From her story, to our story: Digital storytelling as public engagement around abortion rights advocacy in Ireland

Despite the divisive nature of abortion within the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where access to safe, legal abortion is severely restricted, effecting legislative reform demands widespread public support. In light of a building pro-choice counter-voice, this work contributes to a growing body of HCI research that takes an activist approach to design. We report findings from four design workshops with 31 pro-choice stakeholders across Ireland in which we positioned an exploratory protosite, HerStoryTold, to engender critical conversations around the use of sensitive abortion narratives as a tool for engagement. Our analysis shows how digital storytelling can help reject false narratives and raise awareness of the realities of abortion laws. It suggests design directions to curate narratives that provoke empathy, foster polyvocality, and ultimately expand the engaged community. Furthermore, this research calls for designers to actively support community mobilization through providing 'stepping stones' to activism

Assessing the contribution of urban green spaces in green infrastructure strategy planning for urban ecosystem conditions and services

Maintaining ecosystem services is a key adaption option towards sustainable cities and adaptive societies in securing citizens’ health and wellbeing. This research investigates the contribution of using urban green space components as the basic units in green infrastructure strategy planning for urban ecosystem conditions and services. A total of 9 types of urban green spaces are selected and delineated from the high-resolution data. A combination of the quantification method of 6 common urban ecosystem services based on urban green spaces and the MAES framework in reference to literature data is used. A case study of Cheltenham, a typical urban town in England, is studied to present the new approach for local green infrastructure strategy development for urban ecosystem conditions and respective services in improving the resilience of a city in facing global climate change. Results show that changing the composition and spatial arrangement of urban green space components, synergy or tradeoff of various services can be stimulated easily. The small scale of urban green space components allows local detail planning and potential integrated planning among other urban settlements