Joanna Saad-Sulonen

Researcher, Arki research group, Media Lab / University of Art and Design Helsinki (FI)

Spaces of policy and spaces of design: the prefix "e" for everyday life?    

Keywords:   Urban space, ICT, digitalization, collaborative design / co-design, adaptive design, public participation, eGovernment, eParticipation, EU-funded project, practices   of everyday life, digital practices

This paper addresses possibilities for developing ICT mediatedinteraction between city administrations and citizens, in an attempt to bring together different perspectives: on one hand the more rigidly defined frameworks for action of official bodies, and on the other people's growing digital practices related to their daily experience of the city and their production of knowledge of their city. Such possibilities are being explored through research, design and software development effort currently being carried out by the ARKI research group at the University of Art and Design Helsinki in the context of Icing, a EU-funded project focusing on multi-modal and multi-access concepts of e-Government.   The work done by ARKI in Icing concentrates on the development of the Urban Mediator, an open framework and specific tools for building connections between citizens and city administrations, making all knowledge mutually accessible. Urban Mediator would provide a software infrastructure that enables citizens to become organized around interesting topics and develop more effective interactions with the city. Such interactions linked to location-based information sharing can happen on the spot, in the physical space of the city, and can also be facilitated by the use of digital map interfaces. My paper will discuss the experience of working on Urban Mediator, bringing forward reflections and questions related to the tensions between a local 'bottom-up' co-design process and the framework provided by the EU for e-Government initiatives.

Joanna Saad-Sulonen is currently working as a researcher at the Media Lab of the   University of Art and Design Helsinki (UIAH). She received her Bachelor's Degree   in Architecture from the American University of Beirut in 1997 and her Master's   Degree in New Media from UIAH in 2005. She has started her doctoral studies also at   UIAH in 2006 and the working title of her research proposal is Everyday Life in the   Interactive City: Exploring potentials of Information and Communication   Technologies in physical urban context for facilitating public participation and   citizen involvement in urban issues.   

  Joanna's main interest lies in exploring the interplay between the physical and digital   dimension in urban public spaces, taking the lived space and social practices of   everyday life as a starting point for investigation.   Joanna was born in Beirut in 1974 and has lived and worked both in Lebanon, her   father's country, and in Finland, her mother's country. She now lives permanently in   Hakaniemi, Helsinki, loves cooking, discovering cities, and swimming in the sea.