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CITIZENS, TECHNOLOGIES & POWER –
A UNIQUE PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
CHALLENGE!
RELATIONS
JENNIFER SCHUBERT
BERLIN UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
DESIGN RESEARCH LAB
JENNIFER.SCHUBERT@UDK-BERLIN.DE
ENGAGEMENTS
BIANCA HERLO
BERLIN UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
DESIGN RESEARCH LAB
BIANCA.HERLO@UDK-BERLIN.DE
ABSTRACT !
This paper discusses power relations (Arendt 1970)
between citizens and technologies induced by new
communication structures for self-organization
within a participatory design project: the “Mit-
Mach-Stadt Brandis” (“Participatory City”). It
questions how citizens use and adapt new digital
means that have the potential to strengthen local
and social structures. Referring to Latour’s actor
network theory (ANT) and the equation of power
between human and non-human actors, the current
inquiry addresses the impact of digital technologies
on citizens. According to Latour, citizens,
categorized as human actors, lose power in a
digitized and connected urban environment. To
counter this tendency, we develop socio-material
infrastructures (Star, Ruhleder 1996, Ehn 2008)
with and for citizens. Thereby, an empowered
position for dealing with increasing digitization
should come within the citizens’ reach. We analyze
the relation between citizens and technologies
before, during, and after the project duration (cf.
Ehn 2009:55). This paper is aimed at supporting
design researchers in tackling the challenges of
increased digitization and the possibilities of civic
empowerment in participatory design work.
INTRODUCTION – THINKING ABOUT
“RELATIONS” AND “IDENTITIES”
When doing participatory design projects, in which
designers and laypersons work together on iterative
processes, our research is tied to different levels of
involvement, collective action, and the co-creation of
knowledge. There are different roles to take on for the
various actors and stakeholders involved. Participants
are at the same time citizens, residents, and, in the most
cases, members of already existing initiatives, with their
own interests, political affiliations, and social bonds. We
as design researchers also take on different roles at
different stages in the process. During fieldwork we are
facilitators, translators, conductors, evaluators,
organizers, motivators, and designers. We gather local
knowledge, observe social interactions, we listen,
intervene, and guide. Simultaneously, we have to take a
step back in order to reflect our research role and
develop theories. We also disseminate the project in
varying contexts: political agendas and
recommendations for action, guides and manuals for
civic engagement, and academia. Therefore, we are
challenged to follow the respective “languages,” logics,
and discourses. Additionally, we are citizens, too, with
specific political attitudes.
In this mesh of roles and interests, the balance of power
within a group (cf. Arendt 1970) is complex and even
impenetrable. Beyond that, the influences of digital
technologies challenge the power structure within the
very negotiation processes, as technologies entail new
communication and organization practices. This is
especially true when projects explicitly address issues of
interpersonal and digital communication. People and
digital means are embedded in a dense network of
actions, operations, effects, and activities that shape the
role of technology in the distribution of power.
In the project described here, the infrastructure and tools
we design, are meant to bridge differences, open
avenues for debate and negotiations, bring together
individuals from different backgrounds, and create
publics (Dewey 1927). We consider a socio-material
No 6 (2017): Nordes 2017: Design and Power, ISSN 1604-9705. Oslo, www.nordes.org !1
infrastructure in terms of enabling “power” generation
in a collective sense (Arendt 1970:44). The
infrastructure in question is a communications network
that we analyzed and extended to empower citizens and
improve relations with a local municipality.
TRANSFORMATION OF OUR EVERYDAY
LIFE THROUGH DIGITIZATION
With the increasing digitization of our everyday life, the
role of citizens is challenged, especially with regards to
societal and political decision-making processes that are
increasingly becoming digitized: We face in- or
exclusion in and from information flows ever more,
depending on which technologies we are willing or able
to use. In addressing questions of the role of digital
technologies for social development or, in a normative
way, what role technology should have in building a
more democratic and just society, the various discourses
mostly refer to opportunities and challenges but also
high risks of digitization. As the black box principle, an
“internal mechanism [which is] usually hidden from or
mysterious to the user” (Webster’s Dictionary 2014:100)
still dominates our digital behavior, the price for using
digital technologies by implication might be very high
indeed: The possible consequences include a loss of
privacy, deficit of control through interconnection of our
data (big data) or an increasing digital divide (cf.
Schenk et al. 2013). Against this backdrop, the power
relation between technologies and citizens is unbalanced
already. We human actors are still convinced that we
maintain the control, but, when thinking about artificial
intelligence (AI) or massive algorithms, it seems that
technology has gained long-lasting power.
SMART VS. SOCIAL CITY APPROACHES
Most smart city paradigms (cf. Ryser 2014, Laimer
2014) include predetermined and prefixed technologies.
