Info:
Aarhus
active-citizenship
app
citizen engagement
sensors
Smart City Platform
space utilisation

Siidi: Seeding your city with your own ideas – an innovative co-creation tool for citizens

Team: HOP Ubiquitous (HOPU)

Siidi enables the citizens to participate in the co-creation, active participation and enhancement of a new public space in their region. In particular, Siidi has focused on new districts in Aarhus, Denmark. Siidi has offered an innovative co-creation tool to get inputs about what types of spaces citizens think are important in the new district.

The Team

Key members are: Antonio J. Jara (CEO), Matilde Server (Communication), Andrea Gómez (Creative), Germán Molina and Felipe Roca (Software developer)

“Siidi has been designed to enhance the existing co-creation techniques with a full democratic tool. The value of Siidi is in the active involvement of the citizens in urban planning, the capacity to discover and define issues via co-creation of potential services and solution. This enhances the efficiency, sustainability and usability of the city.”

Process

1. Based on the background information, we designed a contextual framework for Siidi experiment.

2. We defined a concrete content for the experiment through interactions with Institute for X.
3. Programming and full integration of the frontend and backend architecture of the Smart Spots sensor were completed. Sensors were designed and interior encapsulations were printed in 3D.

4. Following printed instruction, the sensors ‘Smart Spots’ were assembled and installed in Institut for X.

5. Users' interactions with sensors were monitored then analysed. Another social media campaign was launched.

Experiment outcome

We developed Smart Spots, which interacts with smartphones in the surrounding area, to emit information about Point of Interest, using ‘Physical Web’ technology.

Siidi platform (www.siidi.eu), which includes the Mobile and Desktop Web App that offers different options and topics for the users to participate in the development of their district.

We collected various insights, ideas and votes about public spaces in the new district and the wider city; they were the visualised on a web dashboard.

Lessons learned

    1. Test and validate your technology
      Since the implementation of the project we have detected areas of improvement throughout various phases of the project, from inception to physical installation. We are already applying some of these improvements to our current projects, in order to increase productivity.
    2. Understand the behavior of the target user and collect their inputs safely
      We collected a lot of information from citizens, particularly on the new district. Administrators responded to this citizen input by adding, modifying or eliminating areas of interest according to their needs.

Siidi Website

What happened & what's next?

  • In Summer 2018 we piloted Siidi platform in Murcia region, Spain.
  • The platform was proposed to other cities in Spain, such as Ceuti and Lorca who have shown a great interest.
  • Smart Cities Conferences and OrganiCity provided visibility for the experiment that developed into further opportunities.
  • We developed a co-creation solution for cities based on the conclusions from Siidi and other similar experiments: See more.
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