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{{Paper
|id=Vol-1640/paper6
|storemode=property
|title=Reflections Over a Socio-technical Infrastructuring Effort
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1640/paper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-1640
|authors=Antonella De Angeli,Silvia Bordin,María Menéndez Blanco
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==Reflections Over a Socio-technical Infrastructuring Effort==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1640/paper6.pdf
Reflections Over a Socio-technical Infrastructuring Effort
Antonella De Angeli, Silvia Bordin, María Menéndez Blanco
University of Trento,
via Sommarive 9, 38123 Trento, Italy
{antonella.deangeli, bordin, menendez}@disi.unitn.it
Abstract. In this paper we present some reflections stemming from a case study
aimed at building a socio-technical infrastructure for supporting participatory de-
sign and development. We summarize and abstract our experience into an hour-
glass approach defined by the intersection of two co-evolving dimensions of in-
frastructuring: the social and the technical ones. Different subsets of the commu-
nity, characterized by the increasing involvement of volunteers, position them-
selves along the two axes and have different roles in the design and use of the
generated artefact.
1 The case study
The approach we propose derives from a case study at the University of Trento, in Italy,
which involved the design and implementation of a mobile application by the students-
users. The app, called iFame (a play on words, since in Italian it is pronounced as “hai
fame?” which means “are you hungry?”), addresses students’ concerns on the Univer-
sity’s canteen services. The app allows checking the length of the queue at the canteen
through real-time webcam streaming, view daily and monthly menus and possibilities
for menu composition, and rate the dishes served. This case study is part of the Smart
Campus project, which started in the context of establishing a large-scale Living Lab
in the Trentino Province and has the local University among its partners. In the short
term, the goal of the project is to create an ecosystem that can foster students’ active
participation in campus matters; in the longer term, the goal is to act as a sandbox for
the development of infrastructures to foster active participation of citizens in social in-
novation [1]. This case study allowed us to elaborate on some of the issues that emerge
when applying participatory design (PD) into the public sphere: scale, context and eth-
ical responsibilities, among others.
2 The hourglass approach
The hourglass approach we propose integrates and expands existing proposals related
to social innovation such as crowdsourcing [8], democratizing innovation [1] and End
User Development [5]. It addresses two concurrent dimensions of innovation infra-
28
Proc. of Second International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2014
Como (Italy), May 27th, 2014 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
structuring: we refer to technical infrastructuring as the ensemble of computing tech-
nologies which support the use and production of IT services and to social infrastruc-
turing as the set of human actors who influence, shape and represent the community.
Together, these two axes define an hourglass structure (Figure 1) [4], which is meant
to create the conditions for the application of PD and participatory development in an
environment that involves a large collective of mobile users and that is only partially
receptive to participation.
Fig. 1. A representation of the Hourglass approach
The upper and lower parts of the hourglass delimited by the intersection of the two axes
define the phases of design and use respectively, and frame the emergence of the iFame
artefact, which can be seen as a point of infrastructure [7]. Since it represents a temporal
process, the hourglass shows the progressive evolution of the social and technical in-
frastructuring together with the kind of community involved at each stage. The hori-
zontal sections represent different subsets of users with different degrees of involve-
ment: the darker the colour, the more involved the related group is. Moreover, the size
of each section also reflects the size of the group it represents: for instance, the number
of users involved in the fieldwork is much larger than the number of users involved in
participatory development.
29
Proc. of Second International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2014
Como (Italy), May 27th, 2014 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
In the field-work phase, we focused on building the foundations for our infrastruc-
turing endeavour: to this end, we applied traditional User Centered Design (UCD) tech-
niques with the goal of understanding the general domain, clarifying who the users
were, and setting up the adequate conditions for applying PD. This implied the involve-
ment of a large user base among the students of a local Italian university and the devel-
opment of a service platform; the members of the lab created a first set of Smart Campus
mobile apps on top of it. In order to seed the community, HCI and PD practices were
incorporated into the academic career of computer science students to whom the Smart
Campus apps were released for testing. At the same time, several channels were set up
to facilitate the communication between the students-users and the Smart Campus lab:
a forum, diaries, surveys. From this stage on, we moved from UCD to PD: a group of
students in fact started developing the conceptual design of iFame as part of an aca-
demic assignment. These students then took a paid internship at the Smart Campus lab,
thus actively contributing to the design and development of the app and allowing to
further move to the participatory development phase. It is important to note that each
subset of users spontaneously emerged from the social infrastructure, rather than being
selected based on some unique characteristics as it usually happens for example with
lead users [9].
