Communication Design for Social Engagement. Micro TV and the Integration of Branding and Storytelling into Participatory Processes

Abstract

The Green Move project promoted an innovative interdisciplinary research approach. Imagis Lab research team actively contributed integrating tools and processes from communication design and participatory video. Within the Experimentation actions for experimenting green mobility services and vehicles, a Micro Web TV was designed and produced in collaboration with the community of Villaggio Scarsellini condominium in order to foster users’ engagement. Scarsellini TV. Vicini più vicini was launched in 2013 and produced five different formats for documenting the community’s everyday life, providing video-tutorials explaining how the service works and how you can get the best from the vehicles and the service, the best practices within the condominium itself to be communicated to the rest of the community in order to improve people’s engagement and making them suggesting further possible uses. The paper describes on one hand the design approach to communication: the first part introduces movie design as communication strategies based on audiovisual storytelling and positions this kind of design approach within the other disciplines involved on the Green Move project. Then, the second part describes the specific contribution to the Experimentation research activities and the outputs produced (communication and TV formats), and analyses data from the surveys to the users during the experimentation and interviews to the community after the micro TV experience: was Scarsellini TV a socialization action? Did it help to foster the integration of the service into the condominium daily life? Did the user/community get new visions about possible alternative scenarios of sustainable mobility? And finally: did the implemented communication instruments contribute to foster the social innovation and to raise the consciousness of people involved?.