Urban Interfaces as Technopolitical Devices. Reframing Distributed Agency through Workshop-Based Design

Urban digital interfaces increasingly mediate access to services, participation, and organizational practices, operating not merely as tools but as technopolitical infrastructures that structure delegation and agency. This doctoral research investigates how workshopbased design practices can critically engage with urban digital systems by temporarily reconfiguring how participants perceive and negotiate distributed agency within them. Drawing on STS and critical HCI, the project frames interfaces as sites where governance logics are embedded and often rendered invisible. Through research-creation and participatory action research, iterative workshops enable collective mapping, materialization, and reinterpretation of infrastructural arrangements. Rather than proposing new platforms, the research develops an agency-centered design stance that expands interaction design toward infrastructural literacy and technopolitical inquiry.