UNDP Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge
Transcription
UNDP Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge
UNDP Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge Stage 2: From Idea to Concept Congratulations! The idea you submitted to the UNDP Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge has been selected to move on to the next stage. In order to transform your idea into a concept, you will have to follow the process outlined below. The deadline for submitting the first version of this form is Friday, March 20, 10:00 GMT+2. Concepts will have to be finalized by Wednesday, March 25, 10:00 GMT+2. Once finalized, the Mahallae team will upload the concepts on Mahallae and the Mahallae community will be able to comment on, endorse, and offer contributions to your project. Winners will be announced on Friday, April 10 and they will be expected to join the Build Peace Conference in Nicosia, Cyprus between April 24 – April 26 to present their prototypes. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by UNDP. A panel of judges made up of UNDP staff and technology for peace practitioners will select the winning concepts according to the criteria below: Criteria Feasibility: The concept demonstrates clear and realistic plans for development and implementation. Points 20 Capacity: The team clearly demonstrates that it has the knowhow to turn the concept into reality. 20 Scalability: The concept demonstrates sufficient potential to be scaled up after initial implementation. 20 Community Support: The concept has received sufficient support and interest from potential users. 20 Value for Money: The budget accurately reflects the scope and nature of the proposed activities. 20 TOTAL 100 Please use the instructions provided in the next pages to transform your idea into a concept. 1. Description (max. 600 words) Every successful tool or service has a clear vision behind it. Describe your prototype by touching on the following issues: 1. What specific problem are you trying to address? Research from the social sciences documents that where ethnic, sectarian, or other intergroup conflict is present, contact between the members of the involved groups, leads to more positive outgroup attitudes and increased trust. The problem is, however, that in most places where such conflicts exist, the opportunities for contact are minimal and segregation, either imposed or self-selected, is instead the norm. It is indicative that in Northern Ireland about 90% of children still attend separate faith (Catholic vs. Protestant) schools. In Cyprus, Greek Cypriots (G/C) and Turkish Cypriots (T/C) have been segregated for decades; although crossing from one side to the other has been allowed since 2003, the vast majority of people on either side rarely (if ever) cross. As a result, intergroup contact is generally experienced only by a relatively small number of individuals who are more inclined to seek such contact in the first place. A precursor, but also a consequence, of the lack of contact with the other community is that G/C and T/C, especially those of young age, don’t know much about each other. That is, although a number of remarkable initiatives in Cyprus have been successful in promoting contact across the two communities, most young Cypriots have limited cultural understanding and knowledge about the everyday life and the habits of people on the other side. This makes them even less likely to seek contact. Slice of Life (SOL) is a technology-based solution that aims to increase knowledge about everyday life in Cyprus across communities, with the long-term goal of reducing outgroup negativity and increasing contact. 2. What are the specific features and tools your prototype will employ to help address that problem? Describe each feature briefly. The prototype of SOL consists of an online platform that will host a collection of spherical videos (i.e., with 360⁰ field-of-view) that capture everyday activities from the two communities (e.g., family gatherings, classroom activities, excursions etc.). The videos will be made with specialized cameras that rely on multiple lenses to film footage. This footage can be edited to produce spherical videos that allow the observer to move the field-of-view in any direction within the video. Although people can view the videos online and move with the mouse, they can also use a Head-Mounted-Display (HMD) for Virtual Reality (VR) to immerse themselves in the scene (i.e., as if standing at the location of the camera) and physically rotate their body in it. We will set up a prototype system that combines the SOL platform with the Oculus Rift HMD to provide users with a highly-realistic virtual experience. 3. What specific impact do you aim to have? Explain how you are trying to contribute to positive social change on the ground. As many Cypriots resist the idea of crossing the divide and interacting with people from the other community, we will capitalize on the recent advances in VR technology to provide the means for virtual contact. By experiencing immersive video in an HMD, users will feel present in real-life scenes from the other community and observe how people go on about their daily lives. As the goal of the SOL is not to capture sightseeing locations or other points of interest, but to provide “slices of life” from each community, we expect that through this virtual interaction people will develop understandings about the culture and habits of the people in the other community and note the similarities and differences. Such understandings may clear misperceptions about the other group's culture, which in, our view, is an important prerequisite of seeking actual contact and reconciliation. Thus, SOL will target primarily young G/C and T/C who have generally both very limited knowledge about life in the other community and fewer opportunities for contact. The SOL idea is in line with other international initiatives (e.g., Shared_Portals) that aim to promote encounters across populations. To our knowledge, it’s also