Smart Cities are a prominent trend in Urban Development globally. It is our duty as researchers and designers to ensure our designs will embody the values of equality, inclusivity and fairness. Smart Urban Technologies and Smart City concepts are both the subject and the root of challenges.
Designing futures is an interdisciplinary task with many degrees of freedom. Exploring these will be a focus of our project: how can we ensure that the Smart Cities we create will unfold for the benefit of all citizens and not for ”Black Mirror” scenarios.
We will start by exploring various Urban Technologies and Smart City concepts and projects. Then, we will explore how to use speculative design to design futures and apply this method for urban challenges. We will further explore Feminist approaches to designing technological solutions (emphasizing standpoints of non-represented and marginalised user groups) and how it can be embedded in speculative methods and workshop planning. Finally, we will apply our knowledge to the design of speculative workshops on designing (and challenging) Smart City concepts from the perspective of embedded values. Our final outcome will consist of planning and executing speculative design workshops on the Smart City topic, with the outcomes analysed and summarised.
To bring in further expertise and perspectives, guest lectures and workshops are planned with invited researchers from the OFFIS research institute in Oldenburg, University of Tampere, Finland as well as other Labs in Bauhaus-Universität.
- This project is heavily research oriented, therefore, interest in academic work and experience with HCI or User-Centered Design research methods is a prerequisite for all participants.
- This project is an opportunity to learn more about urban technologies, Smart Cities, Value-Based Designed Futures and speculative design methodology. Upon successful completion you could use your results as a bridge for a thesis or Student Research publication.
- The project’s active phase runs till the end of July and the expected workload is approximately 2 working days per week for 12 ECTs and 3 working days for 18 ECTs.
We encourage all students to email Margarita with your CV to check whether you qualify for the project. For students from other degrees than HCI/CS4DM this is a mandatory step for acceptance. Please feel free to reach out for more details or with any questions or clarifications to be sure that this project is a good fit for you.
margarita.osipova@uni-weimar.de
- This project is a part of ”Feminist Smart Cities: Speculative Design Methodology for Creating Feminist Future for Smart Cities”
Projektnummer: 56-M-2023
Co-sponsored by Bauhaus-Universität Weimar und Frauenförderfond. |
