Papers by Mara Balestrini
European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, 2012
Complex group dynamics in physical educational spaces, such as the classroom, can lead to signifi... more Complex group dynamics in physical educational spaces, such as the classroom, can lead to significant learning benefits. Outstanding teachers apply these dynamics, but their adoption is not extensive. One of the reasons behind the lack of broad adoption refers to their implementation inconveniences, including the time and attention that teachers and students need to dedicate to the orchestration of the dynamic. This workshop paper discusses a technology, the Signal Orchestration System (SOS), which facilitates the organization of group activities in physical spaces by exploiting awareness indications. Using the SOS, students wear a device that renders signals denoting orchestration aspects (e.g., color signals indicating group formation) in a way that the signals are collectively perceived. The paper states the problem and presents the proposed solution discussing different designs for the wearable devices.
This document provides a preliminary mapping of communities affected by odour pollution in eight ... more This document provides a preliminary mapping of communities affected by odour pollution in eight European countries and in Chile, and presents a conceptual framework for supporting stakeholders in planning and conducting citizen science interventions aimed at tackling odour problems.
This dataset contains the data collected using an online survey on knowledge, perceptions and pre... more This dataset contains the data collected using an online survey on knowledge, perceptions and preferences on topics to be investigated around the theme of air pollution and health in Barcelona, Spain. The data collected are for the CitieS-Health project in Barcelona. A scientific paper based on the online survey results is under review.
Complex group dynamics in physical educational spaces, such as the classroom, can lead to signifi... more Complex group dynamics in physical educational spaces, such as the classroom, can lead to significant learning benefits. Outstanding teachers apply these dynamics, but their adoption is not extensive. One of the reasons behind the lack of broad adoption refers to their implementation inconveniences, including the time and attention that teachers and students need to dedicate to the orchestration of the dynamic. This workshop paper discusses a technology, the Signal Orchestration System (SOS), which facilitates the organization of group activities in physical spaces by exploiting awareness indications. Using the SOS, students wear a device that renders signals denoting orchestration aspects (e.g., color signals indicating group formation) in a way that the signals are collectively perceived. The paper states the problem and presents the proposed solution discussing different designs for the wearable devices.
Environmental Health
Background While the health risks of air pollution attract considerable attention, both scholarly... more Background While the health risks of air pollution attract considerable attention, both scholarly and within the general population, citizens are rarely involved in environmental health research, beyond participating as data subjects. Co-created citizen science is an approach that fosters collaboration between scientists and lay people to engage the latter in all phases of research. Currently, this approach is rare in environmental epidemiology and when co-creation processes do take place, they are often not documented. This paper describes the first stages of an ongoing co-created citizen science epidemiological project in Barcelona (Spain), that included identifying topics that citizens wish to investigate as regards air pollution and health, formulating their concerns into research questions and co-designing the study protocol. This paper also reflects key trade-offs between scientific rigor and public engagement and provides suggestions to consider when applying citizen science ...
Crowdsensing or participatory sensing technologies are becoming increasingly available, allowing ... more Crowdsensing or participatory sensing technologies are becoming increasingly available, allowing citizens to collectively monitor and share data about the environment. Initiatives that harness the potential of these tools are typically promoted by individuals, communities or organisations in a bid to foster bottomup citizen participation in environmental action. However, our studies around diverse communities who used low-cost open source sensing technologies such as Smart Citizen have revealed a number of challenges that hinder the uptake and sustainability of crowdsensing practices at the grassroots level. In this paper we summarise and discuss these findings and present Making Sense, a H2020 funded project aimed to overcome some of the challenges associated to the scalability and sustainability of environmental participatory sensing.
