the halo and/or bulge, and a second one with a roughly linear relation between age and metallicity, higher metallicities corresponding to younger ages, possibly associated with the M31 disk. While we recover the very well known Galactic GC metallicity bimodality, our own analysis of M31's metallicity distribution function (MDF) suggests that both GC systems cover basically the same [Fe/H] range yet M31's MDF is not clearly bimodal. These results suggest that both galaxies experienced different star formation and accretion histories.Comment: A&A, in pres

TRIPLE crowdfunding user research

A demo presentation of the GoTriple crowdfunding solution. Rationale for this research:Setting up successfully a crowdfunding solution requires knowledge for supporting the decision making and an effective delivery.Questions:•What kind of projects would interest the potential users of the crowdfunding service? •Do crowdfunders want feedback after the funding? •Would participants like to get involved in other ways? •What contributes toward trusting the researchers/projects?•Could the career stage of the researcher (junior or senior) have an impact toward funding decisions?<br/

Creating a new crowdfunding channel for social sciences and humanities research:exploring the user needs

Over the years, the funding of scientific projects has been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions, such as government programmes or mainstream trusts. However, there are areas and topics of research which, for a variety of reasons, remain underfunded by traditional programmes. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial support to researchers and projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. This paper explores the user needs of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in Europe. The goal of the research was to understand and formalise a set of users’ needs that could help in setting up this nascent crowdfunding solution. The users are the SSH researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. We utilised a mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalised in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel, which might have a broader application for the design of crowdfunding solutions. This research is part of a large European research project, focused on building a discovery platform for SSH, called GoTriple, of which the new crowdfunding channel is one of the services

Crowdfunding scientific research:a case study based on user research

Over the years, funding scientific projects have been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions. Many projects were not getting funded due to the difficulties of accessing government funds. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial solutions to projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. A crowdfunding platform is an internet-based matchmaker where the citizens (the funders) are matched with the researchers who are seeking funds to finance their projects. This paper investigates the users of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities. The users are the Social Sciences and Humanities researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. The goal of this research was to find out about the user needs and preferences to help in the decision-making about this nascent crowdfunding channel. We utilized the mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalized in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel.</p

Creating a new crowdfunding channel for social sciences and humanities research:exploring the user needs

Over the years, the funding of scientific projects has been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions, such as government programmes or mainstream trusts. However, there are areas and topics of research which, for a variety of reasons, remain underfunded by traditional programmes. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial support to researchers and projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. This paper explores the user needs of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in Europe. The goal of the research was to understand and formalise a set of users’ needs that could help in setting up this nascent crowdfunding solution. The users are the SSH researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. We utilised a mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalised in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel, which might have a broader application for the design of crowdfunding solutions. This research is part of a large European research project, focused on building a discovery platform for SSH, called GoTriple, of which the new crowdfunding channel is one of the services

Interactive visualisation of sustainability indicators for water, energy and food innovations

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus describes the synergies and trade-offs between water, energy and food. Despite the significant attention that the WEF nexus has received in recent years, challenges remain, primarily related to gaps in integrated data, information and knowledge related to the most critical inter-linkages and their dynamics. These WEF nexus complexities and uncertainty make decision-making and future forecasting extremely difficult. Policy makers and other stakeholders are currently faced with the task of understanding longer term environmental impacts and tJhe benefits and limitations of innovations that could be potentially beneficial, such as Anaerobic Digestion as a waste solution or insect protein production. This paper describes an approach to support decision making for local-level innovations within the WEF nexus by creating a set of sustainability indicators and an accompanying interactive visualisation. The indicators were derived from stakeholder consultation processes and workshops, and they were selected to include a much broader assessment than just financial aspects when considering the viability of such innovations. By taking this bottom-up approach and placing stakeholders at the heart of the project, we produced a visualisation tool to support sustainable decision making when considering the implementation of WEF innovations. Considering other, often overlooked factors and giving greater priority to these deepens knowledge and the recognition of influential issues that in conventional processes may be overlooked. This visualisation tool is designed to support decision makers to engage in a exploration of the different interlinkages, and to be the basis of stakeholder dialogue around sustainability. The visualisation tool developed was designed to be easily modifiable in order to be updated with new insights and to include other future innovations