Fostering Ethical and Sustainable Innovation in Digital Civics

Emily Barker -

Digital Civics projects aim to beyond just implementing technology—it’s about shaping ethical, sustainable, and community-responsive digital interventions. This project involves assessing the roles we take within digital civics projects, the sustainability of future interactions and addressing biases that could impact the communities we aim to serve. 

With this focus, we organised a Special Interest Group (SIG) at CHI 2024 in Hawaii, bringing together 20 participants from across the HCI field. In this session, we discussed the importance of fostering dialogue between researchers, practitioners, and communities to inspire a new generation of Digital Civics that prioritises ethical considerations and community-driven solutions. The SIG contributed to a deeper understanding of how researchers can drive more responsible, sustainable, and impactful technology projects within Digital Civics. 

Building on the SIG’s insights, we submitted a workshop proposal to NordiCHI 2024 focused on participatory design (PD) in Digital Civics. This workshop aims to explore challenges and failures often overlooked in PD projects. Through case studies and group discussions, participants will reflect on how failure is defined and the obstacles encountered and collaborate on solutions. 

A particular focus of the workshop will be on the impact of these challenges on the well-being of researchers and communities, addressing a key need identified during the SIG. By sharing strategies and embracing different perspectives on failure, we aim to foster collective learning, helping to build more resilient, sustainable design practices in Digital Civics. 

This ongoing project is a collaborative effort involving Anna Carter, Kyle Montague, and Shaun Lawson from the Centre for Digital Citizens, Northumbria University; Reem Talhouk from the School of Design, Northumbria University; Hugo Nicolau, Ana O. Henriques, and Ana Cristina Pires from the DCitizens Project at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa; Markus Rohde, Sarah Ruller, and Clara Rosa Cardoso from the DCitizens project at the University of Siegen; Alessio Del Bue from the DCitizens project at the Instituto Italiano di Technologia; and Tiffany Knearem from Google. 

What is the impact?

This project resulted in the ACM publication of a SIG paper at the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, as well as an ACM workshop paper at NordiCHI 2024, the annual Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. We are currently working on follow-up publications focused on the content and methodologies emerging from these discussions and publications. 

  • Anna R. L. Carter, Kyle Montague, Reem Talhouk, Shaun Lawson, Hugo Nicolau, Ana Cristina Pires, Markus Rohde, Alessio Del Bue, and Tiffany Knearem. 2024. DCitizens Roles Unveiled: SIG Navigating Identities in Digital Civics and the Spectrum of Societal Impact. In Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 575, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3643981 
  • Clara Rosa Cardoso, Sarah Rüller, Ana O Henriques, Anna R. L. Carter, and Markus Rohde. 2024. "And this is where we fu***d up!" Lessons learned from Participatory Design in Digital Civic Initiatives. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '24 Adjunct). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1145/3677045.3685450