Power to the People: Hacking the City with Plug-In Interfaces for Community Engagement

Abstract

This chapter presents a discussion about the design and development of bespoke “city hacking” initiatives focused on community engagement. We draw from the literature in the field to propose a definition of plug-in interfaces as portable interactive technology deployed directly to public spaces on a temporary basis and addressing pre-existing architectural and social affordances.We then present a series of short-term cross-sectional field studies where we make use of two distinct plug-in interfaces to c ontrast different design scenarios against three core contextual constraints: (1) technology familiarity of the interfaces; (2) level of integration of the interfaces into the built environment; and (3) nature of pedestrian activity ordinarily unfolding in the urban precinct. We then discuss the observations from the studies and derive some initial findings regarding the utilisation of plug-in interfaces as tools for city hacking with the purpose of developing community engagement campaigns with rapid deployment and quick turnaround.