1 Communication as Design

The solution-oriented approach to design is usually focused on assessing the project’s functional aspects in order to gain an understanding of its added value and identify the innovative elements in the smart and sustainable solutions panorama. The communication dimension tends to be neglected, even in the case of urban scale projects where citizens, stakeholders and all those potentially interested in getting to know and use a service should be informed about it. This attitude is fairly usual in social innovation, environmental sustainability, service or local government public participation projects. There are many reasons for this and at least two of these are worthy of further attention. The first one is that communication is seen as a creative activity, which is alien to the technical-scientific rigour of many research communities. The second one is that communication is often taken as a tool, which is exclusively linked to commercial companies and branding. Overlaps exist within the same Green Move project and the term “communication” is used by researchers in different ways depending on their discipline of reference: on one hand, they refer to technological platforms and protocols developed for the functioning of the system and on the other hand to scientific and academic dissemination.

Actually, communication is much more complex than this, as far as it intersects with both the business dimension and the more general sphere relating to all human activities needing to be notified, supported, made public and participated (Volli 1994). In fact, the same verb “to communicate” (from Latin: cum-munus) means performing a task with others, sharing, bringing individuals or communities into an event, a story, a danger or good news. Communication is thus an important mover for profit making activities and more generally it also gives substance to that human relations context which is part of everyday life. Communication works according to a system of rules (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic), which are valid both for interpersonal relationships and for commercial or social communication (Testa 2000; Gadotti and Bernocchi 2010; Puggelli and Sobrero 2010). We can understand how it works and attempt to apply its processes to all contexts in B2B and B2C segments or for small groups of interest.

This is the task we took on in the Communication Design context: understanding communication processes and applying them to innovative multi-channel spheres (Santambrogio 2016), new televisions (Piredda 2008), transmedia storytelling projects (Ciancia 2016), branded content (Bonsignore and Sassoon 2014) and web series (Galbiati and Piredda 2010), which are nowadays well established tools and forms.

The Green Move project was an important opportunity to experiment with effective communication formatsFootnote 1 taking account of the socially innovative nature of the context in which the project has been developed. Communication was taken to mean a trigger to give the project its own identity, to extend its public scope and introduce easy to understand narrative forms.

In order to achieve these goals we developed the GM project adopting the movie design approach (Galbiati 2005). Movie design is a discipline, which takes on board audiovisual communication from the perspective of corporate communication. This requires a twofold knowledge background: an awareness of the strategic framework which enables a product, an event and a service to acquire a recognisable and well liked public image and, at the same time, an ability to manage all the technicalities of audiovisual communication from the technical, linguistic and aesthetic points of view.

Applying communication strategies to projects with a social orientation is not different from doing so with consumer products such as washing powder or smartphones. Certainly the nature of the contents requires communication changes but the strategic framework remains the same. For this reason, we learnt that for communicating a project within the social innovation sphere it is very useful to learn both from the world of branding (for the strategic part) and from the world of cinema (for the ability of images to generate empathy), as explained in the next paragraphs.

1.1 What We Learned from Branding

Communication is a fundamental important asset in branding and identity building but it can also perform the same role for services, small-scale initiatives, events or processes, which may or may not be branded. Identity building means identifying the key values that a company wants to transmit to its consumers. It is a complex process, which is designed to generate engagement and consumer’s expectations coherent with needs.

Many factors contribute to transforming a product into a brand. Just for citing a few of them: company reputation, differentiation from similar products, quality, ability to supply additional services, narrative building and communication. Another fundamental important role in this is performed by the communication strategy that orients creative choices and identifies the best-suited media for transmitting the message.

The proliferation of digital technologies has made this task more difficult because defining targets is more challenging with the latter tending to escape traditional classifications. Furthermore while in the past brand was considered the whole of the products and the functions linked to it, it is now increasingly seen as a narration (Matrone and Pinardi 2013), a story, a belief, a principle of reliability around which the values linked to our ways of thinking and living accumulate. At the heart of a brand building exercise there is a relationship of trust, a perception of reliability, which binds together consumers (users) and the brand itself. In contrast to a product, which may have a short life cycle, a brand can have a short life generating an ongoing assessment, support and innovation process in a strategic perspective, which looks to the future. A communication project drives success and it is a strategic resource for the company because its goal is to build an emotional bond with the public that is the true focus of contemporary marketing strategies. This is true of products, services, towns, nations, individuals, cultural destinations, innovative services such as car sharing and Airbnb, music sharing platforms like Spotify and TV series.

Communication thus plays a delicate but fundamental important role: transmitting brand values to its audience, orienting its identity and philosophy in such a way that brands take their place in the hearts and minds of less and less focused consumers that are continually bombarded with different messages and information. We have learnt from the global brands the importance of empathic communication, which is capable of touching directly the innermost chords of its consumers. Nike, Diesel, Apple, Coca Cola, to cite just few examples, represent today a field of study from which to learn effective communication models.

