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Andrea Botero

Aalto University, Department of design, Department Member

University of Oulu, Department of Information Processing Science, Post-Doc

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The Open University

B. Harun Küçük

University of Pennsylvania

Alexandra Chavarria Arnau

Università degli Studi di Padova

Microsoft Research

Politecnico di Milano

cameron tonkinwise

University of Technology Sydney

Kansas State University

Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire

University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Laurajane Smith

The Australian National University

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Papers by Andrea Botero

Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate Emergency

Creativity and Cognition

We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societ... more We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societal issues related to the climate emergency by taking a series of interconnected, small-scale actions. Drawing on our first-hand perspectives, we reflect on how the cases address such issues by proliferating across different social contexts and supporting creative engagements of diverse stakeholders. We offer this empirical reflection at a time of rapid social and ecological change that has affected all life on the planet. Eco-social challenges and structural inequalities caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power require new approaches and transformative actions to stabilize and restore ecosystems on which life depends. Our research shows that creative practice in art and design has a critical role to play in these processes of transformation. By discussing the opportunities and challenges encountered by our three cases within their transformative efforts and analyzing how they proliferate across diverse scales, we aim to expand the emerging scholarship on the transformative potential of creative practice.

Keywords in Participatory Design (V1.0)

Participatory Design (PD) grew out of linkages between technology designers and worker movements ... more Participatory Design (PD) grew out of linkages between technology designers and worker movements in the 1970s. Now, as participation has emerged as an increasingly popular and contested idea in design fields and education, conversations about what we mean by "participation," who gets to participate and to what ends, and how we imagine the kinds of knowledge central to collective practices, are critical. We came together for the first time in New York City, January 30th 2020, for a committee meeting for the 16th Participatory Design Conference (PDC) to be held in Manizales, Colombia. This was just before the pandemia was declared. As part of that meeting Shana organized a panel discussion with all of us, with the same theme as this zine. The panel was the starting point of a creative exploration with some of the keywords–concepts that we consider crucial in/for Participatory Design. We continued to interrogate them throughout the PDC 2020, which, because of the pandemia, en...

Little Data, Big Data, No Data? Data Management in the Era of Research Infrastructures

Multi-scoped infrastructuring project (MULTICS, http://interact.oulu.fi/multics) acknowledges fun... more

Politics in environmental research infrastructure formation:when top-down policy-making meets bottom-up fragmentation

Permalink: http://blog.castac.org/2018/06/research-infrastructure/

DRAWING TOGETHER: INFRASTRUCTURING AND POLITICS FOR PARTICIPATORY DESIGN: a visual collection of cases, issues, questions, and relevant literature

LAYER 2: Collective issues: The what and when of infrastructuring 21 ▪ Seeds and seeding: Interve... more LAYER 2: Collective issues: The what and when of infrastructuring 21 ▪ Seeds and seeding: Interventions and making the strange familiar (Group 1) 22 ▪ Data, gateways, global/local, and a research agenda (Group 2) 24 ▪ Reconfiguring, learning, (counter)narrating, knotworking, struggling (Group 3) 26 ▪ Agreements, learning, scales of intervention and power (Group 4) 30 LAYER 3:(Re)problematizing politics, participation and infrastructuring 33 ▪ Making agendas explicit, and can there be PD without ethics? (Group 1) 35 ▪ Learning to reveal and not to obscure (Group 2) 38 ▪ Why? Take a stand! (Group 3) 40 ▪ Frames for action (Group 4) 42 LAYER 4: Uncharted territories: Some research paths 45 ▪ Political agendas, reflexivity and ethics (Group 1) 47 ▪ Data and design, invisible work and alternative dissemination strategies (Group 2) 50 ▪ Long term studies, framing, activism and PD look into infrastructuring (Group 3) 52 ▪ Changes in design, creative and critical thinking (Group 4) 54 INTRODUCTION: A workshop on Infrastructuring in PD 6 A WORKSHOP ON INFRASTRUCTURING IN PD This e-zine documents the discussions and group work done at the 'Infrastructuring in Participatory Design' workshop, a full-day event that took place at the Participatory Design Conference 2018 in Hasselt and Genk, Belgium¹. The workshop invited the Participatory Design (PD) community to come together, with their cases or projects, questions and topics of interest in order to take stock of empirical insights and conceptual developments around the notions of infrastructure and infrastructuring, and their relevance to the revitalization of the political agenda of PD. Following a hands-on approach, participants-collectively and critically-mapped issues, disentangled assumptions, identified blind spots, and outlined new research opportunities charting the possibilities and limitations of an infrastructuring approach in Participatory Design at large. Participants at the workshop came from a broad range of domains (e.g. Design, Science and Technology Studies, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Information Sciences, Architecture), representing interests in infrastructuring from multiple perspectives. Prior to the workshop, participants were asked to 1) write a position statement and read everyone else's position statements, 2) look at their own work in relation to the theme of the workshop to pick one artifact to bring to the workshop, 3) contribute to a collective compilation of research literature dealing with infrastructures and infrastructuring. With these activities, we together prepared issues, ideas, and concerns to work with in the workshop.