the first attempt to encourage contact across Cypriots by means of VR. Whereas previous VR applications in Cyprus have aimed at providing knowledge about places (e.g., the virtual tour of the Walls of Nicosia in the Leventis Museum), SOL will disseminate knowledge about the people and their everyday life. 2. User Personas (max. 150 words each) Every person who interacts with your product has their own story about why they’re doing it. It is essential to understand your users as best as possible since you are creating something for them to use. Create the profiles of 2 user personas that are potential users of your prototype following the example below: Name Kostas Age 22 Type Undergraduate student Essential Characteristics Greek-Cypriot, born in Limassol, studying Economics at the University of Cyprus. Enjoys cycling. Goal: “to meet T/C with similar interests and make some friends in the T/C community ” Sample questions: -How do T/C behave when in groups? Do they joke and laugh a lot? Are they loud as the G/C or are they more reserved? -How do T/C dress for different occasions? Do they care about fashion? Are the same things in style across the two communities? Goals Obstacles / Pain Points “Don’t know any T/C and have no idea about their hobbies” “None of my friends want to go the north and I feel nervous going on my own” How can your prototype help? -Kostas can use his tablet to watch videos with events in which young T/C participate (e.g., cycling excursions). -He can visit the Psychology Department at his university and view the videos in a VR HMD. Without leaving his comfort zone, Kostas can catch a glimpse of the life of young T/C and observe their behavior in groups. He can then feel more confident seeking acquaintances with common interests. Most important feature Name Meryem Age 16 Type High-school student Essential Characteristics Turkish-Cypriot, lives with parents in Kyrenia, wants to become an Interior Designer Goal: to find out if G/C design and use their homes the same way as T/C. Sample questions: -How do G/C decorate their homes? Do they display pictures of family? Do they prefer open-plan designs, modern furniture etc? -Do many families gather in a house for Easter? Do children and adults sit together? What food/drinks are served? “Don’t know any G/C and my parents don’t visit their G/C acquaintances” “Can’t find pictures on line showing the inside of a typical G/C home” “Don’t feel at ease asking G/C on Facebook questions about their homes” -Meryem can use her computer to watch videos from gatherings inside G/C homes. -When the prototype comes to her school she will view the videos in an HMD and feel as if she is standing within a G/C home during an event. Meryem will see how G/C design, decorate, and use their homes for different functions. She will then know what to expect when visiting a G/C home in the future. Goals Obstacles / Pain Points How can your prototype help? Most important feature 3. Community Engagement (max. 300 words) Engaging your users in the prototyping process can be greatly beneficial. How do you plan to involve your users in the design and testing of your prototype? How will you ask them to support your process? We envision SOL to be an open-source, non-profit, community project, in which any person from Cyprus or abroad can contribute to. Although we have formed an initial team that collectively possesses all the necessary skills and expertise to develop and publicize the prototype, our goal is to make SOL a crowd-driven project. That is, we plan to open up the project to the public from the start and recruit many more people to the development team. The goal of this is twofold. First, the process itself of building the prototype will allow us to achieve to some degree what we aim to achieve with the prototype: contact between G/C and T/C. Therefore, we will try to add to the development team as many people as possible from the two communities. Second, as nowadays people are digitally connected to each other in social media, involving many people in the development process is likely to attract though their networks lots of potential users early on. We will encourage these users to try out the platform and provide their feedback in a short survey form that will be available on the SOL platform. We will ask them to indicate their satisfaction with the tool, note its shortcomings, and make suggestions for improvement. A project team will analyze the collected data and make suggestions to the development team for improvements. The SOL platform will be available to everyone and at any age through the web, requiring only an internet connection and basic computer use skills. The prototype with the HMD will be made available for use at selected locations in both communities (e.g., schools and community centers) and at places convenient to people from both communities (e.g., the Home of Cooperation). For this purpose, we will aim to form partnerships with NGO’s and other organizations (e.g., Teachers’ unions) that will allow us to field test the prototype with real users – and primarily students – from both communities. 4. The Team (max. 450 words) A successful project needs a good team around it, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Please provide the following information: 1. Brief bios of your team members, including roles and responsibilities for this project We have set-up an initial team that collectively possesses the necessary expertise in all aspects of the proposed work, ranging from a solid background in the underlying theory to the specific technical skills entailed by building and launching the prototype. Lucy Avraamidou is the coordinator of the project. Lucy has research interests in the use of technology in curriculum and instruction and holds an Associate Professor position in Education at the University of Nicosia. She will be responsible for the planning and organization of activities and will contribute on issues relating to the theoretical underpinnings of life history as well as on human-computer interaction (HCI). Andria Shimi, a School Psychologist and a Cognitive/Developmental Neuroscientist, will also contribute her expertise on issues relating to HCI particularly with children users. Andria is currently a post-doc at the University of Oxford. Being an amateur photographer, Andria will also help with the development of content. Marios Avraamides, Kleanthis Neokleous, and Yiorgos Chyrsanthou will set-up the on-line platform and oversee all technical work entailed by the prototype. Marios is a Cognitive Psychologist who uses VR for his research. