Benjamin Stokes

American University Washington D.C. | AU · School of Communication

A delicate touch is required to empower neighborhoods using civic media. Funding is persistently scarce. Especially in marginalized neighborhoods, blunt designs can be counterproductive and even entrench complex problems. New metaphors may be needed to guide design and empower local neighborhoods. Urban acupuncture is used as the basis for this stu...

This is the first report in a series on game "impact types." We begin with the problem. Our field needs a better way to talk about impact — a deeper conversation that is more fundamentally inclusive and multi-disciplinary, yet still evidence-based. This report is a first step, revealing the basic fragmentation and documenting its harm. Not just be...

What does it mean to “plan” a technology? Designs with a footprint in public space are important hybrids, including wired bus stops and rebuilt payphones. Our goal is to shift from designing technology for a neighborhood by planning technology as part of the neighborhood. Aging phone booths were purchased in LA’s historic Leimert Park. For six mont...

This paper describes the research process that informed the development of the MetaConnects platform, a university-based engaged scholarship initiative that connected communication researchers with community-based social change organizers. The paper outlines the investigation of community organizers' communication practices and demonstrates the uti...

This hypertext report addresses the mobile frontier for civic games, which is fragmented across the applied domains of activism, art and learning. We argue that these three domains can and should speak jointly–an approach we call the civic "tripod." Our site structure is part of its contribution, with a curated database of projects and interviews f...

A growing number of urban practitioners and scholars are interested in using digital storytelling to strengthen neighborhood connections to shared culture and build a coherent sense of place. This article contributes to this discussion by investigating how ‘urban furniture’ can sustain social capacity for digital placemaking. While traditional ‘urb...

To democratize the power of games for smart cities, we are refining Hive Mechanic, an open-source game engine for embedding play with text messages, city data streams, and the Internet of Things (IoT). City-specific games have the potential to affect social issues, including to address regional economics and health disparities that vary by zip code...

In 2016, city officials were surprised when Pokémon GO brought millions of players out into the public space, blending digital participation with the physical. Yet for local control and empowerment, a new framework is needed to guide the power of mixed reality and pervasive play. In Locally Played, Benjamin Stokes describes the rise of games that c...

How can cities make their history more visible, and invite residents to participate across channels? This project investigates a transmedia “storytelling system” for neighborhoods, designed to circulate audio stories and digital photographs beyond institutional walls. Residents often discovered the system at one of five neighborhood libraries, each...

A new role for local government is emerging to appropriate and remix games for city streets. In contrast to earlier experiments by artists with pervasive and location-based play, the possibility for remix depends on mainstream prominence of a game first-such as the watershed rise of Pokémon GO (Niantic, Inc. 2016). This study investigates how sever...

For games to be studied as forces for localism and local coherence, distinct frameworks are needed – including to categorically differentiate games like Pokémon GO from those with real mechanisms to advance localism. The right kind of game can address the needs of cities for coherence, and a host of social issues that are tied to place. In particul...

The most prominent games for city streets to blend physical exploration with digital play are typically commercial and centrally managed. What possibilities are there for cities to tap into these games, and even redirect them to local goals? Cities are experimenting with new ways to embed and repurpose such global platforms for local events, includ...

This white paper reveals how cities can embed popular platforms for augmented reality (AR) in local events and campaigns -- from walking tours at neighborhood libraries to Open Street Festivals. The report offers case studies and lessons learned from trials conducted in 2017 in five cities to engage players in local activities. One finding is that...

This video was produced as part of the participatory speculative design project "Sankofa City." The project engages community residents to design emerging technologies (e.g. augmented reality, ubicomp, and self-driving cars) tied to their cultural practices. This collaboration is based in the African-American neighborhood of Leimert Park, in South...

Urban placemaking can deepen the sense of place, including with novel technologies. Placemaking seeks to revitalize public spaces, attract investment, and rally stakeholders. How can play help to position residents as storytellers and circulators of key images tied to local history? This study shows how play can leverage smart city technologies, in...