Everything is encompassed by communication to satisfy a more and more challenging, more cynical and also more self-aware target, one which has lost those standardised qualities around which market research was built for years, and become an increasingly profiled and segmented target whose lifestyles are in constant evolution, an increasingly cultured, pragmatic, shrewd, diffident, sceptical and ever more challenging consumer who has been defined “patchwork” by many (Fabris 2010). For this reason in recent years firms have been obliged to change their communication behaviour passing from a “one to many” approach to a “one to one” approach, from a monologue on the virtues of their products to a dialogue with consumers in which the latter expect to take an active part in an exchange of ideas with companies. Markets are conversationsFootnote 2 and all organisations now base their actions on this logic, including tertiary sector, no-profit and community services organisations.

An alternative marketing and communication climate has thus developed which orients the cultural legacy of brand image towards a heritage in which experience is taken fully on board: a multi-form territory whose nature is based on user emotional and sensorial involvement strategies.

In this logic we have transferred these principles to the Green Move project too. We have treated it as a brand, we identified its values, built a brand image and created a narration in order to take on those elements of identity and personality which may be perceived by a target group. We looked for responses not simply on the level of information but also in terms of the processes and languages in which information is targeted.

The integrated communication strategy used in the GM project thus followed the traditional business oriented communication strategy steps: context analysis, users analysis, stakeholders and competitors analysis, identifying the correct tone of voice, choosing media and useful tools to communicate the service both to the internal and external players. Transforming GM into a branding operation has meant creating a framework in which sponsors, stakeholders, small communities and public and private players can activate profitable relationships and virtuous processes which are coherent with the objective of benefiting the whole community. Videos were thus made to present the project, as they were held to be useful and easy to understand tools. Those responsible for the project were interviewed in support of the initiative. A website was made to showcase all the results and a condominium TV was experimented with in order to get a specific user group involved. A final presentation was also put together to tell the story of the whole project.

1.2 What We Learned from Cinema

In a branding project putting user experience centre-stage, digital images and technologies take on strategic importance. Screens are now a veritable cultural paradigm capable of contaminating people’s cognitive universes and organising their actions and thoughts (Manovich 2002). The use and abuse of screens, devices, audiovisual, multimedia and transmedia images has become part of our daily vocabulary.

Cinema is fundamentally important for branding because it takes advantage of the ability to narrate and makes people emotionally involved. French people immediately perceived its historical scope at its first screening in a Paris café in 1895.Footnote 3 For the first time people experienced a totalising experience by seeing a virtual image as if it were real.

For designers like us taking part in the GM communication project, cinema was an exploration area from which we learnt what it means to observe, interpret, tell a story and represent, exploiting audio-visual techniques and languages to obtain effective and participatory communication. We did it primarily by enquiring into the ways in which cinema has put the city centre-stage as well, in more general terms, as the private and public spaces, transforming them into a human event set (Galbiati 1989). Cinema succeeded in bringing across the complexity of life’s ebb and flow and its real or imaginary places immortalising scenarios and depicting the spirit of the times, characterising every era with its moods and emotions. In contrast to a map or graphics, cinema places human beings and their dramatic events centre-stage thus allowing spectators to identify with characters and activate a silent dialogue. It generates those feelings, which we all know and which give us an opportunity to be moved, get angry or laugh at a film’s scenes. To a lesser extent contemporary audio-visual production uses the same paradigms, making itself a language capable of speaking to different levels because it mobilises elements relating to identity, memory and the collective imagination. Audio-visual products also take the form of elements capable of prompting new visions and new collective imaginations.

Moving images (Deleuze 1984) are the maximum expression of the efficacy of cinema storytelling, the true engine of its success. And this is perhaps the densest of the emotions that cinema has brought to the audio-visual communication designer.

Audio-visual and storytelling tools have thus been taken on as design tools to the extent that they have generated visualisations useful in any attempts to understand an area and can be used to facilitate dialogue with citizens and stakeholders (Galbiati and Piredda 2012). They have also been useful instruments for the learning and negotiation process in the disputes, which are always a feature of urban planning projects. And last but not least visualisations have generated practicable ideas and prototypes and been the subject of thought and debate between players taking part in social dialogue.

A new generation of communication products, which transcend the concept of physical space to play a part in the virtual dimension of the Internet acts as counterpart to the cinema experience. These communication artefacts are objects, which are at the centre of attention today both as a result of the brands, which try to find a way of exploiting their potential and for the web generation for whom the Internet is a new global dialogue dimension. We are seeing a shift from a broadcast logic (top-down and one to many) to a social network system that is generated thanks to collective intelligence whose characteristics (the participatory logic, the bottom-up contents generation) have breathed life into new information and know-how platforms such as WEB TV, Wikipedia, blogs, YouTube and the social media in general, an area of the web which is today laying down the traditional communication architecture law.

