Titulo Estágio
Designing Democracy
Local do Estágio
Coimbra
Enquadramento
When a value crisis sweeps the globe and Democracy is in trouble in many political stages, from local communities to organisations or nation states, we raise the challenge of designing democracy. Oftentimes “the people” is presented with an illusion of decision-making power, through voting, after the whole process of problem definition and alternative solutions has been dealt with silently.
After ten years of studies of the influence and possible use of information systems and technologies to support diverse forms of direct or participatory democratic processes, it becomes increasingly clear that there is a whole lot that can be done by focusing on the pragmatics of what makes a democratic process participatory. More than a question of decision making, the empowerment to a balanced exercise of political power though participation can be promoted through the concurrent identification of issues, debating of perspectives and, drafting of resolutions, underlying decision making itself.
Objetivo
Above all else this your opportunity to make a difference.
Posed as User Experience Design exercise, we propose to address the question of designing a participatory democracy process and respective participation medium, taking the form of an online (self-)service that, with the simplicity of creating a “doodle”, can support the starting, enrolment, debate and decision stages of a truly participatory, general purpose, democratic process.
Main goals and deliverables:
a) Assess current state-of-the-art in online participatory democracy solutions and studies;
b) Design and build a workable web-based participatory democracy service, supporting the following participation stages: enrolment, identification of issues, debating of perspectives, drafting of resolutions, and decision making through voting;
c) Evaluate the user experience with such a medium.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
A1. (M1-M3) State of the art research - Research and document the relevant SoA, publications and software review, for the study of the problem at hand; Detailed characterisation of the problem to be solved stating specific goals and requirements;
A2. (M3 - M4) Design Proposal - Conceiving of a design proposal for the specific context, including visual identity, interaction models and user interface draft for the proposed solution, and mapping of assumptions and milestones for the rest of the project;
A3. (M1-M4) Paper - Production of a synthesis of state of the art and conceptual design proposal for a research paper;
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
A4. (M5 - M9) Prototyping - Implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype, tuning and corrections based on evaluation results;
A5. (M9) Evaluation - Definition of evaluation criteria and method; performing evaluations and analysis of results;
A6. (M10 - M11) Dissertation - Dissertation with reflection on process and knowledge production
Condições
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Observações
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Orientador
Licínio Gomes Roque
lir@dei.uc.pt 📩