Researcher Tara Karpinski and Professor Michel van Dartel presented the paper of their case study at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2025
, which took place in Yokohama, Japan, from April 26 to May 1. The paper, titled The Potential of Quadratic Voting for Cohousing Communities: A Situated Design Case Study, was written in collaboration with Martijn de Waal (Civic Interaction Design Research Group, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences).
The paper explores the potential of quadratic voting (QV) as a decision-making method for cohousing communities. While QV has mainly been applied to legislative case studies, the authors conducted a situated design case study in which QV was introduced into the decision-making process of the Community Land Trust H-buurt in Amsterdam (NL). In this case-study a self designed QV tool was introduced to help the CLT H-buurt design their future dwelling together, including the resources they aim to share.
The research aimed to assist cohousing communities in their process of value exploration and decision-making towards the design of their building and its shared resources. It concludes with reflections on how QV could be operationalised in this context.
Paper in CHI proceedings:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3706671
Conference session page:
https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/189289
Charging the Commons is a follow-up project to Circulate which investigated the design of digital platforms for resource communities. It explored how a situated design approach can be employed to articulate the social values of resource communities. The second phase of the project examined how these values can be translated into (digital) tools and designs for the organisation of an urban commons.
‘People are the product of their relationships with their environment. It’s important to understand how technological developments influence these relationships.’
Michel van Dartel is Research Professor Situated Art, Design and Technology at the Avans Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT) and was affiliated with V2_Lab for the Unstable Media between 2005-2024. He holds an MSc in cognitive psychology and a PhD in artificial intelligence.
‘My practice is situated in between different actors, in this shape-shifting middle many things can happen.’
Tara Karpinski is a designer, researcher and educator working in the realm of social practice. She holds a BA in photography and art history from the Savannah College of Art & Design (USA), and an MA from the Sandberg Instituut (NL). Her Master studies were funded by a Netherland-America Foundation grant.
Living in cities developed around data and acting within the inscrutable structure of our techno-society demands art and design that can help understand how we relate to these rapidly changing surroundings and to reflect on that relationship. The research group Situated Art, Design and Technology responds to this exigency by fostering a situated turn in art and design through a diverse portfolio of interdisciplinary research projects in partnership with academic and cultural partners, as well as with government and industry.
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