09 Jul Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, Com­mons and board games at the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Design Con­fer­ence 2020

Grass­roots Radio was present in the inter­ac­tive work­shop “Com­mon­ing Design and Design­ing Com­mons”, orga­nized as part of the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Design Con­fer­ence (PDC) 2020. The work­shop aimed at under­stand­ing the rel­e­vance of the con­cepts of com­mons and com­mon­ing – as an objec­tive to be pur­sued and as a way of prac­tic­ing and being togeth­er – in the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Design of tech­nol­o­gy. Com­mons are usu­al­ly referred as resources built and man­aged by groups of peo­ple moved by eth­i­cal val­ues instead of mon­ey, shar­ing instead of own­er­ship, social inno­va­tion instead of prof­it. These groups typ­i­cal­ly can reach their goals through hor­i­zon­tal inter­nal coor­di­na­tion, ruled by the trans­paren­cy of the deci­sions and the equal pos­si­bil­i­ty to have a say in the project’s activ­i­ties.

Rober­to Cib­in and Mau­r­izio Teli shared some pre­lim­i­nary insights on a piece of research relat­ed to the design of Com­mOni­ty Radio, a board game aimed at sup­port­ing the com­mu­ni­ties mem­bers to define com­mons-based strate­gies for the gov­er­nance of their com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions. Since the pro­pos­al, in fact, the Grass­roots Radio project has been focused not only in the imple­men­ta­tion and improve­ment of the RootIO tech­nol­o­gy, but also in help­ing the com­mu­ni­ties to iden­ti­fy good prac­tices and new tech­no­log­i­cal fea­tures that can allow the radio sta­tions to be sus­tain­able also after the con­clu­sion of the project. Games are tools often used in the design of tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices for their abil­i­ty to sup­port par­tic­i­pants in get­ting involved in dis­cus­sions to find solu­tions to com­plex issues, help­ing them to share their expe­ri­ences but also to imag­ine new sce­nar­ios and change their points of view.

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Design is a research and design approach focused on the impor­tance of involv­ing future users and their needs in the def­i­n­i­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy they use to inter­act with their envi­ron­ments. The process of co-design of new objects or ser­vices is usu­al­ly con­duct­ed through prac­ti­cal activ­i­ties and the use of phys­i­cal things like pro­to­types, draws, shapes, puz­zles, that allows the par­tic­i­pants to express their cre­ativ­i­ty.

At this link you can find the work­shop paper.