User-Led Design in the Urban/Domestic Environment

Abstract

Urban spaces are pervaded by interpretive and reactive technologies that shape and are shaped by its inhabitants, with an increasingly active role for citizen technologists. Yet the role of domestic spaces in shaping lived experience within the urban environment, and subsequent technological interventions, is often overlooked. Homes are framed as closed-off environments which isolate their inhabitants from the city, despite being porous spaces that are also filled with ubiquitous computing. In this paper we draw on the participatory design and user innovation literatures to present the methodology for the "Homesense" research project that explored how users design and develop "smart" technologies within their own homes, based on the intersection of their concurrent urban/domestic lived experience. Kits of open-source hardware were used as cultural probes, and co-located "lead users" provided technical expertise. This methodology demonstrates the importance of physical space and location in user-led domestic activities, and of combinations of technical and "lived" expertise in developing these interventions.

From Organizations to Organizational Fields: The Evolution of Civic Innovation Ecosystems

“…In this "innovation ecosystem" framework, the definition and development of projects both involve many and varied stakeholders (Snow et al, 2016). Proponents have argued that this can improve outcomes, for example, by revealing local conditions during problem definition, leveraging community expertise during project development, or accounting for livelihoods as the result is integrated (Desouza & Bhagwatwar, 2012;Voss & Carolan, 2012). This is because urban technology is uniquely concerned with the supply side (participation, innovation) and the demand side (use, integration), in that it links local actors, institutions, and places in the fulfilment of societal functions (Cohen et al, 2016;Kontokosta, 2016).…”