Planning HCI with Jen

Jennifer Manuel is no stranger to working with people from local communities. With her planning background she has done hundreds of interviews and feels quite comfortable in this area. Jen is interested how we can involve people in design and include them into decision making process.

But where does the ‘tech’ come in? Jen said that she found all the ‘tech stuff’ a bit overwhelming at the beginning – for example the last week’s physicality and embodiment seminar about tangibles. Luckily, with all the collective knowledge of Open Lab, she is not alone. After chatting with the people in the lab she got the idea and started thinking how these technologies could be used in planning. Jen also found the ubiquitous computing a bit challenging: “I can see where the vision came from, but it a lot to take in”. She remains troubled by the question; “How would I engage people to create technology if I don’t know a lot about it?”

Going towards, Jen would like to explore how technology can be used for engagement in planning. She told that with the Localisation Act of 2011 and the concept of Neighbourhood Planning, everything changed – people have a say in development of  local communities. Jen thinks that integrating technology in planning could be new vision for Neighbourhood Planning. She acknowledges the fact that technology is not used for engagement in planning a lot and that the planners are a bit scared of ‘tech’; she would like to bridge that gap. The HCI modules has made her think more about the power of social media. To her knowledge there has been only one project where social media has been used in planning process. She could see social media as a helpful tool for engagement and public discourse and is interested in exploring that.

Jen believes that digital technology could help to engage new people, but we shouldn’t just create ‘tech’, we should talk to people to figure out whether they want to get involved and would technology aid that. Technology can be one of many things which could help people to engage: “Some people want to march to town hall, another section wants to use tech – we have to provide all channels”.

I have chosen the following two papers for Jen to read:

• Leveraging public participation in urban planning with 3D web technology. I think this paper can help Jen see some of the possibilities where ‘tech’ can be used in urban planning and community engagement.
• HCI, Civic Engagement & Trust. A lot of keywords, but I think this paper might have some insights of identifying and understanding the difficulties of engaging people through technology.

I would recommend Jen to talk with Carlo Ratti who is an Italian engineer, inventor and educator teaching in MIT. He studies the interaction between citizen and the built environment – buildings as sensors who talk back to people. I think he could give another perspective how sensors, science and ubicomp can be used in city planning.