Exploring the use of ICTs to support socialization in public spaces

• Grant number: 16/23755-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2017
• End date: May 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science
• Principal Investigator: Junia Coutinho Anacleto
• Grantee: Marcelo Henrique Huffenbaecher Marques de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Exatas e de Tecnologia (CCET). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Community is commonly considered a social unity that shares something, as norms, values, identity, considering a physical or virtual space where they are situated. Being part of a community increases our welfare, improving our capacity of dealing with hard changes in life, such as a loss of a loved one, being fired or home moving. It may also be seen as an indicator of health - just as important as food and physical exercises. However, with the accelerated rhythm of live and the deterioration of urban centers, there is a tendency of social isolation. In this scenario, the chance of a conversation between strangers to happen are decreasing. Public recreation and socializing areas have decreased in quantity and use. The existing spaces seen not to be as effective as they used to be, because of safety issues, distance and time reasons. With the popularization of the information and communication technologies (ICTs), we see the adoption of this new form of communication reinforcing the current scenario where there is a lack of community life, in the most diverse aspects. This can lead (and it does) to social isolation. On the other hand, there is a tendency to break this isolation barrier through the use of ICTs. Virtual relationships appear as a way of adding to social life or even to compensate the lack of it in the physical world. While in physicality, the first step to get involved in a talk with a stranger may be very hard, in the virtual world this barrier is more easily exceeded. In this project, we intend to explore the potential of ICTs to help people taking the first step at meeting other people, besides supporting and promoting the socialization and the community life. In this context, this Scientific Initiation (SI) project is inserted in a bigger project that involves the research to promote socialization, revitalization and transformation of public spaces, turning them into community meeting places, supporting the interaction between people, letting them straighten ties and strengthen their community values, preparing them to appropriate the incoming smart city, changing the concept of smart cities from only being focused on the administration of resources, into social and human cities, with an involved citizen, compromised and socially articulated. The goal of this SI project is to promote the socialization in public spaces, through the use of an interactive technological installation,, observing the impact of theses technologies in the environment in which they are inserted, studying change in the behavior and experience of people in these places. In order to do that, it will be developed a public installation named Community Garden (CG). CG is an interactive application composed by a real garden that will be nourished through collaborative actions realized by people using the application, both there in the experiment place and somewhere else. By adopting a collaborative interaction approach, people can interact and take conjunct decisions about the garden, which result in the way the system will take care of the garden, i.e., nourish it or not. The system will be tested in a public space aiming at analyzing the impact of the technology and its role at supporting socialization. It will also be analyzed the collaboration with the virtual world and its consequences on the physical world. The result of this project will be the creation of a set of guidelines for the development of ICTs that support socialization in public spaces encompassing interactions in the physical and in the virtual world. By creating these guidelines, we hope to collaborate at transforming public places into spaces where socialization happens with more intensity, integrating the virtual socialization to the physicality, boosting the citizen engagement with the smart cities. (AU)