Encouraging active mobility through comic strips: an experiment in research dissemination
Abstract
Urban spaces are undergoing a wide range of changes, partly as a consequence of the rise of new technologies. These trends are particularly significant in the field of mobility, in which these technologies are affecting users’ behaviour in new sensory environments. As Urry (1999) suggested some twenty years ago, the rising importance of embedded technologies should, however, not be considered as an epiphenomenon of urban transformation, rather, it should be addressed at its fair value.
Since then, these profound changes in urban practices have led to the development of new theoretical perspectives. But above all, they require new means of visualization and dissemination in order to reach out to non-academic audiences who, incidentally, are users of these new environments. Two theoretical frameworks underpin our study of this increasing influence of Digital Information and Communication Technologies. On the one hand, literature focusing on the evolution of urban sensory environments and the emergence of ambient intelligence (Crang et Graham, 2007; McCullough, 2013); on the other hand, works looking at mobility practices and experiences.
These frameworks are used to analyse users’ behaviours in active mobility (walking, cycling) as well as public transportation and considers the sensory ecology of urban enhanced mobility through attention modulation (Citton, 2014). This presentation offers an insight into the way in which we are currently experimenting ways of visualizing and disseminating research into the impacts of informational and technical environments on users’ behaviours, in particular on their cognitive processes.
The chosen method is the comic strips. As Bartlett (2012) has pointed out, cartoons “clearly have the potential to present findings from scholarly research in a visually engaging way”, adding that “with few exceptions, they are seldom used to disseminate qualitative research”. We suggest comic strips, and indeed cartoons, can be used to reveal the potential arising from new technologies from the standpoint of sensory ecology, in order to encourage active mobility and therefore more active lifestyles. In other words, our work is based on the assumption that dissemination and awareness-raising targeted at non-academic audiences is as important as the research findings themselves if these are to contribute to the design of healthier cities.
This research is funded by the Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne regional authority for a period of three years as part of the ARC7 programme (Innovations, mobilities, territories and urban dynamics). This presentation is based on the preliminary results of this work in progress.