Viewpoint is a public voting device developed to allow residents in a disadvantaged community to make their voices heard through a simple, lightweight interaction. This was intended to open a new channel of communication within the community and increase community members' perception of their own efficacy. Local elected officials and community groups were able to post questions on devices located in public spaces, where residents could vote for one of two responses. Question authors were subsequently required to post a response indicating any actions to be taken. Following a two-month trial, we present our experiences and contribute guidelines for the design of public democracy tools and dimensions impacting their effectiveness, including credibility, efficacy and format.

In recent years there has been an increased focus upon developing platforms for community decision-making, and an awareness of the importance of handing over civic platforms to community organisations to oversee the process of decision-making at a local level. In this paper, we detail fieldwork from working with two community organisations who used our distributed situated devices as part of consultation processes. We focus on some of the mundane and often-untold aspects of this type of work: how questions for consultations were formed, how locations for devices were determined, and the ways in which the data collected fed into decision-making processes. We highlight a number of challenges for HCI and civic technology research going forward, related to the role of the researcher, the messiness of decision making in communities, and the ability of community organisations to influence how citizens participate in democratic processes.

The Australia tourism industry faces challenges associated with a boom in minerals exports. The erosion of the price competitiveness of destination Australia associated with exchange rate appreciation has adversely affected inbound and domestic tourism while generating increased outbound tourism flows. The mining boom has also driven up labor costs, making it difficult for tourism stakeholders in mining areas to recruit and retain staff. This article highlights the importance of both tourism and mining to Australia, and the changes that are taking place in each sector. It employs a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the economic effects of the boom on Australia's tourism industry and tourism market segments. A micro-level analysis, supplemented by input from key tourism organizations, then highlights the extent and range of tourism impacts associated with the boom, and the strategy implications for different groups of tourism stakeholders.

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