What does infrastructuring look like in STS? When? Workshop Report

WS Co-Designing and Commoning

This workshop explores the relevance of commons as an objective and commoning as a way of doing a... more

What does it mean to do things together?

Interactions

(Challenges and opportunities of) documentation practices of self-organised urban initiatives

Participatory Design Theory, 2018

In this chapter, we discuss the documentation practices of two citizen initiatives in Helsinki an... more In this chapter, we discuss the documentation practices of two citizen initiatives in Helsinki and the role of current social media infrastructures and artefact ecologies in supporting them. We point out how social media and other digital technologies are important catalysers in the initial steps of both endeavours, providing seeds for documentation practices to emerge. However, as practices stabilize and more information is accumulated, challenges related to access, effective archiving, reach and reuse start to appear. The chapter introduces some implications for social media design and the structuring of participatory design processes linking these areas to the construction of knowledge commons.

Infrastructuring in PD

Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial - Volume 2, 2018

In 1 this hands-on workshop we invite the PD community to take stock of empirical insights and co... more In 1 this hands-on workshop we invite the PD community to take stock of empirical insights and conceptual developments around the notions of infrastructure and infrastructuring. We propose that by leveraging the original relational nature of these concepts, we can revitalize the political soul of PD and better characterize the politics of participation in digitalization phenomena and processes ongoing in all walks of life. With a hands-on approach we will collectively and critically map, disentangle assumptions, identify blind spots and outline new research opportunities charting the possibilities and limitations of an infrastructuring approach in PD at large.

Experimental governance? The emergence of public sector innovation labs in Latin America

Policy Design and Practice, 2020

Public sector innovation labs are becoming an increasingly visible instrument in public sector in... more Public sector innovation labs are becoming an increasingly visible instrument in public sector innovation and experimentation. Proponents of these labs claim they can play an important role in addressing pressing social challenges, changing government structures and thereby shaping ideas and practices of future governance. Whilst some research has been carried out on public innovation labs, the focus of inquiry has been primarily on the emergence, models and activities of labs in Europe and North America. This paper attempts to contribute to this growing body of research by bringing forth some of the particularities of this phenomenon as it emerges in Latin America. Using as starting point three experimental interests identified in the available literature, namely increasing flexibilization of public procedures, developing methods for citizen engagement and experimental development of public policies, the paper presents insights and observations from a study of ten public sector innovation labs in Latin America. In particular, our focus is on how these interests are confronted with different realities and therefore what kind of challenges the labs face. Experimentation in Latin America seems to concern not only flexibilization, engagement and public policies; it also includes juggling with the tensions arising from budgetary constraints, the need to weave networks of regional labs to collaborate and finally the need to align their agendas to those of other institutions, while being accountable to different levels of society. This places Latin American labs in a different light than their European and North American counterparts.

Infrastructuring for Cultural Commons

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2017

In this paper we reflect on our involvement in the design and development of two information syst... more In this paper we reflect on our involvement in the design and development of two information systems: Fusion and EUscreen. Both are infrastructural initiatives aimed at contributing, from different angles, to wider public access to and appropriation of the European digital cultural heritage. Our analysis is founded on the notions of an installed base and gateway in information infrastructure development. We situate our co-design activities and infrastructuring strategies in relation to a broader interest in advocating not only the preservation of and access to digital cultural heritage, but, more importantly, enabling collaboration, to support the emerging practices of diverse user groups, and to contribute to cultural commons.