1.3 Movie Design Practices: Examples of Educational Activities and Applied Research

The branding discipline and cinema language are at the heart of what we have called Movie Design. The latter is a term, which attributes a design-oriented strategic and creative perspective to the project of communication artefacts, which is characterised by the equilibrium between art and management.

In particular, one of the Movie Design projects at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano (www.imagislab.it) is linked to sustainable transport themes, which accord well with the GM contents. The project is entitled Cammina MilanoFootnote 4 (Walk Milan) and consists of a communication project for social innovation designed in accordance with Milan city council. The goals of the project are traceable to three actions: promoting a sustainable mobility culture among citizens; facilitating dialogue between Milan city council and stakeholders; building a new image of Milan. In order to satisfy these requisites we created communication formats, which act as tools capable of promoting and developing a dialogue between public and private players in order to generate shared visions (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1z2q1-ekJ1DXbRb0Yw7epN9Z19xtrS-E). Ten video documentaries were made for the purposes of exploring Milan in its public life expressions and register citizens’ opinions on the mobility issue (the activity of listening to the city; Sclavi 2003). A similar number of video scenarios were planned with the goal of giving form to the collective urban imagination which emerged during the exploration phase (scenarios building phase) and lastly commercials were made with the aim of promoting good mobility practices sustaining bicycle use, pedestrians, the use of public transport and bike and car sharing. The audio-visual narratives, conceived within a strategic framework, brought out an image of a living city with all its passions and critical issues in a constant switchback between past and present, sense of belonging and demand for better living conditions, a participatory and emotional story. From this emerged unexpectedly high self-awareness in the city, a desire to improve it by means of good practices even in the face of sacrifices and changes in established behaviours.

By means of three actions: listening (documentary), visualising (video-scenarios) and promoting (commercials) (Piredda et al. 2013; Galbiati et al. 2010) an audio-visual system was created which took the form of a new city thought and planning process. Looking up-close at citizens’ ways of life and stereotypes brought us closer to an ethnographic and anthropological city dimension, an approach which is often undervalued in the decisions taken by national and local governments.

Analysis and planning tools led to a framework in which co-design practices and partnerships were placed centre-stage by those taking part in the project. The results of this work (documentaries, semi-finished products, mood boards, commercials, photographic repertoires, conceptual maps) were used in workshops and round tables in which citizens and stakeholders took part thus facilitating the decision-making process and activating debate on possible scenarios for models of sustainable daily life.

This research acted as starting point for the shaping of research and planning practices which we have been experimenting with since 2012 for a more circumscribed local dimension, the town district. In addition to well-established tools, we also activated a Social TV project (television using social media—YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter—as the principal means of distribution) for the purposes of facilitating the participation of the greatest number of inhabitants of an area of the city suburbs, the Dergano and Bovisa districts. We brought into this project the district councils and citizens associations, which have been working for years to improve the quality of life in the city.

The communication process thus increasingly incorporated bottom-up evaluation. If the digital platforms favour interaction dynamics in themselves, strategies exploit the potential of these in order to stimulate feedbacks from users and strengthen the relationship between online contents and offline action in the area by means of transmedia storytelling. The user-centred and community-centred approach is thus expanding as a design framework and communication practice confirming tendencies underway in all communities which see design as a tool for facilitating and shaping sustainable solutions for a better life.

Today the Plug Social TV platform (facebook.com/plugsocialtv) collects web-series promos, brief documentaries, interviews, extra contents and spin-offsFootnote 5 produced by joint action of students and citizens together. The added value of WEB TV thus consists in becoming a social innovation engine as the fruit of joint local level action capable of putting forward universally relevant issues, which can be adapted to the various local contexts.

2 Movie Design for Social Engagement

Due to the experience gained in the context of new television and transmedia strategies, over the years we have developed audio-visual storytelling processes and techniques relating to participatory videos and community narrations (Anzoise et al. 2015), (Ciancia et al. 2014).

On an international level many groups are researching and experimenting with forms capable of taking advantage of the interactive and participatory potential of media convergence and the development of sharing platforms. Just to name a few, Crucible Studio is a research group within Media Centre Lume (http://lume.aalto.fi/en/) and the Department of Media (http://media.aalto.fi/en/) of the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. It studies and develops narration of the digital, non-linear and interactive media. In the audio-visual context, special attention is paid to new forms of documentary genre: in addition to the work of the National Film Board of Canada (nfb.org), i-Docs (i-docs.org) is a Digital Cultures Research Centre (http://dcrc.org.uk/) initiative based in the Pervasive Media Studio (http://i-docs.org/about-idocs/watershed.co.uk/pmstudio), in Bristol. Furthermore, the Imagis research group at Politecnico di Milano (which we are part of) is experimenting with micro-narratives in terms of forms and practices: narrative structures take advantage of social media’s specific features and affordances (Facebook timelines and feeds, Instagram grids, Twitter hashtags, for example) allowing the organization of multimedia fragments according to drama and meaning making principles (Ciancia et al. 2014; Piredda et al. 2015). We are in the web and social media era, why are we still referring to TV?

