Johanna Ylipulli

Jokapäiväinen elämämme kaupungeissa on kietoutunut monin tavoin yhteen uuden teknologian kanssa. Tieto-ja viestintätekniikka, kansainvälisemmin ICT, on siirtynyt 2000-luvulla ulos työhuoneista kaduille, toreille ja oikeastaan kaikkiin paikkoihin, joissa ylipäätään liikumme. Älypuhelin toimii bussipysäkillä viihdykkeenä ja mahdollistaa tuttujen tavoittamisen paikasta riippumatta; kannettava tietokone kulkee mukana laukussa ja loihtii toimiston kahvilan nurkkaan. Lisäksi erilaiset digitaaliset mainostaulut ja vuorovaikutteiset näytöt ovat muuttuneet osaksi kaupunkimaisemaa väläytellen tekstiä, animaatioita ja valokuvia kadun kulkijalle.

This article examines the dreams and wishes of young-adult city residents regarding future ICT development, comparing its findings with two visions of ICT development offered by large-scale urban agendas, namely ‘smart cities’ and ‘ubiquitous computing.’ The article explores how the visions of ordinary city inhabitants contest or resonate with grand visions of urban future, and investigates alternative agendas that might be built upon those visions. The research site, the city of Oulu in northern Finland, offers a concrete example of a ‘future city’ in which many ideas relating to ‘smart’ and ‘ubiquitous’ urban space have been put into practice. The results indicate there is an urgent need to address questions pertaining to control, agency, and resistance in designing further technology for cities and to employ design practices that enable the creation and implementation of bottom-up visions.

The living lab methodology in technology design emphasizes user involvement throughout the innovation process. This article discusses the execution of this methodology in building a future ubiquitous city in northern Finland. We analyse how the sociomaterial practices of ICT design are constructed in thematic interviews with the designers. Three practices determining the realisation of the ubiquitous city were identified: Funding resources framing user involvement; keeping up the high-tech image of the city; and pursuit of scientific innovation. Then, following feminist technology studies, we discuss how power relations are negotiated, and how the user of new technology is constructed in the design process. In this particular living lab, users were configured as unidentified testers and consumers of the implemented technology rather than innovative co-creators. By reflecting on our position as female anthropologists we also illuminate the situatedness of scientific knowledge.

The paper discusses how the power perspective has been considered and discussed in qualitative social studies on the use of mobile phones in practices at home, work and public places. Some themes relevant from the aspect of power negotiations were extrapolated from the reviewed literature: constant availability at home and work, and the mobile phone as a public status symbol in respect to its design and use in space, time, and social surroundings. The review also aims to show how social variables affecting the adoption and use of the mobile phone have so far been analyzed in research. The writers conclude that mobile phones have been interpreted to reproduce and renew traditional power hierarchies. Still, more nuanced research is needed to understand the micro-mechanisms of power in the socio-cultural contexts of the use of mobile phones.

In this paper we will present studies aimed at uncovering the attitudes, needs, and expectations people have towards novel types of urban computing technologies deployed in a city. First, we conducted a storytelling competition to elicit future visions of how people imagined the role of technology. Second, we conducted a rapid ethnographic study using a mock-up prototype device in various public locations to gain a deeper understanding of how people would appropriate a specific technology, namely interactive public displays. Lastly, we collected ethnographic material through a diary study and interviews where people recorded their use of existing technology, and through these experiences, imagine how future technologies might affect their lives. We found that these methods proved useful in engaging a city's community to imagine the city's future. Consequently, we were able to explore the current use of technologies in the city and project their possible future use. Contrary to previous speculation in academic and cyberpunk literature, we conclude that digital technologies will not necessarily induce an abandonment of physical urban spaces. Rather, we project an increased sophistication in the sociable uses of urban spaces and technologies, where people blend their online and offline worlds into a single lived reality.

We present a multipronged comparative study of citizens’ self-proclaimed information needs and actual information seeking behavior in smart urban spaces. We first conducted several user studies to identify the types of information services that citizens believed to be useful in urban setting utilizing methods ranging from contextual inquiry with lo-fi prototypes to “card sorting” exercise with a separate set of participants, and finally to implementing selected services. We then made a sizeable constructive intervention into the urban space by deploying in a city center 12 large, interactive public displays called “hotspots” to offer a wide range of previously identified information services. We collected comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data on the usage of the hotspots and their services by the general public during 13 months. Our study reveals discrepancies between a priori and a posteriori information seeking strategies extracted from the self-proclaimed information needs and the actual usage of the hotspots.