Peer-Production in Public Services? Emerging Themes for Design Research and Action

Getting Participatory Design Done: From Methods and Choices to Translation Work across Constituent Domains

Collaborative arrangements between users and designers today are enacted in a broadening array of... more Collaborative arrangements between users and designers today are enacted in a broadening array of circumstances. These include extended, even years-long projects within corporations, the public and third sectors, as well as open-ended, peer-to-peer open design initiatives. Building on a literature review and analysis of four concrete participatory design projects, in this paper we argue that besides skills in selecting and implementing co-design methods, there is a larger repertoire of issues that need attention, if one takes the promises and limits of participatory design seriously. We elaborate on how these issues have purchase in the interplay of four interrelated domains: the strategic considerations that drive all those implicated, the mundane acts involved in co-design work, the choice of methods that is conditioned by strategic and mundane issues, and the producing of design outcomes permeated in turn by all the above. These domains co-constitute each other in such a way that...

Ageing together: Steps towards evolutionary co-design in everyday practices

CoDesign, 2013

In this article we outline a temporally extended co-design process of media technologies develope... more In this article we outline a temporally extended co-design process of media technologies developed in collaboration with elderly people. In the course of doing this, we identify a set of design strategies that helped to sustain the collaboration. Based on our experiences, we recognise the need for developing design strategies for extended and evolutionary design collaborations with ordinary communities that have special needs, and do not possess significant resourcing, design experience or skills in the technology in question. Such communities of practice pose challenges to shorter term project-centred forms of co-design and also require updates to the existing extended design approaches, which rest on relatively high user skill and resourcing. The 'ageing together' design strategies outlined in this article hence take necessary steps in adjusting co-designers' repertoires of engagement in this type of everyday context.

On DIY cloth face masks and scalar relationships in design

Nordes 2021: Matters of Scale, 2021

In this paper, we take the case of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) face masks as an entry point to questions... more In this paper, we take the case of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) face masks as an entry point to questions of scale and scalar relations in design. We provide two example scalar trajectories that illustrate how DIY face masks-as everyday design artefacts-are in continuous shaping and reshaping through various forms of active use and design. We also point out how scalar relations manifest in knowledge sharing and circulation of know-how, as DIY masks emerge in a world facing the same COVID-19 virus but within different local realities and relationships.

Sharing Eco-Soap Knowledge – Joosoap Studio Design and Approaches for Sustainability

In this paper we document some of the experiences gained while designing and prototyping JooSoap ... more In this paper we document some of the experiences gained while designing and prototyping JooSoap Studio. JooSoap Studio aims to make it easy for people to gather and make eco-soap products together, anywhere in the world. The Studio is part of a larger project that aims to spread sustainable knowledge around making ecological cleaning soap (eco-soap) from recycled used (kitchen) cooking oil pioneered by activist communities in Japan and Taiwan. JooSoap Studio experiments with tools, practices and infrastructures that will help spreading this knowledge to more communities, through local engagement, aiming at sustainability and replicability of the information.

Interactions

Configuring Devices for Phenomena in-the-Making

Science & Technology Studies

STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical ph... more STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical phenomena. This article participates in discussions on methodography and inventive methods by reflecting on visualizations used both internally by a team of researchers and together with study participants. We describe how these devices for generating and transforming data were brought to our ethnographic inquiry into the formation of research infrastructures which we found to be unwieldy and evolving phenomena. The visualizations are partial renderings of the object of inquiry, crafted and informed by ‘configuration’ as a method of assemblage that supports ethnographic study of contemporary socio-technical phenomena. We scrutinize our interdisciplinary bringing together of visualizing devices - timelines, collages, and sketches - and position them in the STS methods toolbox for inquiry and invention. These devices are key to investigating and engaging with the dynamics of configuring infr...