Despite the growing significance of mobile devices, especially among marginalized communities, there are few explorations of how participatory design (PD) can be applied to mobile communication technologies. This case study of Mobile Voices (VozMob) explores a community-based approach to PD and its potential to promote the participation of groups t...

Recent speculative and critical design practices may critique the dominant socio-cultural assumptions of technologies, but often lack diversity and participatory input outside the privileged realm of academic and professional designers. #is paper investigates the process and potential of designing speculative futures with local communities, in orde...

Urban placemaking can deepen the sense of place, including with novel technologies. Placemaking seeks to revitalize public spaces, attract investment, and rally stakeholders. How can play help to position residents as storytellers and circulators of key images tied to local history? This study shows how play can leverage smart city technologies, in...

Neighborhood placemaking is a growing opportunity for game design. Neighborhood cohesion has been linked to economic renewal, increased life expectancy, and greater civic engagement. However, for game design to be a powerful tool for urban communities, clearer ties to the tools and social practices of placemaking are necessary. This paper investiga...

This learning workshop will prototype and advance theory around the participatory design of hybrid games. In contrast to screen-centered games, our platform makes it easier to repurpose ordinary urban objects -- from aging payphones to experimental bus stop displays. The resulting games are hybrids, where the action is alternately woven across the...

Sustaining participation in design is difficult, especially in neighborhoods that seek change consistent with their cultural values. Participatory Design offers several approaches (e.g. infrastructuring) that help to balance the sensibilities of urban planning with the immediacies of design. This paper investigates the distinctive value of a "const...

Each of the “risky assumptions” in this chapter cuts across disciplines and design practices. They are sneaky, and seem to aggravate the field fragmentation that is described in the main report. But they can be countered. The evidence for these deep assumptions, though well attested by leaders in the field, is often indirect; therefore, this chapte...

Given the emphasis in Participatory Design (PD) on the democratization of technology design and empowerment of users, PD has potential to contribute to the development of communication systems for social justice. Despite the growing significance of mobile technologies, especially within marginalized communities, there are few explorations of the ap...

Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world’s most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help...

Video at: http://www.nanocrit.com/issues/5/leimert-phone-company The Leimert Phone Company is a design collaborative that seeks to reimagine the phonebooth. We are repurposing old payphones for civic engagement and storytelling on local streets. The project was born in Leimert Park, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles famous for its African Americ...

The Leimert Phone Company is a design collaborative that seeks to reimagine the phonebooth. We are repurposing old payphones for civic engagement and storytelling on local streets. The project was born in Leimert Park, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles famous for its African American culture. Across the country, public phonebooths are dying. Is t...

http://conceptlab.com/criticalmaking/

Games are beginning to show a capacity for real impact and civic engagement. Consequently, there is a temptation to seek out game designs that can be deployed on a national scale. This is a completely natural impulse: if games can bring about change, why not do it in a big way, and maximize economies of scale? But this impulse hides an important tr...

The digital world brings new questions for the design of civic life. We are redesigning some of the structures of civic contribution -- from how to volunteer time, to how we advocate for change, fundraise, and learn from one another. In this chapter, I argue that we must look beyond the red herring of new civic tools, and borrow a broader systems a...

As access to the Internet expands, volunteer managers have the option of using this new technology to manage pools of volunteers online. Online volunteering can appear deceptively simple: post an opening, select a volunteer, and then manage them by e-mail. However, our evaluation of an active online volunteering service used by more than three hund...

Interest in digital ‘Serious Games’ has been growing for the past three years across nonprofit, government and media sectors. A few development educators are already involved, and that number will likely grow significantly in coming years in both North and South. Explores three educational opportunities in games - raising public awareness, affecti...

Levenburg-Marquardt (LM) backpropagation neural networks have been trained to predict hour-ahead Log(electron fluxes) with overall prediction efficiency up to 95% and rms error of 0.1 near the flux peaks. The recent histoiy of Log(GOES-7 1-hour averaged electron fluxes), Dst, and Kp along with the magnetic local time were used as inputs. Training/t...