Jokaisenoikeudet in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Participatory Co-Design and Solarpunk Narratives in HCI

Abstract

Jokaisenoikeudet—meaning “every person’s right’’ in Finnish—refers to the ancient right of public access to natural spaces enshrined in law across Nordic and Baltic countries. This workshop draws on Jokaisenoikeudet as a conceptual lens to reimagine the relationships between humans, nature, and technology in the context of AI design. Specifically, we engage with questions of sustainable AI deployment in natural environments, citizen ownership of and access to AI systems, and the transparency and governance of data collected in these contexts. The workshop is grounded in a transdisciplinary collaboration between Arizona State University, Tampere University, and the University of Helsinki, centered on the participatory design of a modular EdgeAI device for natural environments—and, crucially, on the collective curation of the datasets that will shape it. Participants will engage in a structured series of gamified co-design activities—including future scenarios, narratives, and storyboards—to interrogate these questions and produce speculative design artefacts. To orient this inquiry toward constructive futures, the workshop draws on Solarpunk: a literary, artistic, and social movement envisioning worlds in which humanity, technology, and nature coexist in harmony. Positioned at the intersection of speculative and participatory design, ecological thinking, and HCI research, this workshop contributes to a growing discourse on the social and environmental responsibilities of AI design—and invites the NordiCHI community to help shape it.