Everyday self-organising social movements and the role of social media in citizen engagement

This paper examines the role of digital storytelling in the context of small-scale local activiti... more This paper examines the role of digital storytelling in the context of small-scale local activities. We introduce the theoretical concept of ‘everyday self-organising social movements’ (ESSM), which refers to small-scale, citizen-led programs that aim at improving their neighbourhoods and cities. In theorising ESSM, we identify the tension between bottom-up and top-down actions aimed at fortifying the community, and discuss how this tension can be transcended through the concept of self-organisation. Our multidisciplinary research framework combines ideas from the fields of digital communication, media studies, urban planning and collaborative design. From the perspective of digital storytelling, we demonstrate how digital social media plays the role of a catalyst in the organisation of social movements and in the construction of identities. To make our case, we present six examples: three from Helsinki, Finland, and three from Tokyo, Japan. Finally, we discuss the conditions that c...

Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate Emergency

Creativity and Cognition

We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societ... more We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societal issues related to the climate emergency by taking a series of interconnected, small-scale actions. Drawing on our first-hand perspectives, we reflect on how the cases address such issues by proliferating across different social contexts and supporting creative engagements of diverse stakeholders. We offer this empirical reflection at a time of rapid social and ecological change that has affected all life on the planet. Eco-social challenges and structural inequalities caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power require new approaches and transformative actions to stabilize and restore ecosystems on which life depends. Our research shows that creative practice in art and design has a critical role to play in these processes of transformation. By discussing the opportunities and challenges encountered by our three cases within their transformative efforts and analyzing how they proliferate across diverse scales, we aim to expand the emerging scholarship on the transformative potential of creative practice.

Keywords in Participatory Design (V1.0)

Participatory Design (PD) grew out of linkages between technology designers and worker movements ... more Participatory Design (PD) grew out of linkages between technology designers and worker movements in the 1970s. Now, as participation has emerged as an increasingly popular and contested idea in design fields and education, conversations about what we mean by "participation," who gets to participate and to what ends, and how we imagine the kinds of knowledge central to collective practices, are critical. We came together for the first time in New York City, January 30th 2020, for a committee meeting for the 16th Participatory Design Conference (PDC) to be held in Manizales, Colombia. This was just before the pandemia was declared. As part of that meeting Shana organized a panel discussion with all of us, with the same theme as this zine. The panel was the starting point of a creative exploration with some of the keywords–concepts that we consider crucial in/for Participatory Design. We continued to interrogate them throughout the PDC 2020, which, because of the pandemia, en...

Little Data, Big Data, No Data? Data Management in the Era of Research Infrastructures

Multi-scoped infrastructuring project (MULTICS, http://interact.oulu.fi/multics) acknowledges fun... more

Politics in environmental research infrastructure formation:when top-down policy-making meets bottom-up fragmentation

Permalink: http://blog.castac.org/2018/06/research-infrastructure/

DRAWING TOGETHER: INFRASTRUCTURING AND POLITICS FOR PARTICIPATORY DESIGN: a visual collection of cases, issues, questions, and relevant literature

LAYER 2: Collective issues: The what and when of infrastructuring 21 ▪ Seeds and seeding: Interve... more LAYER 2: Collective issues: The what and when of infrastructuring 21 ▪ Seeds and seeding: Interventions and making the strange familiar (Group 1) 22 ▪ Data, gateways, global/local, and a research agenda (Group 2) 24 ▪ Reconfiguring, learning, (counter)narrating, knotworking, struggling (Group 3) 26 ▪ Agreements, learning, scales of intervention and power (Group 4) 30 LAYER 3:(Re)problematizing politics, participation and infrastructuring 33 ▪ Making agendas explicit, and can there be PD without ethics? (Group 1) 35 ▪ Learning to reveal and not to obscure (Group 2) 38 ▪ Why? Take a stand! (Group 3) 40 ▪ Frames for action (Group 4) 42 LAYER 4: Uncharted territories: Some research paths 45 ▪ Political agendas, reflexivity and ethics (Group 1) 47 ▪ Data and design, invisible work and alternative dissemination strategies (Group 2) 50 ▪ Long term studies, framing, activism and PD look into infrastructuring (Group 3) 52 ▪ Changes in design, creative and critical thinking (Group 4) 54 INTRODUCTION: A workshop on Infrastructuring in PD 6 A WORKSHOP ON INFRASTRUCTURING IN PD This e-zine documents the discussions and group work done at the 'Infrastructuring in Participatory Design' workshop, a full-day event that took place at the Participatory Design Conference 2018 in Hasselt and Genk, Belgium¹. The workshop invited the Participatory Design (PD) community to come together, with their cases or projects, questions and topics of interest in order to take stock of empirical insights and conceptual developments around the notions of infrastructure and infrastructuring, and their relevance to the revitalization of the political agenda of PD. Following a hands-on approach, participants-collectively and critically-mapped issues, disentangled assumptions, identified blind spots, and outlined new research opportunities charting the possibilities and limitations of an infrastructuring approach in Participatory Design at large. Participants at the workshop came from a broad range of domains (e.g. Design, Science and Technology Studies, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Information Sciences, Architecture), representing interests in infrastructuring from multiple perspectives. Prior to the workshop, participants were asked to 1) write a position statement and read everyone else's position statements, 2) look at their own work in relation to the theme of the workshop to pick one artifact to bring to the workshop, 3) contribute to a collective compilation of research literature dealing with infrastructures and infrastructuring. With these activities, we together prepared issues, ideas, and concerns to work with in the workshop.

