How to create personas to improve designs for behaviour change strategies in the public domain? Three recent cases illustrate lessons learnt and challenges encountered during persona development in the public domain. Personas were helpful to gain insight into diversity within a target group, to create empathy for its members, and to have a shared understanding when communicating about them. The main challenges encountered were 1) capturing complex behaviour with personas, as the behaviours involved were variable over time, the (legislative) environment in motion, and the target groups diverse; 2) finding the right balance between intuitive vs. evidence-based decision-making, a process we coined “taking a responsible leap of faith”; and 3) transferring personas to third parties, as free sharing of insights and tools is common in the public domain. Validation plays an important role in personas’ transferability. We call for all involved researchers to share experiences with using the persona methodology in the public domain, in order to tackle the challenges, and to create a more standardised way of developing personas.
Blog post op de blog van het Amsterdam Creative Industries Network. Tijdens de Berlin Music Week hebben Inholland-onderzoekers Koos Zwaan en Sabine de Lat van het lectoraat Media, Cultuur en Burgerschap de eerste bevindingen gepresenteerd van een lopend onderzoeksproject getiteld ‘No Limits: The Value of Dutch Music in the Online Domain’.
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Social media zijn momenteel het gesprek van de dag. In slechts enkele jaren tijd hebben social media sites als YouTube, Facebook en LinkedIn een miljoenenpubliek aan zich gebonden. En het aantal consumenten en bedrijven dat gebruik maakt van deze online platformen groeit nog steeds sterk. Hoewel er dagelijks nieuwe cijfers verschijnen over het gebruik van social media is er vooralsnog weinig bekend over de adoptie van social media door bedrijven. Middels dit boek willen de onderzoekers van het lectoraat Online Ondernemen van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam een bijdrage leveren aan het opvullen van deze kennisleemte door het social media gebruik binnen de detailhandel in Nederland in kaart te brengen. Het boek bevat de resultaten van een onderzoek naar gebruik van de social media sites Hyves, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, weblogs, Twitter en fora door (web)winkels en consumenten in Nederland. Welke social media sites worden veel en welke weinig gebruikt door (web)winkels en consumenten in Nederland? Wat zijn de kenmerken van de (web)winkels en consumenten die voorop lopen en achterblijven in het gebruik van social media platformen? In hoeverre zijn Nederlanders geïnteresseerd in het volgen van commerciële bedrijven via social media? Hoeveel volgers hebben (web)winkels op Hyves, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube en Twitter? Op deze en andere vragen over het gebruik van social media in de detailhandel in Nederland wordt in dit boek antwoord gegeven.
Designing cities that are socially sustainable has been a significant challenge until today. Lately, European Commission’s research agenda of Industy 5.0 has prioritised a sustainable, human-centric and resilient development over merely pursuing efficiency and productivity in societal transitions. The focus has been on searching for sustainable solutions to societal challenges, engaging part of the design industry. In architecture and urban design, whose common goal is to create a condition for human life, much effort was put into elevating the engineering process of physical space, making it more efficient. However, the natural process of social evolution has not been given priority in urban and architectural research on sustainable design. STEPS stems from the common interest of the project partners in accessible, diverse, and progressive public spaces, which is vital to socially sustainable urban development. The primary challenge lies in how to synthesise the standardised sustainable design techniques with unique social values of public space, propelling a transition from technical sustainability to social sustainability. Although a large number of social-oriented studies in urban design have been published in the academic domain, principles and guidelines that can be applied to practice are large missing. How can we generate operative principles guiding public space analysis and design to explore and achieve the social condition of sustainability, developing transferable ways of utilising research knowledge in design? STEPS will develop a design catalogue with operative principles guiding public space analysis and design. This will help designers apply cross-domain knowledge of social sustainability in practice.
This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
Flying insects like dragonflies, flies, bumblebees are able to couple hovering ability with the ability for a quick transition to forward flight. Therefore, they inspire us to investigate the application of swarms of flapping-wing mini-drones in horticulture. The production and trading of agricultural/horticultural goods account for the 9% of the Dutch gross domestic product. A significant part of the horticultural products are grown in greenhouses whose extension is becoming larger year by year. Swarms of bio-inspired mini-drones can be used in applications such as monitoring and control: the analysis of the data collected enables the greenhouse growers to achieve the optimal conditions for the plants health and thus a high productivity. Moreover, the bio-inspired mini-drones can detect eventual pest onset at plant level that leads to a strong reduction of chemicals utilization and an improvement of the food quality. The realization of these mini-drones is a multidisciplinary challenge as it requires a cross-domain collaboration between biologists, entomologists and engineers with expertise in robotics, mechanics, aerodynamics, electronics, etc. Moreover a co-creation based collaboration will be established with all the stakeholders involved. With this approach we can integrate technical and social-economic aspects and facilitate the adoption of this new technology that will make the Dutch horticulture industry more resilient and sustainable.
