EUvsVirus: Ideating to Tackle the Covid-19 Crisis is not just about Tech
Reflections from the biggest pan-European hackathon to date
I was a mentor in #EUvsVirus 2020 representing the DesignLab of the University of Twente. The#EUvsVirus 2020 is an online hackathon to tackle the Covid-19 crisis. Looking back, I reflect on the human-technology relationships in the hackathon. And spoiler: students from the DesignLab won the competition ❤ — updated on the 30th of April 12:00
What is #EUvsVirus all about
The #EUvsVirus is a call to action for all citizens to respond to the COVID-19. The European Union invited its citizens to show unity and share knowledge for the common good across borders and generations. #EUvsVirus builds upon already conducted national hackathons. The goal is to enable rapid prototyping of solutions to tackle COVID-19. Participants clustered in teams and proposed an idea to develop in 48 hours between April 25 and 27 2020.
Many are the challenges posed by #EUvsvirus. EU citizens answered the call en masse. In total, more than 21.000 participants signed up. 2.600+ team and skill mentors were available to help to develop in haste more than 1.500 projects.
On Thursday the 30th of April 2020, we will know about the “winners” of the #EUvsVirus event. The European Commission will provide follow up to the best projects coming from the #EUvsVirus hackathon through the new European Innovation Council (EIC) COVID platform. Foundations, investors, health providers (e.g. hospitals) will also be part of the EIC COVIDplatform.
A team mentor representing the DesignLab
During #EUvsVirus I have offered my mentorship and guidance representing the DesignLab of the University of Twente. The DesignLab is an experimental ecosystem focusing on innovative solutions for societal challenges. I strived to bring transdisciplinary working, responsible design [7], and citizen involvement in the mix, which are core to the DesignLab mission.
I have participated as a mentor in the field of social and political cohesion. My goal was to support various teams bring to life a minimum viable prototype to submit by the 48 hours mark. Plus, I tried to make sure the projects took into account responsible design and citizen involvement.
An example? One of the team I have supported developed a solution to support regional food banks in delivering hot meals efficiently:
What I like about the Foodbank hero project is the fact that they have involved societal stakeholders since the very beginning. Moreover, the team developed a technological solution bearing in mind the social implications of their solution.
The other project that I loved is one of the winners!!! Mentor.me., a platform where students can match with mentors. Our DesignLab dream teamers have won the first price in the category Remote Working and education, Students’ challenges. What I love is that they worked on a project grounded in the issues students face.
If you want to check out more of the #EuvsVirus project, you can look up the submissions on Devpost.
Looking back: Reflections
Whilst exciting, this was one of the most difficult mentorships tasks I ever did. Below, a summary of reflections after the hasty co-creation weekend.
Do not take distributed digital co-creation for granted: we are not there yet.
On top of the organizational issues that delayed and cut short the mentorship process, it was clear there was a digital divide among participants. Both digital literacy and technological availability. The organizers of #EUvsVirus did their utter best to arrange things neatly, but they were taken by an unexpected tsunami of participants and projects. Checkpoints and deadlines were falling apart. But, that was not a big issue. What was striking is how hard it was for mentors and teams to navigate the various digital platforms (Slack, DevPost, Facebook) available. Finding common ground [1] while working at a distance was also hard. While I am very familiar with these issues, it was quite shocking to realize that we are a long way from being able to cohesively and efficiently co-create online [2,3,4].
It is not all about Tech: Frame and Reframe the problem, before jumping to tech development.
Most of the #EUvsVirus projects revolved around digital technology. Yet, projects resolved to digital technology without evaluating whether the technology could help. A lack of design skills (i.e., the skill to think like a designer, framing and reframing problems) [8] might have been the culprit. Or, the echoes of the Hacker culture (see below).
No matter the reason, participants should focus more on idea generation. Mentors need to enable an in-depth exploration of the problems before jumping on the app-development train. Design thinking techniques in combination with methods inspired by philosophy of technology could come to rescue [7].
Hacker culture might not represent us anymore. Strive for engaged citizens willing to co-create.
#EUvsVirus is a hackathon. Hacker culture permeated the event from the beginning to the end, implicitly and explicitly.
Our collective view about computers (and later on smart-phones, robots, and AI) is influenced by the hacker culture. Hacker culture stems from American universities and the counter culture in California in the 1960s and 1970s — as described by journalist Steven Levy [5]. Hackers are technical tinkerers with a specific ethos. In her analysis of hacker culture and constructionism, Morgan Ames [6] posited that the consequences of the “anti-authority, every-person-for-themselves, wild-west-like ethos” ([6] p. 18:15) might have contributed to 1) see computers (and technology at large) as the only solution to social problems, 2) focus on the individualized computer-centric perspective and 3) give-up our agency towards algorithms.
While the hacker utopian ethos has had an incommensurable contribution to our collective digital and tech culture, I argue that we should steer towards a more inclusive culture focused on co-creation, pro-social behavior, and social connectedness. Instead of hackers, we should cultivate engaged citizens compelled to collaborate actively to tackle the burning societal challenges of our times. The Covid-19 crisis cannot be tackled in isolation: transdisciplinary collaboration is needed, along with social responsibility.
The gap between Academia and practice is too big.
While working on their projects, the teams focused on engineering methods or borrowed from start-up development methods.
Human-centred design was a stranger to many. While the academic discourse is moving towards post-human centered practices, outside academia methods we take for granted are seen as new. It is baffling to see that there is still such a divide between academia and practice, despite all the efforts of the CHI and design-research community.
This divide makes the effort of trying to bring together disciplines and go beyond them even more important.
Conclusions
The #EUvsVirus event has generated a tsunami of ideas. 1.570 projects submitted in only 48-hours of fast-paced ideation. 21.000+ participants. It was a pleasure to represent the DesignLab as a team mentor. It was great to work with the teams and to support them through the event. Hackathons are incredible incubators of ideas. Such events can mobilize people to tackle the societal-challenges they face. Yet, there are some aspects to improve. We should remember it is about society, not tech. We should enable co-creation online while fighting the digital divide. We should consider going beyond the hacker culture. We should embrace social responsibility and connectedness. And, last but not least, academia and society should work hand-in-hand to tackle societal challenges.
NB: All the paintings used to illustrate this article are used under a fair use license. All rights are reserved and images should not be used for commercial purposes.
References:
- Cramton, C. D. (2002). Finding common ground in dispersed collaboration. Organizational Dynamics, 30(4), 356–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0090-2616(02)00063-3
- Hinds, P. J., & Mortensen, M. (2005). Understanding conflict in geographically distributed teams: The moderating effects of shared identity, shared context, and spontaneous communication. Organization science, 16(3), 290–307.
- Ban Al-Ani, Erik Trainer, David Redmiles, and Erik Simmons. 2012. Trust and surprise in distributed teams: towards an understanding of expectations and adaptations. In Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Intercultural Collaboration. ACM, ACM, 97–106.
- Hinds, P, J., Tsedal, B. N., and Catherine Durnell Cramton. “Language as a lightning rod: Power contests, emotion regulation, and subgroup dynamics in global teams.” Journal of International Business Studies 45.5,536–561.
- Levy, S. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Vol. 14). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
- Ames, M. G. (2018). Hackers, Computers, and Cooperation: A Critical History of Logo and Constructionist Learning. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), 1–19.
- Verbeek, P. P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. University of Chicago Press.
- Cross, N. (2011). Design thinking: Understanding how designers think and work. Berg.