The Green Move experience represents an opportunity to explore a controversial media, Web TV and narrowcasting (that is the tendency to incept small, highly personalized audience groups. Even though it is highly developed internationally (USA above all, as a result of the presence of a great infrastructure of cable transmitters), in Italy, it is still struggling to find sustainable business models despite its historic and cultural roots in the early independent Telestreet TV channels, as far back as the 1970s. Furthermore, the translation of established TV formats and genres to digital media is a mandatory step. Audio-visual clips and episodes produced for YouTube and Facebook still put forward communication artefacts that are typical of broadcast identity (Pajè and Branzaglia 2009). The use of familiar and recognizable communication formats, in fact, facilitates access by user communities. In case of the condominium life, it favours the establishment of a communication pact in which residents see themselves as center-stage players and experts as within their reach in relation to themes and issues on which discussion can continue in online platforms and face-to-face meetings.

2.1 From Community TV to Micro TV

Community TV has a specific target group represented by communities of practice sharing specific interests. The bulk of these WEB TVs have tiny audience numbers, well below 100 per day. Despite this, their value and success factors do not lie in traditional audience concepts but rather in the opportunity to enrich the media ecosystem with differentiated content provision: different themes and genres are provided, from local information to opinions and criticisms, amarcord, community and youth lifestyle (Colletti 2010). The shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting systems is a logic, which has also been adopted by online televisions whose positioning can be defined in relation to the following axes: the main generalist-themed one and the global-local one (Piredda 2010). Community TV is conceived and developed as a result of voluntary work by the members of a community which can be made up of artists, activists, fans or ordinary citizens. These are set up for a range of motives: publicising the association and its work, raising awareness of contents which would otherwise remain unknown, stimulating the creation of a sense of unity among members and helping co-ordinate and organise activities. Very often they exploit the power of the social media as distribution platforms in order to increase their scope and reach a larger number of people. They generally use formats, which opt for the tutorial and newsfeed genres to keep people up-to-date and stimulate debate. The majority of the videos are self-referential, aiming to entertain and have fun within the community itself.

Micro TVs are the direct heirs of the first independent Telestreet TVs. They are mainly focused on super localised areas and targets. Experiences set up in individual condominiums are not new and are the tip of the iceberg: see, for example, Teletorre19 (www.youtube.com/user/teletorre19), active in Bologna from 2001 to 2008 and GrattacieloTV (http://zebraproduction.it/?p=26) active in Ferrara from 2011 to 2013. Amateurs and semi-professionals with a passion for videos or wanting to communicate organise the editorial committee, draw up a more or less well defined editorial plan and ongoing programming.

2.2 Communicating Green Move

Green Move is a complex project because of the interdisciplinary skills needed and the service system put forward in terms of technologies, business, user and community models required in the design phase and effectively involved in the experimentation phase. Such a system of participants, technologies and socio-economic processes requires an integrated communication strategy capable, on one hand, of giving a shape to the system itself, configuring it in such a way as to make it comprehensible and shareable by those interested in it and, on the other hand, of facilitating the participation of potential users in trying out services thanks to its ability to make values and its reference universe concrete.

Green Move was chosen as good practice born in the context of Politecnico di Milano’s research and needed an institutional tone on the strength of its established reputation and recognisability deriving from the university’s history. The tone is then informal and never stuffy because the project is close to citizen-users with whom it has built up a direct and transparent relationship.

The integrated communication strategy is based on the hypothesis that facilitating and supporting active community building around a service and the values underlying it makes it more attractive to potential investors who find themselves dealing with a profiled group of users practically involved in a process of sharing the service, the products and also defined values. This community is a privileged observatory on the conditions of use of services, demonstrating daily use of them.

Enquiries relating to stakeholder analysis—developed by the Department of Management Engineering within Green Move project—were useful in defining the players to be involved in the Green Move system, their respective goals and expectations about each one of the service configurations put forward (“condominium cars”, “cars and workplaces”, “service world” as well as a more generic car sharing service). This enabled us to identify the Green Move’s strengths to be promoted (environmental and social benefits for the community and user services) alongside cultural resistance (car ownership culture and perceptions of company cars as benefits) and psychological barriers (different perceptions of electrical vehicles in buying or car sharing).

Analysis of demand and the literature—developed by the Department of Design—enabled potential user profiles to be identified, highlighting the need to target well-defined user categories (e.g. employees or students) bringing out advantages deriving from forms of partnership (between colleagues or condominiums, for example) and forms of sharing between users (such as peer-to-peer sharing).

