The Public Design Workshop is an academic design research studio.
Our work draws together design, the social sciences, and the humanities to investigate the role of information and communication technologies in shaping public life. This involves both prototyping experimental digital systems and services, and critically analyzing existing digital systems and practices.
Much of our current work involves the Internet of Things (IoT) and exploring how IoT technologies and services might be re-imagined and differently configured to support civic and collective endeavors. For instance, we are researching the design and use of IoT in smart cities, to support urban foraging, and in co-housing communities.
Another strand of research explores the design and use of computational media for political engagement and expression. Currently we are focusing on two particular media forms: bots and maps. With bots we are researching the design of Twitter bots for political parody and commentary. With maps we are researching how the visual representation of geographic data supports arguments about urban development.
Institutionally we are situated within the Digital Media program in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
For more information, contact:
Carl DiSalvo at cdisalvo @ gatech[dot]edu