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology of the University of Cyprus and the director of the Experimental Psychology Lab (http://www.experimentalpsych.com). Kleanthis has extensive experience with VR equipment. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus and is the co-founder of Silversky3D Virtual Reality Technologies Ltd (http://www/silversky3d.com). Yiorgos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus, heading the Computer Graphics Lab (http://graphics.cs.ucy.ac.cy). Charis Psaltis and Maria Ioannou will be responsible for selecting content that fits the scope of the project; both Charis and Maria are Social Psychologists with research interests and expertise in intergroup contact and intergroup relations. Charis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cyprus founder and director of the Centre for Field Studies (https://ucy.ac.cy/pakepe/en/general-information) and the Genetic Social Psychology Lab (http://www.ucy.ac.cy/sdp/en/genetic-socialpsychology-lab/research-programme). Maria is a senior researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD) and holds a PhD from the University of Oxford. Maria Arettines will consult the group on issues related to publicity and dissemination. Maria is a counselor and instructor at the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. She has worked with countless non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and public and private institutions as an educator, coordinator, and researcher across the US, Latin America, and Cyprus. Sholeh Zahraei and Kamil Saldun are the founders of Lupa Pictures (http://lupapictures.com), an art production team. They have produced several short films and documentaries and have won various awards at international film festivals. Their latest film is ‘Letters to Cyprus’ which is based on original letters from 1974 found in Cyprus. Sholeh and Kamil will contribute to the promotion of the prototype through short professional video clips. 2. Organisations and other partners that are supporting your project -Silversky3D Virtual Reality Technologies Ltd (htpp://www.silversky3d.com) -Experimental Psychology Lab at the University of Cyprus (http://experimentalpsych.com) -Genetic Social Psychology Lab at the University of Cyprus (http://www.ucy.ac.cy/sdp/en/genetic-social-psychology-lab/research-programme) -Computer Graphics Lab at the University of Cyprus (http://graphics.cs.ucy.ac.cy) -Developmental Psychopathology Lab at the University of Cyprus (http://www.dplabucy.com) -Developmental Psychology Lab at the University of Cyprus -Lupa Pictures (http://lupapictures.com) -Home of Cooperation (http://www.home4cooperation.info) -Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR; http://www.ahdr.info) -Center for the Advancement of Research and Technology Education (CARDET; http://www.cardet.org) -Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies at the University of Nicosia (http://www.unic.ac.cy/research/affiliated-institutions-business-links/academically-affiliatedinstitutions/cyprus-center-for-intercultural-studies-ccis) 3. Missing roles inside the team and plans for finding the right people to fulfil them. Once we develop the prototype we will need to test it with actual naive users. Although the members of the team have a wide range of acquaintances within both G/C and T/C, we will need to recruit at least 2 researchers who will coordinate testing in the two communities. These researchers could be graduate students from the research institutions supporting the project who might be interested in carrying research with the prototype. Moreover, once the project starts we will make a public call for other people to join our team as volunteers contributing to different stages of the project, including testing. We are confident that through this call we will be able to recruit people that share our motivation to pursue this project with no personal financial gain. 5. Draft Prototype (please attach image) Simulating how a project might work in practice and how a user might interact with it can help you refine your thinking. Create a first draft of your prototype that captures the vision you have for your platform, app, or other technology-enabled tool or service. You can use pen and paper, Photoshop or Illustrator, or one of these online tools: Proto.io, Cacoo, Balsamiq. ON-LINE PLATFORM IMMERSIVE VR GEAR 6. Budget Please provide an outline of the budget using the following table: Activity Designing the project site and hosting it on a reliable server Production of a manuscript that describes the theoretical foundations of the project Intended result of Deliverable activity (what will be produced as a result of the activity) The site of the Project web site project will be up and running. Through the site we will provide information to the public and recruit volunteers and support. The site will be designed to host the videos that will be filmed. Responsible Location person/partner activity (if known) Proposed budget (US$) Kleanthis Neokleous, Marios Avraamides, Yiorgos Chrysanthou, other volunteers (and/or paid programmers) of Timeframe: Indicate the month/year that the activity will take place Silversky3D Will start with VRT LTD the project and laboratories. be completed within the 1st month 3000 Manuscript prepared upon the following ideas: Lucy Avraamidou, Maria Ioannou, Charis Psaltis University of Nicosia & University of Cyprus 0 -Description of the problem through the lens of peace