Abstract
The current crisis of participation and crisis of engagement of Western societies also affects the application and the validity of the participatory design methodology. Traditional techniques to collaboratively design future solutions with the users and bring their knowledge to the technology application might not no longer be sufficient for the complex nature of our societies. This paper describes the applied research and design of a Digital Companion with AI-based profiling, needs matching, and service-access supporting chatbots. The objective of the Digital Companion is to enhance both the effectiveness of the services currently provided to migrants and refugees by local public administration and organizations, and the life quality of the migrants themselves. The adoption of participatory, iterative, and experimental co-creation approaches allowed to contribute to the innovation of the participatory design framework at a theoretical and methodological level, as is required in order to turn participation into action, to go beyond the mere public consultation and to find new pathways for involving all the citizens (not only migrants or local service providers) as a first step to build a successful project.
Highlights
Co-creation proves to be crucial for innovating and adopting solutions for local service providers, for increasing their capability to cope with migrants and refugees’ needs and to foster citizen engagement
The adoption of co-creation is usually based on two drivers (Voorberg et al 2015): 1. Cost-effectiveness, with end-users performing specific tasks as co-producers in the production chain (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000; Vargo and Lusch 2004; Von Hippel 2007); 2
Recent contributions from theory (Kattel and Mazzucato 2018; Tõnurist et al 2017) and practice (Concilio et al 2014; Deserti and Rizzo 2015) are recognizing that public sector innovation based on top-down models mainly promotes efficiency and performance
Summary
Co-creation proves to be crucial for innovating and adopting solutions for local service providers, for increasing their capability to cope with migrants and refugees’ needs and to foster citizen engagement. Co-creation refers to an active involvement of end-users in developing ideas, content and services throughout the whole production process. Cost-effectiveness, with end-users performing specific tasks as co-producers in the production chain (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000; Vargo and Lusch 2004; Von Hippel 2007); 2. With end-users engaged as service designers and innovators through co-creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000; Vargo and Lusch 2004). In the public sector, the end-users are often citizens. A particular focus is put on cost-reduction and time-based performance indicators that originated in business and were applied to public services, whilst failing in taking into account citizens’ needs and societal challenges. As a response to these challenges many public administrations are trying to introduce co-creation as a new public service paradigm, with a particular emphasis on the development of a more human-centered approach to innovation to build a better society (Strokosch and Osborne 2016)
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