Technopolitics

 

Investigation on how emerging M2M, networked objects and Internet of Things technologies can increase political engagement between people and places within the civic sphere. Our design provides networks that enable grassroots action within communities using technology.

 

 

 

Year 2014 saw an unprecedented event of the Scottish Independence Referendum – culmination of what started as a grassroots movement led by the Scottish National Party. With a 84.6% turnout, the referendum became a phenomenon of high political mobilisation of the public in a modern democracy for years facing systematic decrease in voting turnout and political engagement of the public.

 

 

 

 

 Co-operate/Co-mmunicate/ Co-ordinate
+
Do-motics
=
Co-motics

 

 

Comotics: our homes see increasing automation currently known as “domotics”. We created a future scenario of “comotics” – a system built on home domotic infrastructure which allows coordination of resource usage and community network-building within neighbourhood hubs via home automation technology. Comotics promotes wellbeing and civic empowerment for people living in metropolitan areas.

 

 

 

Mado is the main touchpoint of the Comotic system and it is envisioned to be connected to the existing domotics system, allowing to make the best of the community in which you live. Mado allows the users to:

• Share community resources
• “Tag” problems or issues in the city to speed up response times
• Better communicate directly with the local council and coordinate community action.

 

 

Divided into four distinct phases, the process graph shows the divergent and convergent stages of the design process, showing different modes of thinking and approaches used. Firstly, we opened our understanding of the brief by researching the topic of politics and civic engagement in the Discovery phase through desk and ethnographic research. Secondly, we narrowed down the scope of our research by defining the tensions and opportunities that we found and synthesizing them into three key insights (Define phase). Then, we again opened up the scope by creatively addressing the key insights and developing potential user scenarios and concepts in the Development phase. After evaluating the most promising design ideas, we entered the Delivery phase to develop the final design. Design process is highly iterative, hence the infinity sign which I incorporated into that model demonstrates constant need for stepping back and reflecting on the process as such.