The communication strategy thus responded to the following general objectives: communicating research under way; communicating research results; enhancing the “polytechnic” identity of the research group (finalising of the various departmental roles); stimulating stakeholders to become potential partners and investors; informing citizens. Specific objectives were also identified. In the initial experimentation phase the communication action was intended to support users signing up to services, overcoming initial reluctance and signing up problems; expressing clearly the advantages of electric cars and car sharing instead of or in addition to car ownership; explaining how vehicles work; offering personal use experiences. In the course of experimentation, on the other hand, it was a matter of increasing the number of users signed up and getting members who had not yet used the service involved; creating an active community around the service that could increase personal involvement levels.

The communication target was split into primary (Regione Lombardia and the local government in general and other stakeholders) and secondary (potential end-users). On one hand, in fact, the institutions needed to understand the innovative character and effectiveness of the system in taking on urban and citizen mobility problems: businesses and car manufacturers and service providers needed information on the way in which their vehicle fleets would be incorporated into the system network. On the other hand, citizens needed information on the characteristics, advantages, ways of using and prices involved and other Green Move system innovations.

The integrated communication systemFootnote 6 was thus split up into the following actions with specific objectives, players and communication output effectively developed:

  • Introductory video—Green Move. Open, light, electric and close-by (Mellera 2013): presenting the project and condominium car service experiment (target: primary and secondary). It is an animation video lasting 1’25” illustrating the main characteristics of the Green Move project. The video was designed for web distribution (mainly on the Politecnico’s YouTube channel and the Green Move website) but also for screening at public project presentations in a wide range of situations (meetings with users and stakeholders, research closing events). The essential graphic style was linked to key words and an institutional but unstuffy voice over. Stylised characters and environments and the representation of spaces in axonometric projection allowed for a very straightforward movement animation but one with very powerful identity elements, which were co-ordinated and coherent with the Green Move brand image, and the project’s institutional colours with the addition of dramatizing elements. The voicing of the logo animation and the payoff completed the ident’s opening and closing. The electrical vehicle service was made into an important graphic element to bind together the video contents by means of a common thread running through it, which introduced the key words and structured the transition between the various parts of the video. The narrative structure is in fact modular with the first three scenes or chapters relating to the project in general followed by a final part illustrating the characteristics of one of the service configurations put forward in the research, the condominium car concept. Lastly, from a productive point of view, the digital animation technique made for short creation times and involved only one person in addition to the speaker (Fig. 1).

    Fig. 1
    figure 1

    —Key frames from the Introductory video (Gabriele Mellera, 1’25” 2013). Available on the GM website (http://gm.polimi.it) and on the PoliMi YouTube Channel, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDzxJ5mW5-k&list=PL_06oobzMEusjsq-5b7AJaJi2I2iY4-Mq)

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  • Video interviews (Mellera 2013) of the project team leaders (target: primary). The main purpose is explaining some of the project’s characteristics and putting a face to the members of the Politecnico’s team: the video interviews of the various team leaders who took part in the project summed up the contributions made by each Department and the expected outcomes. The researchers put their faces to the project, contributing to enhancing its human dimension and the personal involvement of each of them in the project itself. The purpose of the video interviews was also to integrate the information given in the introductory video and supply greater details. The graphic layout was thus the same and the same common thread was used to bring out the key words and reveal the people involved in the research waiting in the wings. These videos were posted on the Politecnico’s YouTube channel reinforcing the institutional nature of the contents of the video and the overall image of the project. These were made in both the intermediate project research phases and for the final presentation. These latter were designed to define the results obtained (Fig. 2).

    Fig. 2
    figure 2

    The video interview (Gabriele Mellera and Laboratorio Immagine 2013) to professor Giovanni Azzone, the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, and the Green Move’s playlist on the PoliMi YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/1wze5fXol0M?list=PL_06oobzMEusjsq-5b7AJaJi2I2iY4-Mq)

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  • Scarsellini TV. Vicini + Vicini: condominium television (Piccinno 2014) and 4 formats designed and created together with the residents at
Scarsellini (target: secondary). The communication strategy used was strongly experimental in character to the extent that it used its citizen target group and in particular the Via Scarsellini condominium group where the condominium car experiment was carried out. The experiment offered an opportunity to enter into direct contact with a group of Milan citizens from whom mobility needs, habits and expectations and daily lives in general could be identified, documented and told by means of video interviews and direct accounts. From each of these enabled certain profile types were then identified (personas). For example: the retired couple using the condominium car service to take full advantage of their free time were active in condominium life and open to sharing experiences and common spaces; the young couple with small children for whom the condominium was a social fabric similar to the provincial one they were used to. The Green Move condominium car service was thus shown in action via the building of a real, active community around the Green Move brand and its values. The Via Scarsellini experiment was an opportunity to document and tell the story of the service in action and at the same time involve residents in Scarsellini TV content production (Fig. 3).

