Publications
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Culén, Alma Leora; Niess, Jasmin; Carvalho, Aparecido Fabiano Pinatti de; Caspersen, Aki Axel; Jarsve, Tora & Joshi, Suhas Govind
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(2026).
The Misalignment of Technology, Democracy, and Design: A Scoping Review.
In Yen, Chingchiuan; Lee, Jung-joo; Do, Ellen Yi Luen; Zheng, Clement; Yoo, Daisy & Tang, Tony (Ed.),
DIS '26: Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
ISSN 9798400725630.
p. 2595–2612.
doi:
10.1145/3800645.3813042.
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This scoping review examines the past decade of research at the intersection of democracy, technology and design. Analysing 170 articles across Scopus, the ACM Digital Library, and the DRS Digital Library, we investigate how this research relates to democracy and how democratic values are conceptualised and enacted through interactive systems. We identify four dominant orientations: technology as democratic repair, as risk, as co-constitutive of democratic practices, and as embedded in everyday collective action and lived practices. Across these, we reveal a persistent misalignment: while democratic values are frequently invoked, much of the work reduces democracy to technical or procedural problems, prioritising optimisation over power, relationality, and lived practice. As a result, key dimensions such as collective agency, structural inequalities, and infrastructural conditions remain under-addressed, offering novel opportunities for HCI research. We argue that democratic technology design should advance better alignment fostering responsibility, participation, equity, and transparency in sociotechnical systems.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Stevens, Nicholas; Niess, Jasmin; Finken, Sisse; Miklian, Jason & Hoelscher, Kristian
(2025).
In the relational sandbox: Deep democracy and technology.
In Morrison, Andrew & Habib, Laurence (Ed.),
Proceedings of Nordes 2025: Relational Design.
p. 1–7.
doi:
10.21606/nordes.2025.77.
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Designing for democracy often emphasizes values but underestimates the role of relationships in shaping civic life. This workshop explores how relationality - our social ties, political agency, and economic conditions - affects grassroots democratic design experiments and the technologies they inspire. Grounded in deep democracy and participatory approaches, we engage in small-scale experiments using Relational Sandbox to explore how new technologies that support democratic values can reshape power dynamics and how locally rooted, tailored designs can counteract capital-driven technological development. By experimenting with relational civics, we will collectively imagine new design strategies that prioritize meaningful technologies for deep democracy over profit-driven ones. This workshop invites designers, activists, and researchers to co-develop strategies and design guidelines that place relationships at the heart of democratic practice.
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Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian; Niess, Jasmin & Culén, Alma Leora
(2025).
A Sandbox for (Designing) Democratic Technologies.
In Sorce, Salvatore; Elagroudy, Passant & Khamis, Mohamed (Ed.),
MUM '25: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
ISSN 9798400720154.
p. 493–498.
doi:
10.1145/3771882.3771919.
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Interactive technologies have reshaped how we connect, socialise, work, and participate in civic life. However, the design of systems that mediate democracy is too often guided by extractive logics of large technological corporations, highlighting the erosion of public values. This workshop invites participants to reimagine how interaction design can foster grassroots democratic engagement. Using a relational sandbox approach (low threshold, low fidelity prototyping, including the use of generative AI), we will explore civic scenarios that involve stakeholder mapping, prototyping, and speculative design to explore power dynamics, strengthen social ties, and support inclusive civic practices. The workshop will contribute to ongoing debates about how HCI can sustain democratic life in times of social and technological crisis.
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Stevens, Nicholas; Zhao, Yangyang & Culén, Alma Leora
(2025).
Empathy and Sustainability at the Core.
In Sarantou, Melanie; Miettinen, Satu & Jylkäs, Titta (Ed.),
Empathic Service Design.
Bloomsbury Publishing.
ISSN 9781350476424.
p. 272–286.
doi:
10.5040/9781350476424.ch-17.
