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IoT Community Technologies: Leaving Users to Their Own Devices or Orchestration of Engagement?

Balestrini, M; Diez, T; Marshall, P; Gluhak, A; Rogers, Y; (2015) IoT Community Technologies: Leaving Users to Their Own Devices or Orchestration of Engagement? EAI Endorsed Transactions on Internet of Things , 1 (1) , Article e7. 10.4108/eai.26-10-2015.150601. Green open access

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Abstract

Citizens are increasingly crowdfunding IoT based participatory sensing technologies that allow them to collect and share data about the environment. These initiatives are usually referred to as grassroots and are driven by a vision of widening access to tools for political action. In this paper we compare patterns of participation and user experience over 15 months in two distinct communities using ‘Smart Citizen’, a crowdfunded IoT participatory sensing tool. Our studies reveal that technology issues and a lack of reliability of the sensed data hindered user participation. However, in one of the communities, many of these challenges were overcome through orchestrated actions led by community champions. We discuss how crowdfunding doesn’t necessarily translate into active participation and provide guidelines on how to achieve sustained engagement in crowdfunded IoT community sensing projects: enable distributed orchestration provided by local champions, encourage social interactions that embed skills and learning, and facilitate meaningful participation and reward mechanisms among community members.

Type: Article
Title: IoT Community Technologies: Leaving Users to Their Own Devices or Orchestration of Engagement?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.4108/eai.26-10-2015.150601
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.26-10-2015.150601
Language: English
Additional information: © 2015 M. Balestrini et al., licensed to EAI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: IoT community technologies, engagement, crowdfunding, social action, activism, participatory sensing
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > UCL Interaction Centre
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1474761
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