    Fig. 3
    figure 3

    Key frames from the ident, the animated logo of Scarsellini TV (Giancarlo Piccinno, 40” 2014)

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  • Green Move website graphic project ( http://gm.polimi.it ) as research results container (target: primary and secondary, for service sign-up). The actual website comes from of a series of proposals for the layout that where designed by Giancarlo Piccinno and Laboratorio Immagine (Piccinno 2014) (Fig. 4).

    Fig. 4
    figure 4

    Layout proposals for the Green Move website (Piccinno 2014)

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  • Green Move presentation video (18’) for the final event (target: primary). It was designed and produced by Laboratorio Immagine and it was screened on the 6th of December 2013 during the event “Green Move, the present and the future of vehicle sharing” at Politecnico di Milano. Many stakeholders both from public administration and companies were present. A voice over introduces the topic of sustainable mobility and depicts the state of the art of car sharing approaches and solutions, in particular Politecnico’s approach and the Green Move project. The other videos produced for GM, were edited again in order to explain and integrate the words of the speaker. For example, the introductory video, thanks to its modular narrative structure, was useful in different moments of the presentation; the video interviews show the researchers explaining the different actions and the main results. Some slides from the research report have been animated in order to show the technologies developed and how they work. In addiction, Laboratorio Immagine shooted and edited the fictional storytelling of the user journey. A guy books the service online, choosing the vehicle, goes to the parking and uses the car. The video shows the interfaces for different devices and the additional services provided by Green Move (Fig. 5).

    Fig. 5
    figure 5

    Key frames from the Green Move presentation video (Laboratorio Immagine, 18’ 2013)

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Next paragraph provides a detailed description of Scarsellini TV: the process and the outcomes.

2.3 Scarsellini TV, Vicini + Vicini: The Condominium TV

Scarsellini TV focuses on Villaggio Cooperativo Scarsellini, one of the two key elements in the Green Move experiment and on the car sharing service. By documenting perceptions and use it also provided space for the user community itself. The residents told their stories on it and worked to produce shared interest contents for the channel stimulating the shaping of a generalised sense of belonging to the community via video contents production.

During the production phase, part of the format was dedicated to describing the relationship between condominium and the car sharing service registering use experiences, feedback and sensations. This allowed research contents to be made available for promotional purposes in relation to the various service stakeholders (primary targets: car manufacturers, energy suppliers and institutions such as the Regione Lombardia and Milan city council).

On 13th March 2013 the car service was officially launched in Via Scarsellini 17 condominium. The meeting documentation had the twofold purpose of gathering information on progress in the experiment and establishing via condominium TV a partnership relationship between residents and researchers, which was indispensable to the success of the experiment itself.

The Villaggio Scarsellini community was founded on a shared joint working spirit, on values of co-operation and sharing which motivated and oriented the birth of the residential project itself. HousingLab (www.housinglab.it) played a fundamentally important mediating role: it sponsored a series of preliminary meetings and activated a social network on NING platform (scarsellini.ning.com) which enabled future neighbours to introduce themselves, get to know each other and exchange opinions, in the very first phase. Later it supplied a further channel for more in-depth open discussions, event organisation and an opportunity to find out more and interact also in relation to designing and making condominium TV contents.

The use of a closed platform safeguarded residents’ privacy. As far as the stakeholders and researchers themselves were concerned, in fact, it was possible to contact them and obtain feedback from them only by means of a series of meetings and presentations. Communication designers and video makers in particular had to win the trust of the residents by building up personal relationships with them via periodic on site presence. Being allowed to be part of the condominium blog meant waiting for this relationship to mature and being recognised as part of a shared project.

The promise to Villaggio Scarsellini was thus that a further form of exchange and sharing would be created, representing the community itself and respecting its values. The project was, in fact, developed in such a way as to deliver a usable tool to them, which was adaptable to future evolutions. The contents were designed with the goal of making residents free to express themselves. In all work phases, from planning to production, the objective was to maintain ongoing direct dialogue (face-to-face) or by means of the condominium’s social network once the design team obtained access to it.

The Scarsellini TV tone of voice was thus informal, friendly and easy going in order to present the TV brand and Green Move in general as neighbourly, a potential reference point of trust. The visual style was designed developing the infographic already present in the other communication contents defined by the strategy (Mellera 2013) that were entrusted with the cartoon style, which was felt to be closest to the condominium’s youth user segment.

The very name of the TV was decided together with residents. It was a fundamental identity element given that it represented the initial contact with the project for both primary users and the stakeholder target. The brand and logo were designed from the starting point of the building’s shapes and colours and foresaw all possible versions useful to a dynamic brand identity (logo, ident, captions, etc.).

