Two years ago, in an economically underprivileged neighbourhood, designers and researchers collaborated with residents to investigate how local community challenges could be supported by initially hypothetical autonomous urban robots that later became known as “hoodbots” (Jaskiewicz & Smit, 2024). The …

As urban environments increasingly adopt automated technologies for municipal enforcement, this paper interrogates the erosion of human judgment, discretion, and interaction in public space governance. Drawing on participatory design workshops within the “Human Values for Smarter Cities” project, the …

In 2024, the Civic Interaction Design research group, in collaboration with the Centre of Expertise Economic Transformation (CET), organized a research residency titled “What happens when the Civic Economy meets the Protocol Economy?” This initiative, led by researcher, curator, and technology strategist …

The smart city infrastructure will soon start to include smart agents, i.e., agentic things, which co-exist and co-perform with human citizens. This near-future scenario explores the flexible types of collaborations and relationships between the human and nonhuman citizens. Drawing on current technology …

Review and analysis of three hackathons in which participants were challenged to make protoypes that deliver meaningful experiences based on personal data combined with environmental (open)

Design-based inquiries into the networked products of the Internet of Things (IoT) lack a coherent understanding of the effect of such products on society. This paper proposes a new taxonomy for networked products, which would allow articulation on their current state and future, and provide insights …