DCitizens aims to build the capacity to conduct research in the field of Digital Civics. Digital Civics is a cross-disciplinary research area that posits the use of technology to empower citizens and non-state actors to co-create, take an active role in shaping agendas, make decisions about service provision, and make such provisions sustainable and resilient. Particularly how digital technologies can scaffold a move from transactional to relational service models and the potential of such models to reconfigure power relations between citizens, communities, and institutions. The project is funded by the European Commission (GA 101079116). The consortium includes partners from Italy (IIT), Germany (University of Siegen), and the UK (University of Northumbria).

Project Details

Title: DCitizens

Date: Dec 1, 2022

Authors: Hugo Nicolau

Keywords: digital civics, communities, co-creation

Website: https://dcitizens.eu/

Related Publications

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  • Workshop: Envisioning Collaborative Futures: Advancing the Frontiers of Embedded Research
  • Anna R. L. Carter, Kyle Montague, Reem Talhouk, et al. 2024. Workshop: Envisioning Collaborative Futures: Advancing the Frontiers of Embedded Research. PDC ’24 Participatory Design Conference.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  Participatory design initiatives, especially within the realm of digital civics, are often integrated and codeveloped with the very citizens and communities they intend to assist. Digital civics research aims to create positive social change using a variety of digital technologies. These research projects commonly adopt various embedded processes, such as commissioning models [5]. Despite the adoption of this process within a range of domains, there isn’t currently a framework for best practices and accountability procedures to ensure we engage with citizens ethically and ensure the sustainability of our projects. This workshop aims to provide a space to start collaboratively constructing a dynamic framework of best practices, laying the groundwork for the future of sustainable embedded research processes. The overarching goal is to foster discussions and share insights that contribute to developing effective practices, ensuring the longevity and impact of participatory digital civics projects.
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  • Workshop: Participatory Design with Young Children: Failures, Challenges, and Successes
  • Katharina Buckmayer, Filipa Rocha, Elisa Rubegni, Reem R. Talhouk, Hugo Nicolau, and Ana C. Pires. 2024. Workshop: Participatory Design with Young Children: Failures, Challenges, and Successes. IDC ’24 Interaction Design and Children, ACM. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/view/idc-2024-workshop-pd/organisers
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  This paper introduces a hands-on workshop centered on participatory design (PD) approaches tailored for engaging young children, with a special focus on failures, challenges, and successes in prior experiences within the child-computer interaction (CCI) domain. Although previous efforts have highlighted the advantages of engaging young children in PD, research has overlooked their involvement as co-designers, leading to a lack of exploration and understanding of their unique perspectives and challenges in the design process. Through an interactive session and collaborative activities, this workshop will facilitate discussions surrounding challenges, successes, and lessons learned through PD with young children. By evaluating and exchanging experiences, we aim to enhance our understanding of PD and refine its methodologies for this particular population. By synthesizing the shortcomings, difficulties, and successes of past experiences, the workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to initiate efforts toward closing this research gap. Together we will establish the groundwork for enhanced approaches and a deeper understanding of how to involve young children in PD, which will enhance future efforts in the field of CCI.
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  • DCitizens Roles Unveiled: SIG Navigating Identities in Digital Civics and the Spectrum of Societal Impact
  • Anna R. L. Carter, Kyle Montague, Reem Talhouk, et al. 2024. DCitizens Roles Unveiled: SIG Navigating Identities in Digital Civics and the Spectrum of Societal Impact. CHI ’24 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  The DCitizens SIG aims to navigate ethical dimensions in forthcoming Digital Civics projects, ensuring enduring benefits and community resilience. Additionally, it seeks to shape the future landscape of digital civics for ethical and sustainable interventions. As we dive into these interactive processes, a challenge arises of discerning authentic intentions and validating perspectives. This exploration extends to evaluating the sustainability of future interactions and scrutinising biases impacting engaged communities. The commitment is to ensure future outcomes align with genuine community needs and address the ethical imperative of a considerate departure strategy. This dialogue encourages future researchers and practitioners to integrate ethical considerations and community-centric principles, fostering a more sustainable and responsible approach to technology-driven interventions in future urban regeneration and beyond.
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  • Workshop: Fostering Feminist Community-Led Ethics: Building Tools and Connections
  • Ana Henriques, Hugo Nicolau, Anna R. L. Carter, et al. 2024. Workshop: Fostering Feminist Community-Led Ethics: Building Tools and Connections. DIS ’24 Designing Interactive Systems.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  This workshop proposal advocates for a dynamic, community-led approach to ethics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) by inte- grating principles from feminist HCI and digital civics. Traditional ethics in HCI often overlook interpersonal considerations, result- ing in static frameworks ill-equipped to address dynamic social contexts and power dynamics. Drawing from feminist perspec- tives, the workshop aims to lay the groundwork for developing a meta-toolkit for community-led feminist ethics, fostering collab- orative research practices grounded in feminist ethical principles. Through pre-workshop activities, interactive sessions, and post- workshop discussions, participants will engage in dialogue to ad- vance community-led ethical research practices. Additionally, the workshop seeks to strengthen the interdisciplinary community of researchers and practitioners interested in ethics, digital civics, and feminist HCI. By fostering a reflexive approach to ethics, the work- shop contributes to the discourse on design’s role in shaping future interactions between individuals, communities, and technology.