Either citizens must be willing to appropriate and use it
– and thereby include themselves in the information
flow – or deny it and thereby exclude themselves. By
that, citizens get pushed into the role of consumers
instead of producers, not being involved in the decision
making process but getting ignored and oppressed in
their “urban competence” (Laimer 2014).
An opposing perspective is provided by the “social city”
(De Waal 2014) or “smart citizen” (Hill 2013) view.
Here, citizens are at the center of attention.
Figure 1: Comparing the principles regarding the power relation
between technology (T) and citizen (C)
Technologies and the urban environment get considered
from their perspective (see figure 1) – and not the other
way around.
Comparing the smart city technologies’ scope and range
of functions to those of the social city, the technological
developments of open source technologies for the social
city approach are still lagging behind (e.g. Fair Phone,
Open Street Maps, Linux).
In Latour’s actor network theory, citizens and
technologies are at least on the same level, with regards
to power relation (cf. Nigten 2016). Now we need to ask
ourselves which consequences this perspective has for
our participatory design approaches within the citizens’
perspective in urban space.
OUR APPROACH: SHARED, SOCIO-
MATERIAL INFRASTRUCTURES & OPEN
SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES
We have to ask ourselves how to strengthen the position
of citizens in such a complex network. Or rather, how
do we make the position of citizens more informed and
sovereign in comparison to digital technologies? We are
talking about the expansion, adaption and
“reassembling” (Latour 2005) of the citizens’
infrastructure vis-à-vis both the local municipality and
their fellow citizens, as well as those responsible for
urban issues. This is done through technologies and
face-to-face communication.
Our approach is to develop socio-material
infrastructures that build on and extend already existing
local structures. After identifying specific gaps within
the structure, new “fillers” are developed in a
participatory manner. Those fillers can be human actors
or non-human actors, social or material. Through
developing those missing parts, a more connected and
empowered situation for the citizens might come about.
Such infrastructures are a result of a long-lasting and
intense collaboration with the citizens in a specific local
environment. After the project, the goal is to hand over
the infrastructure to the citizens. The position of the
participants should thereby be strengthened vis-à-vis the
technology. It is still based on mutual reliance, but now
the dependency is structured in such a way that citizens
can take on the active role and be able to react to the
functionalities they need. In order to enlarge their scope
of action, we are convinced that open source
technologies offer the flexibility, openness, and
adaptability citizens require. Citizens would become
more independent from external constraints – so that
within the network they are less dependent on other
actors. It is an opportunity to give back “digital
sovereignty” (Lepping, Palzkill 2017:17) to citizens.
APPLYING OUR APPROACH
We would like to illustrate how we implement this
approach in our empirical research with one of our
research projects called “Mit-Mach-Stadt
Brandis” (drlab.org/projects/mit-mach-stadt; mit-mach-
stadt.de), a colloquial German expression that invokes
the idea of “Participatory City”. It is an one-year project
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and part of the “Innovative Municipality” award of the
Saxon Ministry of the Interior (SMI).
This award was bestowed upon Brandis, a town of
10,000 inhabitants, in 2014. It is situated close to the
city of Leipzig, where it benefits from younger families
relocating out of the city to the rural and green area of
Brandis. The goal of our activities was to implement
new avenues for civic participation as well as improve
communication and exchange between the municipality
and the citizens within a co-design process.
Our first methodological decision was to install a
socially oriented “living lab” (Franz 2015) at a local
cultural center. We understand social living labs to be
central hubs for meetings during the overall research
process. They are continuously available for
implementing a set of participatory design methods that
suit both the research and the local requirements. The
tangible space allows for mutual trust to be built up and
questions to be addressed: The research becomes visible
and locatable – also for passersby and non-active
citizens.
Every three months, a series of intensive workshops
with residents were planned and conducted in the living
lab. In the mean time, public interventions, extensive
conversations, informal and half structured interviews,
municipality meetings, as well as public project
presentations were conducted.
COMMUNICATION NETWORK BEFORE THE
PROJECT
The analysis of the already existing communication
structures and tools made clear that the newly revised
municipalities website (stadt-brandis.de) gave access to
specific local information. The e-participation platform
(stadt-brandis.de/de/beteiligungsportal), implemented
by the Saxon Ministry of the Interior (SMI), was used
for surveys, e.g. about the future development of the
inner city. In fact, this purely digital tool was badly
adopted by the citizens, as a result of the one-
dimensional communication channel: only the
municipality could raise questions, and the tool hindered
a broader usage.
The municipality also launched a city application
(app.brandis.eu), offering local news, citizen services
and “defect reporting” that gives a direct feedback about
the reparation progress of public space.
COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK DURING THE
PROJECT
By analyzing the existing socio-material infrastructure,
we identified the necessity to interweave digital and
analog avenues of communication. The central, physical
platform – the social living lab – meanwhile served as a
space for encounters.
