Member
Lara Piccolo 
Research Associate
+44 (0)1908 659773
My personal mission is to design technology for triggering positive social changes.
Beyond pursuing adequate and pleasant user interactions, my research aims at exploring design methods and artefacts to design with a sociotechnical approach, taking into account also the impact of technical innovations on people’s lives and their communities.
With this perspective, I have worked mainly in designing technology for people unfamiliar with ICTs and engaging communities in the design process.
I have worked on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for more than 10 years in Brazil and now in the UK. My background is Computer Engineer and I obtained my Master degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science in HCI. My Ph.D. was obtained in Brazil in 2015 at UNICAMP. The research targeted motivational aspects in design with a sociotechnical approach. The study engaged a community with energy conservation collectively and collaboratively, supported by a public and tangible eco-feedback, smart meters, and social media.
I joined KMi for the European project DecarboNet, involving communities in an energy trial with smart monitors, and evaluating technologies and strategies to engage people with energy conservation and environmental protection.
Keys: Community engagement, users engagement, social change, socially-aware design, motivation, social media, energy awareness, climate change
Team: Harith Alani, Gregoire Burel, Anna De Liddo, Miriam Fernandez, Christina Myers, Hassan Saif
News
05 May 2016
14 Dec 2015
25 Nov 2014
Publications
Bell, S., Benatti, F., Edwards, N., Laney, R., Mose, D., Piccolo, L. and Zanetti, O. (2017) Smart Cities and M3: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design, Systemic Practice and Action Research
Piccolo, L., De Liddo, A., Burel, G., Fernandez, M. and Alani, H. (2017) Collective intelligence for promoting changes in behaviour: a case study on energy conservation, AI & SOCIETY, pp. 1-11
Burel, G., Piccolo, L. and Alani, H. (2016) EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption, 15th International Semantic Web Conference - ISWC, Kobe, Japan, pp. 257-272
Piccolo, L. and Alani, H. (2016) Strategies and Tools to Raise Energy Awareness Collectively, Behave 2016 - 4th European Conference on Behaviour and Energy Efficiency, Coimbra, Portugal, pp. 12
Piccolo, L., Fernandez, M., Alani, H., Scharl, A., Föls, M. and Herring, D. (2016) Climate Change Engagement: Results of a Multi-Task Game with a Purpose, Workshop: SWEEM 2016 - the 1st International Workshop on the Social Web for Environmental and Ecological Monitoring at 10th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, Cologne, Germany The Workshops of the 10th Intl. AAAI Conf. on Web and Social Media: Technical Reports WS-16-16, AAAI