The primary objective was to get Scarsellini’s young people interested, i.e. teenagers from 14 to 18 years old, who were familiar with the new digital media (computers, cameras, and social media) and had the chance to follow the project in the afternoon after school. Two boys, Leonardo and Riccardo, 14 and 16 years old respectively, showed an immediate interest. This was followed by a call to action by means of a poster on the walls of the condominium’s common rooms and an announcement published on its social network.

figure a

Eight people responded, showing their interest in the initiative without, however, giving any direct involvement availability. In fact, of all Scarsellini’s residents the only young people present were the two who effectively took part. The others were all children and thus too young to take an active organisational role or university students busy with study and work. The adults made themselves available for shooting and interaction with the TV cameras but did not take part in organisation and contents production. The initial idea of offering a basic course in video shooting and editing with the support of the technicians from Politecnico’s Laboratorio Immagine was thus abandoned.

Once they were finished, all the videos were uploaded to YouTube Scarsellini TV (https://www.youtube.com/user/ScarselliniTV). These were shared on the Ning platform with private access so that only the community itself would have access to them. On the basis of a community decision, the YouTube videos were not indexed in order to safeguard the residents, especially children, filmed in the various episodes.

Contents were distributed every week (Tuesday or Friday). Thanks to Ning platform functions residents were able to comment, share or “like” contents thus supplying immediate feedback.

A Scarsellini TV Twitter profile was also activated which kept the community informed of new contents.

A range of contents were thus designed and made on the basis of 4 different formats each of which had a reference genre with its own identity (logo, colour palette, claim and other animated elements):

  • Scarsellini LIFE: a chronicle of resident activities mainly in the condominium’s common rooms (courses, initiatives, events). Eight episodes lasting 2’. These were filmed from May to September 2013. The format—using a photo album style—obtained the greatest number of visualisations (Fig. 6).

    Fig. 6
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    Key frames from the format Scarsellini LIFE

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  • Scarsellini SPEAK: the Vox populi by which residents could express opinions on a range of themes. Seven episodes lasting 2’. Claim: “make your voice heard”. Recordings began with video cameras turned out remotely by residents wanting to sit down on the sofas and say what they had to say. The themes were also linked to hashtags in order to encourage people to continue discussions on social media. Posters with technical instructions and advices were provided near the camera (Figs. 7 and 8).

    Fig. 7
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    Key frame from the format Scarsellini SPEAK

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    Fig. 8
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    Posters providing technical information and advices

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  • Scarsellini NEWS: the news sheet informing residents of appointments organised at the condominium. These were monthly and helped residents to keep track of the initiatives to take part in. Scarsellini’s agenda, published and updated constantly on the condominium’s social network, was a much-used tool. Two episodes were made (for June and July 2013) lasting 3 min each. Riccardo conducted the programme with the support of animated graphics, announced planned events and reminded residents of initiatives under way showing images or documents.

  • Scarsellini GREEN MOVE: the video documentation on the Green Move service condominium experiment. This developed 5 types of video with the aim of documenting the main service access and use phases in the experiment stage.

Scarsellini GREEN MOVE

8 clips were made: “Green Move, first service sign ups”. Documentation for the 12th March 2013 event organised to present the Green Move project to the residents (duration: 1” 41”; filmed by: Gabriele Mellera and Giancarlo Piccinno). SEMS, vehicle supplier partner, also took part. The first resident to sign up, Mr. Enzo Prandi, was given the keys to the garage. “Green Move, condominium car” (3’23”, filmed by: Federico Zotti, Gabriele Giussani, Giancarlo Piccinno). Video tutorial explaining service access methods (animation and use scenarios). There are 4 scenes: registration, booking, collection and delivery. “Green Move, car sharing in the city” (2 versions: 3’57” and 1’35”. Filmed by: Federico Zotti, Giancarlo Piccinno): Mr. Enzo Prandi goes on a trip to the Triennale di Milano, tells of the benefits of driving an electric car with automatic gear shift, etc.; how privileged he felt to be allowed into Area C, etc. The second, abridged version of this film was used to communicate the project on the occasion of official presentations. “Green Move, tips&tricks” (1’36”. Filmed by: Federico Zotti, Giancarlo Piccinno): a collection of information titbits describing tricks discovered by users to best use the Green Move vehicles. Enzo Prandi tells of a trick designed to limit kilometer consumption when driving (energy saving). “Green Move, concluding interviews (4 episodes, 2’. Filmed by: Gabriele Carbone, Giancarlo Piccinno): interviews of service users recorded at the end of the experiment: they were asked when did they use it and opinions on functioning and willingness to use in future outside the experiment. In general the service was considered convenient, cheap and reliable although each user made different use of it: occasional or frequent as in the case of those without a family car.

figure b

2.4 Results: Numbers and Comments

The aim of creating a residents’ council to whom ascribe the responsibility for the project and the production of television contents, in technical terms too, was hindered in particular by the lack of suitable profiles for such a process. The only person who took an active part in it as film operator, in addition to play the role of interviewee or participant in documented activities, was a 14-year-old boy who loved videos and, more occasionally, his friend. It was thus difficult to build a management group with the potential for real autonomy.