One key outcome was the demand for an independent
digital platform with low-threshold access and means
for self-organization in different areas of urban social
life. In a co-design process, we developed a platform
with basic functionalities (see figure 2): No registration
is necessary but, if interested, you get topic
notifications. It has two local administrators – one of the
city council, one citizen – in order to control misuse and
adapt it with more functionalities, if necessary. By the
two admins the information flow should get extended to
the citizens as well as the city council. The platform
aims to make the getting-to-know-each-other and
Figure 2: The citizens platform “mitmachen.mit-mach-stadt.de”
supporting self-organization
meeting-up process as easy as possible, and lead to face-
to-face actions. It provides a continuous space for
participation and discussion at local scale. The resulting
ideas get bundled and communicated to the
municipality.
In order to open up to digitally illiterate people, several
additional communication channels are being offered:
The public column in the center of the market square
(see figure 3) allows citizens to intervene in the public
space (agora-like).
Figure 3: Public intervention “Dear Market Square” integrating the
public column and the Hybrid Letterbox, June 2016
Another way would be using the Hybrid Letterbox
(drlab.org/projects/hybrid-letter-box) – installed in the
local city hall and connected to the e-participation
platform from SMI. The municipality can ask specific
questions, make them visible, and present the input in a
playful way to residents, the digitally savvy and the
technophobe alike. The box notifies citizens of a chance
to participate, and do so in a way that functions beyond
the merely digital world. It is a counterbalance to the
digital divide afflicting many communities. To digitally
No 6 (2017): Nordes 2017: Design and Power, ISSN 1604-9705. Oslo, www.nordes.org !3
Figure 4: Implemented socio-material infrastructure after the
“Participatory City” project duration
literate residents, the Hybrid Letterbox additionally
draws attention to the website-based participation offer.
The infrastructure was supplemented throughout with
these new elements in order to allow more holistic,
diverse and open interaction (see figure 4). The low
threshold, cross-media infrastructure gets additionally
explained in a guide for self-organization, in print and
download version (drlab.org/projects/mit-mach-
handbuch). Citizens should be able to administrate, use
and adapt the tools according to their changing
conditions. Thereby citizens gain urban competence and
are able to act in a sovereign way.
The design-after-project-duration phase was planned in
detail: there was a final, concluding workshop. In
preparation, we identified citizens as mentors for each
new infrastructural element, informed them about the
intentions of the tools and important stakeholders.
Additionally, we assigned responsibilities to the
municipality. The tools got developed in the beta version
and released open source (on Git Hub) in order to give
the Saxon municipalities and initiatives network the
possibility to build on and adapt it. We also handed out
instructions for each tool and asked for feedback requests.
COMMUNICATION NETWORK AFTER THE
PROJECT DURATION
From the initial workshop onwards, the participants
demanded that all explanations and controversies be
discussed in “citizen language”. By following this
guiding principle, we built up relations to the
participants with mutual trust and commitment. It
worked out that citizens took over responsibility and
continued the activities on their own. The owner of the
living lab’s donated room extended the offer. This way,
we can observe and analyze future interactions.
Now we are at the stage of observing the appropriation
of the communications infrastructure and reflect upon
the results of the whole process. The next six months
will bring insights about adoption and empowerment –
through observation and investigation of people use the
tools we provided.
OUTLOOK & PERSPECTIVES
Our goal is to offer socio-material infrastructures with
cross-medial access points for citizens with varying levels
of technological know-how. The project is still underway;
therefore, the final reflection must wait. Nevertheless, we
assume that taking this path is an encouraging way in
times of digitization of everyday life.
From our point of view as designers, the co-designed
technologies need to be simple but also offer a
beneficial range of functionalities to motivate citizens to
engage with the tools. So the challenge is to find the
balance between simple access but also open source
functionalities that are intuitive and easy to use. It is
necessary that a critical mass of citizens is using the
tools, so that collective power (cf. Arendt 1970) can
evolve and decisions making processes can be
influenced. The power to decide about the surroundings
we live in should get shared between representatives
and citizens. Thereby technology, which citizens can
understand and adapt, can have a great impact.
Reflecting this participatory design process – and its
uniqueness in turning complex power structures into
enablement of citizens through technology – hopefully
reaches influence in the decision making processes
shaping our common lifeworld.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
These reflections are based on joint work developed in
the “Participatory City” project with Florian Sametinger
and a presentation at the “Critique” symposium of the
German Society for Media Studies (GfM) in 2016 with
Malte Bergmann. The focus on socio-material
infrastructures derives from the Community
Infrastructures research cluster of the Design Research
Lab Berlin with Malte Bergmann, Andreas Unteidig,
Florian Sametinger and ourselves. Special thanks goes
to Lutz Reiter, Tina Deiml-Seibt and Daniel Stepanov
for coding the digital infrastructure.
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No 6 (2017): Nordes 2017: Design and Power, ISSN 1604-9705. Oslo, www.nordes.org !5