Every day, humanity generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, according to an estimate by the market intelligence firm IDC. Much of this information is produced in cities: since 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the planet’s inhabitants live in urban environments. Today they are 56%, according to the United Nations, which predicts that by 2050 they will account for 68% of the planet’s 9.7 billion inhabitants.

 

This information points to an important scenario: the huge volume of data generated daily offers a unique opportunity for cities to propose evidence-based and data-driven solutions. Without taking into account the information produced by the population, it will not be possible to shape urban development, creating more efficient public spaces.

 

It is not a simple process, since applications of data to implement urban solutions involve tradeoffs between benefits and privacy concerns, which vary according to different socio-demographic and cultural contexts. It was with this challenge in mind that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed the Data Slot.

 

This is a game about tradeoffs between privacy concerns and benefits of data-driven solutions. It is a participatory activity in the form of a card game based on data slots. On April 17th, 12 Insper students participated in a session, organized by Insper’s Arq.Futuro de Cidades Lab and conducted by Fabio Duarte, professor at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and main researcher of the Senseable City Lab that developed the game.

 

Duarte was invited by Adriano Borges Costa, professor of Mobility and Urban Data at Insper. The collaboration between the two professors also materialized in the course Transportation Shaping Sustainable Urbanization: Connections with Urban Economics and Planning, taught by Costa in 2022 at Insper and, later, also at MIT.

 

“The DataSlot is an activity in the form of a card game developed by the MIT Senseable City Lab to measure how people evaluate the privacy benefits and risks of data-driven solutions by both private and public companies,” says Duarte. “We have played DataSlots more than 700 times in about 15 countries. We have a strategic partnership with Insper. Thus, it is a key partner for us to play DataSlots in São Paulo.”

 

Data Market

 

The goal of DataSlot is to gamify the process of listening to citizens. Instead of traditional polls or surveys in which city managers or developers propose solutions and residents just express their opinions, or even workshops with residents, which are usually guided by experts, DataSlot removes top-down approaches.

 

Therefore, the residents can present their own ideas to each other, express their opinions on each other’s proposals in terms of benefits and privacy issues, and even decide which ideas they would invest in. What’s more, throughout the process, data slots serve as a data collection tool.

 

In other words, the game simulates a dice market: players go through quick rounds of exchanging dice cards to get what they consider the best assets, which they use to propose solutions for one of three different scenarios: public spaces, home, and work environment.

 

Each player pitches their idea to the group, and participants evaluate the ideas in terms of privacy issues and benefits of each solution. Finally, participants “invest” in the ideas of their peers, simulating allocating private funds or voting in a participatory budgeting process.

 

Successful Session

 

Thus, data slots can not only be used to reveal residents’ trade-offs between privacy concerns and the benefits of the data-driven solution, but also become a community engagement tool that the city can use during its planning process, involving residents, faculty people, and city officials.

 

Registration for the session with Insper students was done online and, among all applicants to participate, 12 were drawn. “In each session there are always questions about the game itself its implications,” explained Professor Duarte, who is a principal research scientist at the MIT Senseable City Lab, where he manages projects such as Underworlds, Roboat and City Scanner, as well as the data visualization team. “It’s important, in the case of Insper, to see how students are incorporating data privacy concerns into their proposals.”