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  • That’s our game!: Reflections on Co-designing a Robotic Game with Neurodiverse Children
  • Patricia Piedade, Isabel Neto, Ana Pires, Rui Prada, and Hugo Nicolau. 2023. That’s our game!: Reflections on Co-designing a Robotic Game with Neurodiverse Children. In Proceedings of INTERACT 2023 Workshop - Designing Technology for Neurodivergent Self-Determination: Challenges and Opportunities, Springer International Publishing.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  Many neurodivergent children are integrated into mainstream schools alongside their neurotypical peers. However, they often face so- cial exclusion, which may have lifelong effects. Inclusive play activities can be a strong driver of inclusion. Unfortunately, games designed for the specific needs of neurodiverse groups, those that include neurodi- vergent and neurotypical individuals, are scarce. Given the potential of robots as engaging devices, we led a 6-month co-design process to build an inclusive and entertaining robotic game for neurodiverse classrooms. We first interviewed neurodivergent adults and educators to identify the barriers and facilitators for including neurodivergent children in main- stream classrooms. Then, we conducted five co-design sessions, engaging four neurodiverse classrooms with 81 children (19 neurodivergent). We present a reflection on our co-design process and the resulting robotic game through the lens of Self-Determination Theory, discussing how our methodology supported the intrinsic motivations of neurodivergent children
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  • PartiPlay: A Participatory Game Design Kit for Neurodiverse Classrooms
  • Patricia Piedade, Isabel Neto, Ana Cristina Pires, Rui Prada, and Hugo Nicolau. 2023. PartiPlay: A Participatory Game Design Kit for Neurodiverse Classrooms. Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3614496
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Play is a central aspect of childhood development, with games as a vital tool to promote it. However, neurodivergent children, especially those in neurodiverse environments, are underserved by HCI games research. Most existing work takes on a top-down approach, disregarding neurodivergent interest for the majority of the design process. Co-design is often proposed as a tool to create truly accessible and inclusive gaming experiences. Nevertheless, co-designing with neurodivergent children within neurodiverse groups brings about unique challenges, such as different communication styles, sensory needs and preferences. Building upon recommendations from prior work in neurodivergent, mixed-ability, and child-led co-design, we propose a concrete participatory game design kit for neurodiverse classrooms: PartiPlay. Moreover, we present preliminary findings from an in-the-wild experiment with the said kit, showcasing its ability to create an inclusive co-design process for neurodiverse groups of children. We aim to provide actionable steps for future participatory design research with neurodiverse children.
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  • Ethical Concerns when Working with Mixed-Ability Groups of Children
  • Patricia Piedade, Ana Henriques, Filipa Rocha, Isabel Neto, and Hugo Nicolau. 2023. Ethical Concerns when Working with Mixed-Ability Groups of Children. In Proceedings of ASSETS 2023 Workshop - Tackling the Lack of a Practical Guide in Disability-Centered Research. Retrieved from https://assets2023guide.mere.st/accepted-submissions/
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Accessibility research has gained traction, yet ethical gaps persist in the inclusion of individuals with disabilities, especially children. Inclusive research practices are essential to ensure research and design solutions cater to the needs of all individuals, regardless of their abilities. Working with children with disabilities in Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction presents a unique set of ethical dilemmas. These young participants often require additional care, support, and accommodations, which can fall off researchers’ resources or expertise. The lack of clear guidance on navigating these challenges further aggravates the problem. To provide a base and address this issue, we adopt a critical reflective approach, evaluating our impact by analyzing two case studies involving children with disabilities in HCI/HRI research.
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  • Frameworking for a Community-led Feminist Ethics
  • Ana Henriques, Hugo Nicolau, and Kyle Montague. 2023. Frameworking for a Community-led Feminist Ethics. In Proceedings of CSCW 2023 Workshop - A Toolbox for Feminist Wonder - Theories and Methods that can Make a Difference.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  This paper introduces a relational perspective on ethics within the context of Feminist Digital Civics and community-led design. Ethics work in HCI has primarily focused on prescriptive machine ethics and bioethics principles rather than people. In response, we advocate for a community-led, processual approach to ethics, acknowledging power dynamics and local contexts. We thus propose a multidimensional adaptive model for ethics in HCI design, integrating an intersectional feminist ethical lens. This framework embraces feminist epistemologies, methods, and methodologies, fostering a reflexive practice. By weaving together situated knowledges, standpoint theory, intersectionality, participatory methods, and care ethics, our approach offers a holistic foundation for ethics in HCI, aiming to advance community-led practices and enrich the discourse surrounding ethics within this field.