What does infrastructuring look like in STS? When? Workshop Report

WS Co-Designing and Commoning

This workshop explores the relevance of commons as an objective and commoning as a way of doing a... more

What does it mean to do things together?

Interactions

(Challenges and opportunities of) documentation practices of self-organised urban initiatives

Participatory Design Theory, 2018

In this chapter, we discuss the documentation practices of two citizen initiatives in Helsinki an... more In this chapter, we discuss the documentation practices of two citizen initiatives in Helsinki and the role of current social media infrastructures and artefact ecologies in supporting them. We point out how social media and other digital technologies are important catalysers in the initial steps of both endeavours, providing seeds for documentation practices to emerge. However, as practices stabilize and more information is accumulated, challenges related to access, effective archiving, reach and reuse start to appear. The chapter introduces some implications for social media design and the structuring of participatory design processes linking these areas to the construction of knowledge commons.

Infrastructuring in PD

Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial - Volume 2, 2018

In 1 this hands-on workshop we invite the PD community to take stock of empirical insights and co... more In 1 this hands-on workshop we invite the PD community to take stock of empirical insights and conceptual developments around the notions of infrastructure and infrastructuring. We propose that by leveraging the original relational nature of these concepts, we can revitalize the political soul of PD and better characterize the politics of participation in digitalization phenomena and processes ongoing in all walks of life. With a hands-on approach we will collectively and critically map, disentangle assumptions, identify blind spots and outline new research opportunities charting the possibilities and limitations of an infrastructuring approach in PD at large.

Experimental governance? The emergence of public sector innovation labs in Latin America

Policy Design and Practice, 2020

Public sector innovation labs are becoming an increasingly visible instrument in public sector in... more Public sector innovation labs are becoming an increasingly visible instrument in public sector innovation and experimentation. Proponents of these labs claim they can play an important role in addressing pressing social challenges, changing government structures and thereby shaping ideas and practices of future governance. Whilst some research has been carried out on public innovation labs, the focus of inquiry has been primarily on the emergence, models and activities of labs in Europe and North America. This paper attempts to contribute to this growing body of research by bringing forth some of the particularities of this phenomenon as it emerges in Latin America. Using as starting point three experimental interests identified in the available literature, namely increasing flexibilization of public procedures, developing methods for citizen engagement and experimental development of public policies, the paper presents insights and observations from a study of ten public sector innovation labs in Latin America. In particular, our focus is on how these interests are confronted with different realities and therefore what kind of challenges the labs face. Experimentation in Latin America seems to concern not only flexibilization, engagement and public policies; it also includes juggling with the tensions arising from budgetary constraints, the need to weave networks of regional labs to collaborate and finally the need to align their agendas to those of other institutions, while being accountable to different levels of society. This places Latin American labs in a different light than their European and North American counterparts.