Penelitian ini bertujuan, pertama, Menganalisis dan menjelaskan pemenuhan hak kebebasan berekspre... more Penelitian ini bertujuan, pertama, Menganalisis dan menjelaskan pemenuhan hak kebebasan berekspresi berdasarkan undang-undang nomor 9 tahun 1998 tentang kemerdekaan menyampaikan pendapat di muka umum. Kedua, Menganalisis upaya negara untuk melindungi hak asasi manusia dari tindakan anarkis dalam kebebasan berekspresi. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode penelitian hukum doctrinal normatif atau penelitian hukum kepustakaan, yaitu penelitian hukum yang dilakukan dengan cara meneliti bahan pustaka atau data sekunder yang terdiri dari bahan hukum primer, bahan hukum sekunder dan bahan hukum tersier. Bahan-bahan tersebut disusun secara sistematis, dikaji, kemudian ditarik suatu kesimpulan dalam hubungannya dengan masalah yang diteliti. Hasil penelitian ini: Pertama, Undang-Undang Nomor 9 Tahun 1998 tentang Kebebasan Mengemukakan Pendapat di Muka Umum, masih terdapat kekurangan berkaitan dengan pembatasan-pembatasan yang ada, sebab tidak dicantumkan jelas mengenai batasan yang tidak boleh dilanggar seseorang, agar tercipta relevansi di antara peraturan perundang-undangan. Kedua, Menyampaikan pendapat di muka umum merupakan hak bagi setiap warga negara, namun apabila tindakan yang dilakukan oleh para pengunjuk rasa berakhir anarkis, maka tidak dapat dikategorikan sebagai perbuatan melanggar Hak Asasi Manusia sehingga aparat kepolisian dapat menindak berdasarkan aturan hukum yang berlaku.
Within the field of Personal Informatics much research pursues the design of applications for sel... more Within the field of Personal Informatics much research pursues the design of applications for self-tracking to motivate behaviour change. Such tools usually follow an “egocentric” approach where the user is expected to reflect on and change her behaviour by visualizing her own collected data. I suggest that a system where the data of a user is mapped into the wellbeing of an external entity or a community, with which the user establishes an affective bond, could lead to an alternative approach towards self-awareness, based on empathy and vicarious emotions such as altruism and compassion.
The EU Horizon 2020 call ‘’Science with & for Society’’ funded the D-NOSES project (Distributed N... more The EU Horizon 2020 call ‘’Science with & for Society’’ funded the D-NOSES project (Distributed Network for Odour Sensing, Empowerment and Sustainability), which aims to develop a methodology based on participatory strategies and collaboration among different stakeholders using an extreme citizen science approach. This paper presents the findings of this approach applied to a Chilean case study concerning a small community impacted by a municipal wastewater treatment plant. Results of odour observations gathered by citizens during a three-month period are compared with the traditional odour impact evaluation techniques such as field inspections. An adapted odour annoyance index showed a better accuracy for each assessment square compared to the odour impact characteristics. It also points out challenges of citizen participation and opportunities of combining both approaches.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Projects producing citizen-generating data (CGD) to provide evidence and to drive change have inc... more Projects producing citizen-generating data (CGD) to provide evidence and to drive change have increased considerably in the last decade. Many of these initiatives build on multi-actor collaboration and are often supported by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the public sector, businesses or community-based organisations. The joint efforts of these actors are often necessary to provide the resources and the support that citizens need to produce data. In return, organisations can harness the data to support their objectives. The recent growth (or up-scaling) of CGD projects has created opportunities, as well as challenges for capacity building and sustainability. These challenges can affect the continuity and effectiveness of these initiatives and, in turn, the quality and utility of collected data. This paper analyses two CGD projects to consider their social implications and the measures necessary to increase their capacity, up-scaling, spreading, and sustainability. The case s...
Large technology companies and city councils are increasingly developing smart city programmes: a... more Large technology companies and city councils are increasingly developing smart city programmes: augmenting urban environments with smart and ubiquitous computing devices, to transform how cities are run. At a smaller scale, communities of citizens are appropriating technologies to tackle matters of concern and to effect positive change from the bottom-up. HCI researchers are also deploying civic technology in the wild, sometimes collaborating with these communities, in the pursuit of both scientific and societal impact. However, little is known about how impactful they have been, and the extent to which they have meaningfully engaged communities in the long term. The goal of this PhD is to identify the factors that can guide the design and deployment of engaging, sustainable and impactful civic technology interventions, from the perspective of the communities that they are intended to benefit. Three case studies are presented: an ethnographic study of an existing civic technology, a...