education/conflict resolution Manuscript Will start with the project and be completed within the 1st month -Discussion of the role of life history and ethnographic approaches in addressing the problem Tool specifications Filming footage for 4-5 scenes to set-up the initial database -Discussion of the role of technology in addressing the problem A set of guidelines for producing videos (i.e., decide content, setting, etc) so that the scientific goals of the project can be achieved. Production of spherical videos of everyday life scenes. The activity involves on-site filming followed by video editing. A technical report with the set of specifications for the videos to be made. Charis Psaltis, Maria Ioannou, Lucy Avraamidou, Andria Shimi, Sholeh Zahraei, Kamil Saldun University of Cyprus & University of Nicosia Will start with the project and be completed within the 1st month Videos posted on the on-line platform Marios Avraamides, Andria Shimi, Lucy Avraamidou, Kleanthis Neokleous, Sholeh Zahraei, Kamil Saldun and other Filming will be done onsite, editing will take place at Silversky3D VRT LTD laboratories. Will start on the 2nd month of the project. 0 3500 volunteers. Advertising the project Raising awareness about the project to recruit more people to the cause (as well as potential investors) by advertising it in social media, publications, and local events. List of advertising venues (web-sites, events, social media etc.) Lucy Avraamidou, Maria Arretines, Maria Ioannou, Sholeh Zahraei, Kamil Saldun On-line and print media Testing the prototype Initially we will do inhouse usability testing. Subsequently, testing will take place at different locations in Cyprus with naïve users. Feedback from users of the web interface will also be collected and analyzed -Technical report with results from usability testing Marios Avraamides, Kleanthis Neokleous, Lucy Avraamidou, Andria Shimi, Charis Psaltis, Maria Ioannou, Yiorgos Chrysanthou, and other volunteers Initially at the labs of Silversky3D and at the University of Cyprus. Subsequently at other locations in Cyprus. 1500 Once the final product (which has been improved following testing) -Manual for producing videos Lucy Avraamidou, Marios Avraamides, On-line and print media 1000 Launch phase -Summary of user comments -new promotional Will start with the project and continue throughout its duration 1000 becomes available, videos we will aim at -articles in the enriching the video press database. We will provide instructions to citizens on how to produce videos themselves for the platform. At the same time, we will continue to advertise the tool both locally and internationally through new promotional videos and articles in social media and the press. TOTAL Maria Arretines, Maria Ioannou, Sholeh Zahraei, Kamil Saldun, Yiorgos Chrysanthou, Kleanthis Neokleous, Charis Psaltis, Maria Ioannou, and other volunteers 10,000 7. In-kind Contributions Once your concept goes back onto Mahallae, members of the public will be able to endorse it, ask questions, provide comments and offer in kind resources. Use the table below to indicate the resources you would like to request from your community, up to a maximum of 6 different items. Resource Web designer Supervisors for testing with HMDs Back-up facilities (e.g., cloud storage, NAS) Filming Crew Quantity 1-2 2 8TB As many people as possible depending on number of cameras available Video editing 2-3 people (can be trained by Silversky3D Ltd) People to analyze user feedback 2-3 Scientists to use the tool for research As many as possible projects Collaborators for writing grant proposals to As many as possible secure funding beyond the period supported by UNDP Note. Our goal is to recruit many people for the development team to contribute towards different aspects of the prototype development, testing, and launch. However, to ensure that the project can be completed regardless of how this recruitment unfolds, we have made sure to include in our initial team all the expertise that is needed to complete all aspects of work. Specifically, our team includes individuals possessing experience with VR hardware and software, web design, filming and video editing, research methodology and statistics, grant writing etc. In addition, we have included in our budget some funds to cover the costs of specific services if needed. Also, we will capitalize on our academic affiliations to initiate research projects and secure external funding to expand the project further in the future. 8. Sustainability (max. 300 words) How do you plan to sustain your prototype? Describe how you are planning to attract other financial resources and establish strategic partnerships in the future. From the beginning of the project we will put much effort into advertising it in various ways, aiming to attract not only volunteers to work on it but also potential investors. Although a nonprofit project, we are confident that SOL will be attractive to a number of social entrepreneurs both from Cyprus and abroad (e.g., the Stelios Foundation). In parallel, we will direct our efforts in securing further funding from local (e.g., Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation; CRPF) and international sources (EU grants). It should be noted that many of the members of the current team are academics with experience in attracting funding from various sources (i.e., EU, UNDP, CRPF) for their research. Collectively, in the last decade we have managed funded projects with over $2,5 million of funding. Thus, once the prototype is completed, we will apply for research funding that will allow us to carry out scientific research with it and disseminate our findings. We will look closely for applicable calls in Horizon 2020 as well as other possible sources (e.g., Eurostars, Erasmus+, Marie Curie ITN grants). Possible research funding will allow us to carry out control experiments and ethnographic studies to determine how effective the SOL prototype is in advancing knowledge and encouraging contact across members of the two communities.