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.

Advances in conductive inks and increasingly accessible and flexible platforms, such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, are allowing researchers to transform a range of surfaces, including paper and additive layer objects, into capacitive surfaces. When imbued with Internet connectivity, and placed within the 'Internet of things', opportunities to create interactive surfaces that respond to touch and offer audio playback or other data transfer via additional connected peripherals emerge. This poster explores the potential for web-connected paper interfaces with the media and publishing sector and an accompanying content management and system-analytics package to present a range of content, design, interaction and revenue-based opportunities for related industries. It also hints at how paper could be a viable interactive surface and posits potential related work on a wider and cross-industry spectrum.

Mobile handheld devices are an increasing part of everyday fieldwork of news professionals. Mobile assignments delivered to mobile journalists' smartphones are one potential future development step. We present findings on using mobile assignments from two exploratory user studies in which smartphones were used as news reporting tools. Mobile assignments were perceived as handy for fast reporting situations and simple stories but challenging in case of more complex tasks. Structured information content of assignments, process phase based information and supporting situation and activity awareness would support the work of both editorial staff and mobile journalists. The locationing of reporters for sending location-based assignments was found acceptable for coordinating the work although some privacy concerns were expressed. The findings provide new information on using mobile assignments in work where carrying out tasks involves creativity and the tasks may be complex, not strictly limited or they may not have clear completion criteria.

The possibility of linking paper to digital information is enhanced by recent developments in printed electronics. In this article we report the design and evaluation of a local newspaper augmented with capacitive touch regions and an embedded Bluetooth chip working with an adjunct device. These allowed the interactive playback of associated audio and the registration of manual voting actions on the web. Design conventions inherited from paper and the web were explored by showing four different versions of an interactive newspaper to 16 community residents. The diverse responses of residents are described, outlining the potential of the approach for local journalism and recommendations for the design of interactive newsprint

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