How do communities sustain public spaces when formal infrastructure fails? In Stanley, UK a post-industrial town facing infrastructural neglect and climate-related flooding, residents sustain their environment through micro-acts that formal participation metrics fail to capture. Through surveys, interviews and a diary study conducted in partnership with Wear Rivers Trust, a charity advancing Nature-based Solutions (NbS), we examine how communities perceive and enact care under conditions of environmental precarity and low institutional trust. We found that care practices are embedded in daily routines and social ties, shaped by both pride and frustration, and sustained through informal networks. We contribute: (1) empirical insights into everyday civic care as emotional, negotiated, and place-based; and (2) a framework of six design dimensions, embeddedness, visibility, reciprocity, autonomy with support, coordination without formalization, and frustration as data — to guide HCI/CSCW in developing respectful, lightweight, and situated systems that amplify rather than replace community capacities.

Access to public spaces is of the utmost importance for social cohesion, inclusion, and civic engagement.Nevertheless, a large majority of public spaces remain incredibly uncomfortable environments for neurodivergent individuals due to, for instance, the unpredictability of such spaces and the sensory stimuli within them.Smart City technologies present an exciting opportunity to improve the accessibility and enjoyment of the spaces where they are deployed by, for instance, offering users the ability to customise a space to their specific sensory needs.However, the research topic of public space technologies for neurodivergent individuals remains scattered and sparsely documented.This critical review analyses the existing domains of inquiry, contributing a theoretical framework based on Spatial Justice and Neuroqueer Technoscience and suggests future research avenues informed by this framework.We advocate for the participatory co-creation of a neurodivergent-affirming landscape of public space technologies that both support neurodivergent needs and promote neurodivergent joy.

The technologies we use in everyday contexts are designed and tested, using existing standards of usability. As technology advances standards are still based on planar displays and simple screen-based interactions. End-user digital devices need to consider context and physicality as additional influences on design. Additionally, accessibility and multi-modal interaction must be considered as we build technologies with interactions such as soundscapes to support user experience. When considering the tools we use to design existing interactions, we can evaluate new ways of working with software to support the development of the changing face of interactive devices. This paper presents two prototypes which explore the space of user experience design tools, first in the space of contextual cues when looking at multi device interaction, and second, in the space of physical prototyping. These prototypes are starting points for a wider discussion around the changing face of usability. We also discuss extending the scope of existing user experience design tools and rethinking what ”user experience” means when the devices we own are becoming ’aware’ of their surroundings, context, and have increasing agency.

What do pedestrian crossings, ATMs, elevators and ticket machines have in common? These are just a few of the ubiquitous yet essential elements of public-space infrastructure that rely on physical buttons or touchscreens; common interactions that, until recently, were considered perfectly safe to perform. This work investigates how we might integrate touchless technologies into public-space infrastructure in order to minimise physical interaction with shared devices in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on an ethnographic exploration into how public utilities are being used, adapted or avoided, we developed and evaluated a suite of technology probes that can be either retrofitted into, or replace, these services. In-situ community deployments of our probes demonstrate strong uptake and provide insight into how hands-free technologies can be adapted and utilised for the public domain; and, in turn, used to inform the future of walk-up-and use public technologies.