Pilot project presentations: SciberCity

Speakers meeting link: https://bit.ly/36uVRwF | Meeting attendants: Facebook live at https://www.facebook.com/designscapesproject/

17:30-17:45 Welcome and introduction
(Nicola Morelli, AAU)
17:45-18:15 Presentation of the pilot project
(Annika Wolff, Lappeenranta University of Technology)
18:15-18:30 Q&A and Discussion (*)
18:30 End

(*) Other winners of the Designscapes call with similar thematic orientation will be invited to contribute

Our speakers

Nicola Morelli is Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark. He has previously worked at RMIT University, in Australia and at Politecnico di Milano, where he also completed his PhD in Industrial Design.

He is coordinating the Service Design Lab, a research unit working on several research projects on service design. His research focuses on public services, social innovation and design policies. He has also published several articles on service design methodologies, social innovation and sustainability. He contributed as scientific coordinator or WP leader in several EU funded projects, such as Life 2.0, Open4Citizens My Neighbourhood, MUV2020, DESIGNSCAPES and easyRights.

Annika Wolff

The aim of the SciberCity project was to examine how environmental data and other forms of environmental information might act as a bridge between people and nature, one that can be used to build empathy towards problems that might otherwise remain unnoticed. We were particularly interested in the experiential aspects of engaging with data and how we might foster creative and sensory experiences with it. To support this, the project combined data literacy and arts-based methods with a focus on pre-text process drama which is influenced by oral storytelling and literary and performing art techniques. In our case, the intended end result was a set of methods that can be utilised as part of planet-centric/more-than-human design and that improve the ways in which data is utilised in these situations.

To achieve these aims we developed a set of activities designed to lead participants through engaging with data in the process of building a SciberPunk character, a type of ‘future persona’ that could then be utilized as part of a design process. The SciberPunk has special abilities for feeling and expressing data, such as the ability to smell or hear it, or to communicate it through living tattoos on the skin. These future personas are intended to extend more standard personas used in design to understand end users by channeling the voice off the environment. Therefore, SciberPunks generally channel environmental data. However, as the project took place during the initial lockdown of COVID-19 we also included COVID data and discussed how SciberPunks could also be utilized to design technologies for bringing people closer together when they need to be physically apart. The design of the SciberPunk personas took place online through a series of co-design workshops via both Zoom and WhatsApp. The activities that the participants undertook to help them to really understand and develop their characters were based on creative activities around environmental information related to a local swamp area as well as COVID-19 statistics. Activities included drawing, writing and performing and each activity was specifically designed to engage the participants with data and other information that could be used for developing their characters. The activities were framed by a single story that took participants on a journey through time: past, present and future and through the evolution of characters from the swamp to SciberPunk.