Enabling democracy through communications technology
The Undiscovered Country (a.k.a. “Waterfall”) is a proof of concept prototype that gives people the ability to give direct responses to issues facing their government on a range of social scales. It was developed by Tristam Sparks as his Interaction-Ivrea graduation project.
“The prototype collects opinion using a seamless joining of authoring and aggregation. Citizen data is added as a new issue or as reaction to existing ones. This information is tallied on the fly and entered into a visualisation that represents and emergent group opinion. This loop imparts a sense of editing and contributing to a larger conversation.”
“The non-linear, multi user interface is expandable to a community of any size. It is a tool for the government and citizens to observe and interact with each other.”
(This post is the sixth in a series of short features on the graduation projects by the final students of the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, now located in Milan. As of next week, the Institute will be entirely absorbed within the Domus Academy‘s ‘I-Design” programme.)
