Story behind DailyWorks
DailyWorks development has been part of the project Emergent Digital Practices of Communities (ADIK in Finnish). In ADIK project, we have used DailyWorks as a prototype to explore, probe and understand communities' everyday life practices. What are the limits and possibilities of digital tools that assist the management of everyday life activities? How can we understand better the interplay between practices and tools?
DailyWorks software is one of the concrete results of close collaboration with the Active Seniors ry association (AS), during the project. The Active Seniors ry are a “creative community” that has taken for its goal to develop a new kind of housing for elderly based on neighbourly and self-help (see box bellow). With them we have created scenarios and prototypes for solutions that deal with some of the challenges that this type of arrangements imply.
Through several of our co-design workshops during the course of ADIK project the idea of developing a community calendar was born as a way to explore solutions to organize and coordinate shared tasks and for giving a sense of security and both belongingness and independence. As a concrete outcome of the ideation, in december 2005 we jointly setup to design and implement this "community calendar" (implementation help has also been provided by students of Helsinki Polytechnic, Stadia - http://www.stadia.fi).
The "community calendar concept" was named by the seniors Miina after Miina Sillanpää because “the system can accomplish so many things as she could.” ( Miina Sillanpää,1866 – 1952 was one of the first nineteen female members of the Parliament of Finland and Finland's first female minister). Active Seniors contribution for the project did not end up in giving name for the system, when the design and development process officially started, Active Seniors drafted the first specification of the system that has been collaboratively refined through workshops, prototypes and trials. Miina's first stable beta version has been available for AS since May 2006 and continuously improved and developed since then.
During the course of the project, Miina, the calendar for the seniors grew into DailyWorks application which is a more general purpose framework that could serve other communities as well (e.g groups of friends and clubs, residents associations, extended families, food buying circles, day-care circles, to name a few of the cases we have in mind). However, since some of the topics dealt with AS collective cooking and cleaning activities, sharing of resources, security, care and communication in general, some of the components of the current version reflect those practices. Other components and access modes have also been envisioned to further support AS and other communities and will be developed in future projects.
For more info please contact: abotero-at-uiah-dot-fi
Participants, collaborators, team:
- Arki reseach group / Media lab Helsinki:
- Information Technology Faculty / Stadia, Helsinki Polytechnic
- Aktiiviset Seniorit ry.:
Aktiiviset seniorit ry : (http://aktiviisetseniorit.fi)
-Active seniors- is a non-political association founded in the summer of 2000 in Helsinki.
Its purpose is to develop a new kind housing arrangement for aging citizens based on neighborly
and self-help. During January 2001 the association got a HITAS (price-regulated) lot from the city
of Helsinki in the new housing area of Arabianranta and construction worked ended in the spring of
2006. Loppukiri (Spurt) -as the building is named- aims at building a strong community.
The community cooks, eat and clean together among other activities. There are around
50 smallish apartments(between 30-50 sq2) but large common areas, including library, kitchen,
dining room, a guestroom, activity room, etc.