Infrastructuring for Cultural Commons

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2017

In this paper we reflect on our involvement in the design and development of two information syst... more In this paper we reflect on our involvement in the design and development of two information systems: Fusion and EUscreen. Both are infrastructural initiatives aimed at contributing, from different angles, to wider public access to and appropriation of the European digital cultural heritage. Our analysis is founded on the notions of an installed base and gateway in information infrastructure development. We situate our co-design activities and infrastructuring strategies in relation to a broader interest in advocating not only the preservation of and access to digital cultural heritage, but, more importantly, enabling collaboration, to support the emerging practices of diverse user groups, and to contribute to cultural commons.

Peer-Production in Public Services? Emerging Themes for Design Research and Action

Getting Participatory Design Done: From Methods and Choices to Translation Work across Constituent Domains

Collaborative arrangements between users and designers today are enacted in a broadening array of... more Collaborative arrangements between users and designers today are enacted in a broadening array of circumstances. These include extended, even years-long projects within corporations, the public and third sectors, as well as open-ended, peer-to-peer open design initiatives. Building on a literature review and analysis of four concrete participatory design projects, in this paper we argue that besides skills in selecting and implementing co-design methods, there is a larger repertoire of issues that need attention, if one takes the promises and limits of participatory design seriously. We elaborate on how these issues have purchase in the interplay of four interrelated domains: the strategic considerations that drive all those implicated, the mundane acts involved in co-design work, the choice of methods that is conditioned by strategic and mundane issues, and the producing of design outcomes permeated in turn by all the above. These domains co-constitute each other in such a way that...

Ageing together: Steps towards evolutionary co-design in everyday practices

CoDesign, 2013

In this article we outline a temporally extended co-design process of media technologies develope... more In this article we outline a temporally extended co-design process of media technologies developed in collaboration with elderly people. In the course of doing this, we identify a set of design strategies that helped to sustain the collaboration. Based on our experiences, we recognise the need for developing design strategies for extended and evolutionary design collaborations with ordinary communities that have special needs, and do not possess significant resourcing, design experience or skills in the technology in question. Such communities of practice pose challenges to shorter term project-centred forms of co-design and also require updates to the existing extended design approaches, which rest on relatively high user skill and resourcing. The 'ageing together' design strategies outlined in this article hence take necessary steps in adjusting co-designers' repertoires of engagement in this type of everyday context.

On DIY cloth face masks and scalar relationships in design

Nordes 2021: Matters of Scale, 2021

In this paper, we take the case of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) face masks as an entry point to questions... more In this paper, we take the case of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) face masks as an entry point to questions of scale and scalar relations in design. We provide two example scalar trajectories that illustrate how DIY face masks-as everyday design artefacts-are in continuous shaping and reshaping through various forms of active use and design. We also point out how scalar relations manifest in knowledge sharing and circulation of know-how, as DIY masks emerge in a world facing the same COVID-19 virus but within different local realities and relationships.

Sharing Eco-Soap Knowledge – Joosoap Studio Design and Approaches for Sustainability

In this paper we document some of the experiences gained while designing and prototyping JooSoap ... more In this paper we document some of the experiences gained while designing and prototyping JooSoap Studio. JooSoap Studio aims to make it easy for people to gather and make eco-soap products together, anywhere in the world. The Studio is part of a larger project that aims to spread sustainable knowledge around making ecological cleaning soap (eco-soap) from recycled used (kitchen) cooking oil pioneered by activist communities in Japan and Taiwan. JooSoap Studio experiments with tools, practices and infrastructures that will help spreading this knowledge to more communities, through local engagement, aiming at sustainability and replicability of the information.

Interactions

Configuring Devices for Phenomena in-the-Making

Science & Technology Studies

STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical ph... more STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical phenomena. This article participates in discussions on methodography and inventive methods by reflecting on visualizations used both internally by a team of researchers and together with study participants. We describe how these devices for generating and transforming data were brought to our ethnographic inquiry into the formation of research infrastructures which we found to be unwieldy and evolving phenomena. The visualizations are partial renderings of the object of inquiry, crafted and informed by ‘configuration’ as a method of assemblage that supports ethnographic study of contemporary socio-technical phenomena. We scrutinize our interdisciplinary bringing together of visualizing devices - timelines, collages, and sketches - and position them in the STS methods toolbox for inquiry and invention. These devices are key to investigating and engaging with the dynamics of configuring infr...

