Cultures of Participation in Community Informatics: A Case Study

This paper describes a participatory design project aimed at developing FirstAidMap, a collaborative web mapping application to be used by an Italian non-profit association for public assistance and first aid. Volunteers of this association, and specifically ambulance drivers, need to know the characteristics of the territory where the association ensures its assistance, in order to reach a given place quickly and in a safe manner. Despite the new opportunities offered by Web 2.0 technologies, paper-based maps are the only means used by volunteers to spread and share knowledge within the association, while training sessions through PowerpointTM presentations are regularly held to train novice drivers about the dangers existing in the territory and possible changes to traffic and road signals. The two design cycles carried out to develop FirstAidMap, which are described in this paper, gave the chance to observe how a culture of participation may progressively emerge in a community informatics domain and how the related issues may be addressed.