Related papers: Voice to Vision: Enhancing Civic Decision-Making t…
Picture a community torn over a proposed zoning law. Some are angry, others defensive, and misunderstandings abound. On social media, they broadcast insults at one another; every nuanced perspective is reduced to a viral soundbite. Yet,…
Artificial intelligence has become a part of the provision of governmental services, from making decisions about benefits to issuing fines for parking violations. However, AI systems rarely live up to the promise of neutral optimisation,…
Despite the recognized benefits of visual analytics systems in supporting data-driven decision-making, their deployment in real-world civic contexts often faces significant barriers. Beyond technical challenges such as resource constraints…
Collective robotic systems are biologically inspired and advantageous due to their apparent global intelligence and emergent behaviors. Many applications can benefit from the incorporation of collectives, including environmental monitoring,…
To allow non-designers' involvement in design projects new methods are needed. Co-design gives the same opportunity to all the multidisciplinary participants to co-create ideas simultaneously. Nevertheless, current co-design processes…
Community engagement processes form a critical foundation of democratic governance, yet frequently struggle with resource constraints, sensemaking challenges, and barriers to inclusive participation. These processes rely on constructive…
Participatory Budgeting (PB) has evolved into a key democratic instrument for resource allocation in cities. Enabled by digital platforms, cities now have the opportunity to let citizens directly propose and vote on urban projects, using…
Data-driven algorithmic and AI systems are increasingly being deployed to automate or augment decision processes across a wide range of public service settings. Yet community members are often unaware of the presence, operation, and impacts…
There have been significant innovations in media technologies in the recent years. While these developments have improved experiences for individual users, design of multi-user interfaces still remains a challenge. A relatively unexplored…
AI is increasingly used to scale collective decision-making, but far less attention has been paid to how such systems can support procedural legitimacy, particularly the conditions shaping losers' consent: whether participants who do not…
Public participation has become increasingly important in collaborative urban design; yet, existing processes often face challenges in achieving efficient and scalable citizen engagement. To address this gap, this study explores how large…
Community consultations are integral to urban planning processes intended to incorporate diverse stakeholder perspectives. However, limited resources, visual and spoken language barriers, and uneven power dynamics frequently constrain…
Technologies are increasingly enrolled in projects to involve civilians in the work of policy-making, often under the label of 'civic technology'. But conventional forms of participation through transactions such as voting provide limited…
Calls for heightened consideration of fairness and accountability in algorithmically-informed public decisions---like taxation, justice, and child protection---are now commonplace. How might designers support such human values? We…
In pediatrics, patients, caregivers, and clinicians share responsibility for health decisions, but limited collaboration can undermine outcomes. We conducted a qualitative study examining decision-makers perceptions toward collaborative…
This paper presents the co-design and design evaluation of Sbocciamo Torino civic tool, which helps understand and act upon the issues of youth deviance in the Italian city of Turin through multi-stakeholder collaboration and collaborative…
An innovation ecosystem is a multi-stakeholder environment, where different stakeholders interact to solve complex socio-technical challenges. We explored how stakeholders use digital tools, human resources, and their combination to gather…
Public deliberation, as in open discussion of issues of public concern, often suffers from scattered and shallow discourse, poor sensemaking, and a disconnect from actionable policy outcomes. This paper introduces BCause, a discussion…
Social technologies are the systems, interfaces, features, infrastructures, and architectures that allow people to interact with each other online. These technologies dramatically shape the fabric of our everyday lives, from the information…
Decentralizing the governance of social computing systems to communities promises to empower them to make independent decisions, with nuance and in accordance with their values. Yet, communities do not govern in isolation. Many problems…