Viewpoint: Empowering Communities with Situated Voting Devices

Marshall, Justin, Taylor, Nick, Blum-Ross, Alicia, Mills, John, Rogers, Jon, Egglestone, Paul, Frohlich, David, Wright, Peter and Olivier, Patrick (2012) Viewpoint: Empowering Communities with Situated Voting Devices. In: Association of Computing Machinery: Computer-Human Interaction, 5 - 10 May 2012, Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, USA.

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Abstract / Summary

This research uses the concept of digital democracy as a framework for designing digital interfaces to improve public and community engagement with local policy-making. The paper describes ‘Viewpoint,’ an aspect of the Bespoke Project (see output 2) which tested design-based applications of digital democracy., Three networked devices were designed, made and then installed in a community in Preston for 8 weeks where housing association managers and local councillors used them to gather community feedback from on local issues and concerns. Over 1500 votes were cast by 250 people. Councillors acknowledged a significant improvement in the levels of community engagement over established opinion-gathering techniques., This research examines the design and use of physically situated interfaces intended to deliver digital content and services that support democratic policy-making processes in a time of rapid technological change. The paper addresses issues concerning accessibility and engagement in hyper-local contexts and explores the potential relevance of these approaches to policy-making on a national scale., The paper was presented at the Association of Computing Machinery conference on ‘Computer Human Interaction’ through the conference’s Design Track (where only 23% of papers are accepted)., This work has been further recognised through the receipt of an EPSRC Impact award of £28,000 by Newcastle University. This follow-on project allowed Taylor & Marshall to develop a second iteration of the devices and test them in two public locations in Newcastle. Examples of iterations one and two have been exhibited at a number of internationally significant venues (see output 2 for details).

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