Elizabeth Lane

Investigating the possible futures of community driven by emerging digital technology and affected by community-centred design.

Emerging digital technology can positively impact humans, but its existence and rapid advancement also cause unintended consequences and externalities – the costs and benefits of the industry’s activity – in society. In particular, emerging digital technology is disrupting healthy communities. With healthy communities as the backbone of a democratic society, the risks of unintended impacts, such as social fragmentation and social polarization, are significant. Therefore, this research explores a definition of healthy community, the evolution of community in the context of technology, and how digital technology can be designed to preserve and build healthy communities now and across various possible futures. Leveraging systems thinking and foresight methodologies, multi-level system community-fortifying interventions are developed, propelling the paradigm shift from human-centred design to community-centred design.