Similar to a grain of sand, iFame fell through the lower part of the hourglass to be
received by the user community seeded in the design phase. Most members of the com-
munity just profited from the information provided by the app; some of them, however,
also contributed content to the app by commenting and rating the food. A smaller part
of users chose to contribute at a higher level, reflecting on the app and sharing their
opinions with the staff and the rest of the community through the forum, diaries and
surveys. Finally, as the community expanded also to students of other departments, we
have some evidence of the willingness of some members of the community to engage
even more actively by contributing to the further development of the technical and so-
cial infrastructuring, in different ways corresponding to their different skills.
3 Considerations
The hourglass approach integrates and expands previous proposals to social innovation.
First of all, the initial steps of the design phase resemble a crowdsourcing approach in
the emphasis put on the wisdom of a large number of people [8], but they aim at trans-
forming the crowd into an active community. Then, the participatory steps unfold on
democratizing innovation [1], but they push the boundaries of participation to the phys-
ical assembly of the artefact, following the philosophy of EUD [5]. Finally, the student
developers can resemble lead-users [9] in that they have special skills: however, in the
hourglass approach this group spontaneously emerged from the social infrastructure,
rather than being selected based on some unique characteristics; furthermore, involving
a smaller group of informants was a more practical approach to move towards the de-
velopment of the envisioned designs while incorporating the feedback provided by the
larger group.
30
Proc. of Second International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2014
Como (Italy), May 27th, 2014 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
The hourglass is a temporal process: by the time we reached the stage of participa-
tory development, we had also created a receptive environment through the incubation
in the lab (which provided technological, political, organizational and logistic support),
the establishment of the platform as a technological infrastructure, and an acceptance
of participation also at an institutional level. Moreover, an instrumental knowledge base
was built, for instance by incorporating PD practices into the academic career of stu-
dents; this knowledge increased as they went through the hourglass. The social and
technical streams evolved in parallel to create the conditions for the actual pursuit of
social innovation: however, neither of them alone was sufficient to achieve this goal,
and thus they needed to intersect at some point (in our case study, generating iFame).
The co-evolution of the social and technical infrastructures contributes to coping
with scaling issues [3], adapting to the innovation milieu [1], and defining responsibil-
ities [6]. To scale and reach a larger number of potential informants we exploited a
variety of UCD techniques; furthermore, by integrating participation to the project into
the students’ academic practice, PD education was accompanied by an immediate
recognition of the importance of their involvement. The potential of this approach is
witnessed by the many students who maintained an active role in the project well after
the academic course was over.
The innovation milieu where the project originated is a mid-size University campus
in Italy characterized by limited possibilities for direct participation. Since the begin-
ning of the design, the milieu has been changing and the selection of roles the students
could play evolved from mere testers and informants to active designers and develop-
ers. This suggests that we succeeded in creating a space for collaborative development,
and at the same time in creating a receptive environment for participation. Finally, the
staged process proposed by the hourglass approach facilitates the definition of respon-
sibilities in a dynamic environment. Designers fine-tuned their intervention preparing
a socio-technical ground to maximise participants’ gains and minimise failures [2].
We believe that the hourglass approach can show some potential when dealing with
a context that is not historically and culturally oriented to public participation. For in-
stance, the university feared that the canteen community would use the communications
channels in an inappropriate way: our social and technological intervention has allowed
them to overcome these worries. On the other hand, user participation also raised some
difficulties; bringing user representatives through the hourglass approach is especially
hard when unpopular decisions have to be taken. The hourglass structure also represents
a dynamic system that in some cases can be turned upside down, starting a new cycle
of innovation.
In conclusion, nurturing and maintaining “infrastructures” are among the main chal-
lenges that bottom-up approaches to innovation are currently facing. These challenges
are intensified if innovation is the hub where research, education and business con-
verge. Involving and accommodating different stakeholders and activities to unfolding
situations requires a shift from current approaches adopted in these areas: this shift en-
tails constant dialog among stakeholders, modification of current processes, and the
capability to adjust to changing circumstances. We believe that the hourglass approach
can facilitate these processes.
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Proc. of Second International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2014
Como (Italy), May 27th, 2014 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
4 References
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3. Dalsgaard, P. 2010. Challenges of participation in large-scale public projects. In Proceedings
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9. Von Hippel, E. 2005. Democratizing innovation. MIT press.
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Proc. of Second International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2014
Como (Italy), May 27th, 2014 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.