Sasha Costanza-Chock's presentation about codesign and civic media at the Knight-MIT Civic Media conference, 2011

1. Co-designing the Future of Civic Media
Sasha Costanza-Chock, PhD
@schock
Knight-MIT Civic Media
Conference / June 23rd, 2011

2. Some things I do

3. Some things I do

4. Overview
I. Theories of Technological Innovation
➔ Diffusion of Innovation
➔ Technology Appropriation
➔ Codesign / Participatory Design
II. Example: VozMob
III. Key codesign concepts

5. Diffusion of Innovation (Tarde, Rogers)

6. Technology Appropriation
➔ Lead-user innovation (von Hippel)
➔ Technology Appropriation Cycle (Bar & Pisani)

7. Technology Appropriation Cycle
1. roll-out
2. appropriate

8. Technology Appropriation Cycle
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

9. Technology Appropriation Cycle
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

10. Technology Appropriation Cycle
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

11. Example: Mobile Banking
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

12. Example: Mobile Banking
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

13. Example: Mobile Banking
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

14. Example: Mobile Banking
1. roll-out
2. appropriate
3. re-claim

15. Responses to user appropriation

16. Codesign
➔
Human Centered Design
➔
Appropriate Technology Design
➔
Participatory Design

17. http://bit.ly/hcdtoolkit

19. VozMob
Projecting the voices of immigrant workers
by appropriating mobile phones
for popular communication

20. Supporters

23. Top result: anti-immigrant hate site daylaborers.org
“Do you really want this in your neighborhood?”
Day Laborer site in Farmingville, Long Island, NY
Photograph courtesy of Dave Drew

24. Who are day laborers?

25. Problem: Digital Access Inequality
Composite Technology Index (Modarres and Pitkin, 2006)

26. ?

27. Research: mobile phone survey at day laborer centers

28. We found:
We surveyed day laborers in 5 worker centers
➔ About 80% have a cell phone
➔ About 1/3 use a pre-paid plan

29. What do they use their phones for?

30. What features do they use?

32. Popular
Education

33. Participatory Design

35. Free / Open Source Software
+ Creative Commons Content

36. System Features

37. Thousands of community stories on VozMob.net
“Jacqueline” http://vozmob.net/en/node/777

38. Key Points

39. Enabling Conditions

40. Enabling Conditions
➔ Strong connection to
communities of practice

41. Enabling Conditions
➔ Strong connection to communities of practice
➔ Universal Access to
ICTs

42. Enabling Conditions
➔ Strong connection to communities of practice
➔ Universal Access to ICTs
➔ Diverse project team

43. Enabling Conditions
➔ Strong connection to communities of practice
➔ Universal Access to ICTs
➔ Diverse project team
➔ Open everything:
access, standards,
source, data, tools

44. Enabling Conditions (SUDO)
SUDO
➔ Strong connection to communities of practice
➔ Universal Access to ICTs
➔ Diverse project team
➔ Open everything

45. Universal Design Goals (APT)
➔ Accesible
➔ Para
➔ Tod@s
(Accessible for All)

46. Codesign Philosophy (GET)
➔ Generate (ideas, user stories, prototypes) +
➔ Evaluate (everything, ongoing, iterative)
➔ Together

47. Simple! SUDO APT-GET ...

48. Simple! SUDO APT-GET ...

49. Not so simple ...

50. Watch out for
➔ Inequalities
Technologies (including ICTs) tend to reproduce structural inequalities
(gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, geography) (Hargittai)

51. Watch out for
I
➔ nequalities
➔ Proprietary thinking
Closed platforms = bad for innovation, appropriation, diffusion, and codesign

52. Watch out for
I
➔ nequalities
➔Proprietary thinking
➔Restrictions on use
Resist the urge to tell the users they're doing it wrong – learn from them!

53. Watch out for
I
➔ nequalities
➔Proprietary thinking
➔Restrictions on use
➔Scale
One size doesn't always fit all (despite pressure to 'scale up')

54. Watch out for IPRs!
I
➔ nequalities
➔Proprietary thinking
➔Restrictions on use
➔Scale

55. Let's Build It Together!
@schock | http://schock.cc

56. PS: Links to communities of practice
➔ Association for Progressive Technology: http://www.apc.org
➔ Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org
➔ Tactical Tech: http://tacticaltech.org
➔ Netsquared: http://netsquared.org
➔ Mobile Active: http://mobileactive.org
➔ VozMob: http://vozmob.net
➔ IDEO Human Centered Design toolkit
http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/
➔ InnoCentive: http://www.innocentive.com/