Everyday self-organising social movements and the role of social media in citizen engagement

This paper examines the role of digital storytelling in the context of small-scale local activiti... more This paper examines the role of digital storytelling in the context of small-scale local activities. We introduce the theoretical concept of ‘everyday self-organising social movements’ (ESSM), which refers to small-scale, citizen-led programs that aim at improving their neighbourhoods and cities. In theorising ESSM, we identify the tension between bottom-up and top-down actions aimed at fortifying the community, and discuss how this tension can be transcended through the concept of self-organisation. Our multidisciplinary research framework combines ideas from the fields of digital communication, media studies, urban planning and collaborative design. From the perspective of digital storytelling, we demonstrate how digital social media plays the role of a catalyst in the organisation of social movements and in the construction of identities. To make our case, we present six examples: three from Helsinki, Finland, and three from Tokyo, Japan. Finally, we discuss the conditions that c...

The Urban Information Toolkit

by Andrea Botero and Joanna Saad-Sulonen

The aim of the Urban Information Toolkit is to provide inspiration or facilitate collaboration in... more The aim of the Urban Information Toolkit is to provide inspiration or facilitate collaboration inside heterogeneous groups of people that are interested in urban data and information. In this publication, we give an overview of our motivation to come up with such a toolkit, which is very much linked to our desire to bring forward the need for a citizen-centered approach to smart cities. We also explain the methods we have used to develop The toolkit, and report an example of a concrete application context where we used the toolkit as part of a workshop in Helsinki in autumn 2013. We conclude with proposals for ways the Urban Information Toolkit can be integrated to activities of companies and municipalities interested in the topic of urban information and collaboration with citizens.

This work has been supported by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation TEKES (through the Kaupunkitieto ja toiminnan hallinta project, KaToHan) and the Aalto Media Factory (through the Urban Media Prototyping project, UMPro).

Towards Peer-production in Public Services: Cases from Finland

by Andrea Botero, Andrew Gryf Paterson, and Pirjo Tulikukka

There are many challenges and opportunities in designing, developing and maintaining services for... more There are many challenges and opportunities in designing, developing and maintaining services for participatory modes of governance, not to mention their co-creation and peer-to-peer aspects. We ask what can be learned from the current research, and what is happening already beyond academia? With the aim to increase the opportunities for dialogue between the Finnish scene and the international context, we have gathered this collection of articles that deal broadly with the relationships between peer-to-peer dynamics, and public services. Most of the cases presented are illustrative of recent developments and discussions in Finnish society, however, also included are broader international perspectives, giving historical reflection and future-oriented speculation on how peer production might affect the structures of our society.Aalto University - Special Interest Group (SIG) in co-creation, co-governance and peer-to-peer production of public service

Expanding Design Space(s). Design in Communal Endeavours.

The study explores collective design processes that both closely tied communities and emergent co... more The study explores collective design processes that both closely tied communities and emergent collectives are increasingly engaging in. The hypothesis was that collaborative design in these settings is better understood at the intersection of the evolution of the every-day practices and the shared new media forms that emerge, since both of these aspects shape and give direction to each other.

Based on two case studies of fledgling communities (seniors aging together) and emergent collectives (citizens and city officials linked by locative media), the study shows how continuities and collaboration can be achieved between design and life-practices. Particular attention was paid on expanding what comprises the design spaces of these communal endeavours to capture a wider interplay of possibilities: practices, partly assembled technologies, as well as the developing competencies and social arrangements emerging. These are all found to be the basis for ongoing design choices.

Strategic Design Research Journal | Call for Papers | Autonomía: Design strategies for enabling design process

by Carlo Franzato, Chiara Del Gaudio, Andrea Botero, and Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero

Strategic Design Research Journal | Call for Papers | STRATEGIC DESIGN RESEARCH JOURNAL #10!

by Filipe Campelo Xavier da Costa, Carlo Franzato, Chiara Del Gaudio, Andrea Botero, and Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero

Strategic Design Research Journal | New issue | v.9, n.2 | Exploring Participatory Design as a Strategy to Act within the City

by Carlo Franzato, Chiara Del Gaudio, Andrea Botero, and Liesbeth HUYBRECHTS