BUILDING “COMMUNIT”— DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A CYBER-PHYSICAL ARTIFACT FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

Many subgroups in the US remain marginalized from, misunderstood by, or invisible to the larger communities they reside in. Technologies supporting community building, more generally, have focused on apps; but these apps can fall short of making visible and heard subgroups such as the LGTBQ+, immigrant, and black populations. In response to this shortcoming, we report on the design iterations and evaluation of communIT, a cyber-physical platform for making visible and heard, in public places, subgroups towards building community. To inform the design of communIT, we conducted in our lab a design studio study (N=57), a co-design activity with a to-scale prototype (N= 12), and a co-design activity with a full-scale prototype (N=28). These lab studies involving in-person participation by local university students and public high school students were followed by an online study (N=197) reaching out to subgroups across the US. We learned the following and more from these studies: preferences for communIT’s design characteristics (i.e. form, embedded IT, and function); that communIT may be suitable and useful for diverse groups to share, engage, and interact; that communIT may make an impact on how the larger community perceives diverse groups; and that communIT may be helpful for groups to express their ideas, concerns, and aspirations to the larger community. Our research suggests the promise of large-scale, cyber-physical artifacts for making subgroups visible and heard towards community building.