Digital Humanities - Meet our people - Jean-François Lucas
© BCN Smart City
Jean-François Lucas is a sociologist whose research resides at the junction of city life and the digital world. His main research areas cover social practices in digital urban environments (habitat, mobility), the involvement of citizens in the smart city (participation, consultation) and 3D environments (virtual worlds, videogames, 3D city, virtual worlds of content creation).
Jean-François has both published papers on the digital city and on mixed methods in social sciences (qualitative/quantitative, online/offline) and co-published books on innovation processes and methods (idea genesis, upstream phases).
For several years now, he has been both designing (issues, concepts and tools) and driving creative research workshops bringing together industrialists and researchers in social and human sciences, engineering and design as well as artists.
He recently launched a research project called “Types of inhabitants encapsulated in digital devices” with the Department of Urban Planning, Housing and Energy, of the Canton of Geneva (Jun-Dec 2017) in which he analyses the design processes of several mobile apps for citizens (Civictech).
The objective of this project is to analyze the social technical mediations that transform the user types over the duration of the project. To reach his goal, Jean-François will be making participative observations during the app design and functionalities meetings with the stakeholders. He also plans to carry out interviews with them. He will be analyzing a large amount of material (meeting reports, technical documentation, design briefs, requirement specifications, legislations, etc.). This will allow him to understand how the user types evolve both through the political, economical and legislation mediations as well as through decisions made by the stakeholders.
In terms of a theoretical perspective , Jean-François is working on the “habitat” concept. He is exploring the possibility of describing the user types in a different manner than what is generally used in design processes. He is approaching the concept of habitat with user types such as the inhabitant, the landlord, the occupier, the squatter, the tourist, the traveler, the passer-by, etc. His work is based on the hypothesis that these user types can reveal both the complexity and diversity of urban experiences. Also, the plurality of the ties (physical and psychological) that exist between an individual and an urban environment can be rethought in order to propose better urban digital experiences with digital devices.