In this workshop, we reflect on and share the fun and frustrations of working in interdisciplinary research. We ask
participants to openly reflect on their experiences of
interdisciplinarity. What approaches have worked and what
have failed? In addition to identifying phenomena, we aim
to sketch out the next decade of interdisciplinary research in
computing, especially in HCI. The third paradigm of
Human-Computer Interaction focuses on the qualitative
aspects of use experience and the situatedness of
technologies. This new orientation has drawn in researchers
from various other research and arts backgrounds and
traditions, including the social sciences, architecture and
industrial design among others. Therefore, we consider this
third paradigm to be inherently interdisciplinary. Through
workshop participants’ reflection of their own experiences,
we strive to identify the common problems and pitfalls of
interdisciplinary research, and to celebrate successes, as
well as share best practices.

We introduce evaluation probes for conducting emic, experiential evaluation of urban technologies “in the wild” without direct researcher presence. We commence with a thorough discussion and analysis of the original cultural probes, used by Gaver, Dunne and Pacenti to gain design inspiration, and their subsequent variations. We develop the concept of evaluation probes through careful reconceptualization and application of the cultural probes in three successive studies conducted in the wild. We recount and reflect on our use of evaluation probes and discuss their merits and limitations in experiential emic evaluation.

We propose a novel way to approach the research and design of urban ICT, namely, climate sensitive urban computing. This approach considers the climatic patterns, weather conditions and people’s adaptations to them on the level of everyday practices. Our theoretical and methodological foundations lay in the fields of cultural anthropology, architecture, and HCI. First, we present a multidisciplinary discussion of prior works relating to technology, weather and climate conditions. Secondly, through two empirical, mostly qualitative data sets, we demonstrate the vast impact weather and climate have on young adults’ ICT use at our research site located in Northern Finland. Thirdly, based on the theoretical discussion and findings from the real-world studies, we argue that climate sensitive thinking should be part of the design of urban ICT, and outline some central design challenges.

In many cities around the world, surveillance by a pervasive net of CCTV cameras is a common phenomenon in an attempt to uphold safety and security across the urban environment. Video footage is being recorded and stored, sometimes live feeds are being watched in control rooms hidden from public access and view. In this study, we were inspired by Steve Mann’s original work on sousveillance (surveillance from below) to examine how a network of camera equipped urban screens could allow the residents of Oulu in Finland to collaborate on the safekeeping of their city. An agile, rapid prototyping process led to the design, implementation and ‘in the wild’ deployment of the UbiOpticon screen application. Live video streams captured by web cams integrated at the top of 12 distributed urban screens were broadcast and displayed in a matrix arrangement on all screens. The matrix also included live video streams of two roaming mobile phone cameras. In our field study we explored the reactions of passers-by and users of this screen application that seeks to inverse Bentham’s original panopticon by allowing the watched to be watchers at the same time. In addition to the original goal of participatory sousveillance, the system’s live video feature sparked fun and novel user-led appropriations.

We compare the interactive experiences of two public infrastructures — situated displays and a municipal wireless network — using a conceptual framework of place, experience and embodiment. Using the framework as a point of reference, we can begin to address some inherent design issues in these technologies. Consequently, we argue that urban technologies which take into account their environment and leave room for creativity, add and support existing meaningful experiences in the city.

This thesis explores the sociocultural processes shaping the design, adoption and use of new urban technology in the city of Oulu in northern Finland. The exploration is conducted at experiential level focusing on people’s personal perspectives which allows uncovering underlying cultural meanings, social structures and historically formed practices and discourses. The unique case for the thesis is provided by the recent technological development in Oulu that has been shaped by agendas such as ubiquitous computing and smart cities.

The thesis first investigates in-depth the design process of the new urban technology, and also compares the visions of the designers and decision-makers with the practices and perspectives of the city inhabitants. Then, the adoption process of public urban technologies is studied in detail by constructing a conceptual appropriation model. Finally, the effects of the northern location of Oulu on the design and use of the urban technology are scrutinized. The research is based on empirical, qualitative research materials comparing the experiences of young adult and elderly city inhabitants; in addition, quantitative use data of urban technologies is utilized to provide an overview on the use trends.

The key findings indicate that the design and decisions concerning novel technologies and the outcome are shaped by complex sociomaterial practices based on experiences from previous similar projects, and on certain preconceptions about the city inhabitants and technology’s role in the cityscape. Different people have differing power positions in relation to the development of the urban public places, and technology implementation can marginalize some segments of city inhabitants. Further, the adoption of novel urban technologies is found to depend heavily on the norms of public places and people’s long-term experiences of technology use. Finally, climate, ICT use and sociocultural context are shown to be profoundly interconnected, and thus, urban computing design must reconsider the situatedness of technology. These findings call for further sociocultural studies on future smart cities.