The main source of data for the first evaluation of the experience was Scarsellini TV’s YouTube channel with views and comments on the video.

Furthermore, on the occasion of the experiment completion event, residents were asked to fill in a questionnaire enabling us to assess the Scarsellini TV experience. The questionnaire was circulated by means of Google Docs and made up of 10 questions (9 multiple choice and 1 open) with the aim of understanding the level of penetration of Scarsellini TV, opinions on contents and layout, the feelings generated by the presence of video cameras, users’ attitudes to using the online video contents and the channel’s potential future. 19 residents filled in the questionnaire of whom all except one had seen the videos despite the fact that only four of them habitually follow other WebTV or YouTube channels. In general, all of them expressed positive opinions on the contribution of Scarsellini TV to telling the story of the condominium’s life and would have liked the experiment to continue and become a collective project (7 interviewees out of 18) or have it handed over to competent people (11 out of 18) using the methods currently linked to the Green Move experiment. Only one resident expressed no interest and had not even watched the videos although he had known of it via the condominium blog. Evidently the presence of external individuals to co-ordinate the operation was seen as indispensable to the channel’s success and the will to develop the experience into their own project was lacking.

In order to support the post-production phase, that would be the most difficult to take over for those with little time to devote to it and without the technical skills to reduce time frames, Giancarlo Piccinno’s M.A. thesis supplied all the material created in the project and reorganised it to make it more adaptable and intuitive to use. An extensive database of files, information, videos and semi-finished artefacts, illustrations and transitions was created on a blank format on which new clips were to be inserted. A paper manual “Scarsellini TV—Guide to the Material” and a DVD “Scarsellini TV—Materials” was handed over directly to residents and placed in the common room. Furthermore, links to the digital versions were uploaded to the Scarsellini social network.

3 Conclusions

On the occasion of the Green Move service experiments at the Scarsellini condominium in Milan a full-blown Web TV was created together with residents. The contents served to encourage a desire to share which already existed in the community and responded to the goal of demonstrating to service stakeholders how a representative sample of the potential users interacted and used the service itself supplying an additional, qualitative type assessment tool.

In relation to the experiment, in particular, communication on condominium TV contributed to the social innovation process bringing the resident community into the storytelling process and also in later comparison with the representation itself. Whilst mediated by the designer/video maker role, this process represented an innovative way of sharing common values and visions.

In any event, communication’s fundamental contribution was to launch the community building process (the Green Move community) by means of an identity building (branding) project which defines shared values and puts a meaning universe centre-stage. In this way, while profoundly bound to its local area, this community could potentially exploit a range of communication channels to enter into contact with stakeholders on the local level and also share good practices with other reference groups on an international level becoming a network nodal point in mobility and sustainable daily lives. Starting from and by means of community, people can promote and develop sustainable service systems and qualifying platforms with powerful economic as well as environmental and social value.

From a theoretical perspective, the Scarsellini TV participatory project provided a contribution to growth in both the methodology and content of the practice-based research approach, in particular the area of research through, by or for creative practice, art and design (Nimkulrat and O’Riley 2009). Scarsellini TV played an instrumental role in the conduct and dissemination of Green Move research, willing to convey how we worked, using the creative processes as a foundation for enquiry (Koskinen 2009).

Focusing on the area of media studies, the “Vicini più Vicini” condominium TV project fits into the debates on new television. From the point of view of practice it promotes joint audio-visual experimentation projects with powerful social impact. Our intention was to understand whether the television models developed over the course of the last decade can be an effective resource to support participatory design system projects. The confidentiality limitations required by the community did not, however, allow the potential of networking characteristic of social media such as Facebook to be exploited in which “Users can be business pages, songs, or newspaper articles. Being social simply means creating connections within the boundaries of the system. Every click, share, like, and post creates a connection, initiates a relation. The network dynamically grows evolves, becomes. The network networks. The social in social media is not a fact but a doing. The social is constantly performed and enacted by humans and non-humans alike” (Bucher 2015). The branding strategy founded on the idea of partner ecosystems (Santambrogio 2016) could not put residents/users, institutions and service providers on a par as the project hoped. Then, on one hand it did not extended it to a virtuous circle of listening and provision capable of bringing all stakeholders in a direct and self-aware way and regenerating relationships between them. Nevertheless, on the other hand, we got some strongly positive result: the participatory video process provided vertical feedbacks between the community and the Green Move researchers, who have the role to build and manage a dialogue among the stakeholders. Moreover, the participatory communication process triggered valuable horizontal feedback within the community (Collizzolli 2010; White 2003) making most of the members aware of the values of such a sustainable mobility service and committed in taking advantage of it in everyday life, by the means of Green Move. We can say that Scarsellini TV showed and actually contributed to change the condominium community behaviour, respecting its desire of intimacy and familiarity.