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Through case studies from across the globe, this book helps designers understand how forward-looking service prototyping, analysis and tools can promote and create empathic, emotion-oriented and relevant services. Despite services being at the core of organisations, to create service flows, designers, groups and their diverse stakeholders must negotiate ever more complex and hybrid interactions between human and more-than-human role players in service delivery. The challenge lies in delivering empathic, relevant and desirable services, despite these complexities. New knowledge is needed to bridge the gaps, uncertainties and even anxieties that organisations face in making their service delivery empathic and keeping them purposeful to users. Addressing problems within service delivery like empathy fatigue, poor collaboration, and siloed work experiences that lead to poorly-functioning systems, the authors suggest concrete solutions for developing empathetic approaches and tools with consideration for the needs of participants. The book critically examines the role of empathy, and explores how compassionate understanding of the end-user is key to success. Case studies include mapping of children's services, wearable technologies for pandemics, understanding cultural sensitivity, emojis and chat bots, and AI used in care settings.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Karahasanovic, Amela; Makokha, Joseph Maloba; Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian & Zhao, Yangyang
(2024).
ChatGPT: mediating complex design processes.
In Gray, C.M.; Chehade, E. Ciliotta; Hekkert, P.; Forlano, L.; Ciuccarelli, P. & Lloyd, P. (Ed.),
DRS2024: Boston.
Design Research Society.
ISSN 9781912294626.
doi:
10.21606/drs.2024.628.
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This study explores the integration of ChatGPT as a facilitative tool in complex design processes within a project-based Transformative Design course. Student teams collaborated with external partners on projects concerning democratization of trading, democratization of local manufacturing processes, and promoting social inclusion. The inquiry observed if ChatGPT positively contributes to such processes and, if so, in what ways. We focused on its impact on teamwork, creativity, and informed decision-making. Data collection involved recording design sessions with automatic transcription, conversation logs from ChatGPT, semi-structured team interviews, observations and an anonymized questionnaire. Our findings point to ChatGPT’s ability to offer better assistance with real-life design processes - not as much in terms of creativity, but the ability to learn and get the information needed for design in complex and often novel domains. They also point to a shifting perception of human, technology, and world relationships.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Junge, Ines Petra; Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian & Gaver, William
(2023).
Plurishop – a workshop-based method for transitions design.
Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design.
RSD12.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian
(2022).
Speculative and critical approach to designing technological futures through HCI education.
ID&A Interaction design & architecture(s).
ISSN 1826-9745.
2021-22(51),
p. 8–31.
doi:
10.55612/s-5002-051-001.
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We believe that challenging times demand HCI education to pay attention to current real-life, complex, systemic problems. Therefore, we suggest an integrated framework for teaching HCI that involves combining the transition design framework, which suggests long-term, future-oriented design on a large scale toward more sustainable lifestyles, and speculative and critical design. The integration of the two creates spaces for dialogues and debates enabling students to take a more critical perspective concerning possible futures and technology design. We suggest studio-based pedagogy and explicate various aspects of the course, including its theoretical and practical underpinnings, pedagogical approach, and provide examples of projects to illustrate how the framework was used and ways in which speculative and critical design and thinking were crucial for learning. Finally, we highlight six learning facets that might contribute to orienting students’ upcoming professional work towards desirable futures.
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Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian
(2021).
Endogenous design and alternative sites for manufacturing digital artifacts.
In Kommers, Piet; Issa, Tomayess; Viana, Adriana Backx Noronha; Issa, Theodora & Isaías, Pedro (Ed.),
International Conferences Internet Technologies & Society 2021, Applied Management Advances in the 21st Century 2021 and Sustainability, Technology and Education 2021.
IADIS Press.
ISSN 9789898704368.
p. 131–138.
doi:
10.33965/ITSAMASTE2021_202111L018.
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As is becoming increasingly apparent, society faces the need to dramatically transition the ways in which we provision both our goods and our social needs. Headlines are filled with articles listing the debilitating societal effects of aspects of social media and the environmental costs of resourcing our consumerist lifestyles. Many proposals exist regarding the local commissioning, production, and consumption of objects in order to address these issues. However, there are limited examples of how this might be implemented regarding goods of a digital nature and the application of endogenous motivation on behalf of the consumer to encourage stronger forms of sustainability to emerge. To investigate this premise further, this paper proposes an opportunity that allows exploration of endogenous design in a protected niche environment, reviews alternate, emergent design approaches, and ideas of endogenous or intrinsic motivations and social practice. Finally, it outlines the potential of conducting this research.
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Published
Dec. 21, 2020 11:30 AM
- Last modified
May 21, 2026 11:07 PM
