The objective of the strategic research centre Digital Urban Living is to address new forms of digital urban living reflected by the societal and technological development of the experience economy. Our hypothesis is that the nature of digital urban living can be addressed in a productive way by a complementary and integrated set of theoretical perspectives:
The activities of the centre will be based on, and reinforce public-private cooperation by organizing projects according to a research-based, user-driven innovation, and explorative case-based activity model. In keeping with this model, four cases - Civic communication in urban spaces, Participation in cultural heritage, Digital art in urban space, and New urban areas - have been initially selected, and constitute the basis for involving citizens, industry, and public institutions in case-driven research with a concern for innovations and partnering, leading to new businesses.
As interaction with cultural interfaces becomes an integrated part of urban living, there is a need to investigate how interaction is designed to accommodate experiential qualities and user driven content in urban spaces. The participatory design tradition has documented how interaction design can benefit from user involvement to secure usability, democracy at work and funology. Current participatory design research investigates new methods for exploring the experiential potential of new interfaces by involving non-professional users in the design processes.
Designing and innovating for digital urban living calls for the need to pay particular attention to the experiential qualities, including the physical and bodily aspects of interaction. Specific research questions to be addressed in this context include