With the advent of the Internet of Things, low-cost sensing technologies are becoming increasingl... more With the advent of the Internet of Things, low-cost sensing technologies are becoming increasingly available, allowing citizens to collectively monitor and share data about the environment. A subset of these technologies is being made at maker spaces, using open source and affordable technologies. While these systems have the potential to power bottom-up participatory data networks, a key concern is that laypeople often fail to effectively setup and connect these sensors to the Internet because they lack technical skills and/or the systems’ user experience is poorly designed. We present a novel onboarding application that aims to facilitate the process of sensor setup and connection by non-experts. It works by providing an integrated design experience, scaffolding the complexity of the process, and guiding the user in a conversational fashion. We hope to inspire other developers and designers to consider the needs of non-technical and diverse communities in the design of IoT systems.
Journal of Science Communication
Undertaking citizen science research in Public Health involving human subjects poses significant ... more Undertaking citizen science research in Public Health involving human subjects poses significant challenges concerning the traditional process of ethical approval. It requires an extension of the ethics of protection of research subjects in order to include the empowerment of citizens as citizen scientists. This paper investigates these challenges and illustrates the ethical framework and the strategies developed within the CitieS-Health project. It also proposes first recommendations generated from the experiences of five citizen science pilot studies in environmental epidemiology within this project.
Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems ha... more Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems have enabled the expansion of maker movements and DIY cultures. This can be considered as a form of democratization of technology systems design, in alignment with the aims of Participatory Design approaches. However, this landscape is constantly evolving, and long-term implications for the HCI community are far from clear. The organizers of this one-day workshop invite participants to present their case studies, experiences and perspectives on the topic with the goal of increasing understanding within this area of research. The outcomes of the workshop will include the articulation of future research directions with the purpose of informing a research agenda, as well as the establishment of new collaborations and networks.
Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference
In this paper we examine ways to make data more meaningful and useful for citizens in participato... more In this paper we examine ways to make data more meaningful and useful for citizens in participatory sensing. Participatory sensing has evolved as a digitally enabled grassroots approach to data collection for citizens with shared concerns. However, citizens often struggle to understand data in relation to their daily lives, and use them effectively. This paper presents a qualitative study on the development of a novel approach to Community Level Indicators (CLIs) during two participatory sensing projects focused on noise pollution. It investigates how CLIs can provide an infrastructure to address challenges in participatory sensing, specifically, making data meaningful and useful for non-experts. Furthermore, we consider how this approach moves towards an ambition of achieving change and impact through participatory sensing and discuss the challenges in this way of working and provide recommendations for future use of CLIs.
Internet of Things
This chapter reviews existing work on public engagement with Internet of Things (IoT) systems fro... more This chapter reviews existing work on public engagement with Internet of Things (IoT) systems from a social perspective. It contributes a taxonomy that categorises the emergent social phenomena around IoT in places and communities. We sample representative work from each category and summarise the identified factors that are positively associated to social and civic engagement. Based on previous work and our own experiences in this field, we discuss possible approaches to scale up citizens’ participation and the role of technologies in such public engagement processes.
Citizen Science: Theory and Practice
Citizen science is challenging professional researchers and their organizations to rethink the wa... more Citizen science is challenging professional researchers and their organizations to rethink the way they do science and connect with society. In any citizen science project, professional researchers are "making a promise" to the public about the level of participation and power in decision making that they are willing to provide to citizen scientists. Researchers should set expectations explicitly to ensure informed participation, trust, and motivation. Also, the design of tools for informed consent, information sharing, recognition, and privacy has to be adapted to the new power relations and distributed knowledge production. Based on fieldwork experiences and literature review about environmental and biomedical citizen science, this article examines the challenges and proposes solutions for: 1) setting expectations for informed participation; 2) addressing privacy concerns and adapting informed consent to evolving interests and networked environments; and 3) promoting citizen governance of research data. Citizen science has the potential to both increase scientific literacy and counteract mistrust and skepticism about scientific evidence of global problems (such as climate change) that need to be addressed. However, there are still many challenges to fulfilling the promise of citizen science-for example, empowering people and gaining trust. A few inspiring initiatives help us reflect on a facilitation model for engagement and informed participation; privacy by design; and new governance models for research data provided by citizen scientists.
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Papers by Mara Balestrini