All good things come to an end, and SIMPORT is no different: last week, the final meeting of the project took place. All project partners came together to reflect on what we have achieved, to evaluate what went well and what challenges there were.
After a brief review, we were proud to realise that we had largely achieved our goals despite the coronavirus pandemic:
- The learning app is available for public download in the Google Play Store;
- The associated studies and workshops have shown that learning effects are recognisable and that participants have developed a greater awareness and interest in what location-related data is tracked about them;
- The learning app could be linked to an immersive video environment (IVE) (see illustration) – this means that interactions with the app can now take place in realistic scenarios and additional visualisations can be implemented;
- The Location Privacy Toolkit could also be transferred to other apps such as the enviroCar app from 52north and the senseBox:bike app from re:edu;
- An Ethics by Design approach was developed and tested in the project;
- An Ethics Primer was published as a theoretical and empirical analysis with research results and recommendations for the integration of ethics in software development;
- In addition, ethics tools were developed for practical work, such as a card-based tool for software developers.
During the coffee break, there were opportunities to try out the card-based tools, apps and the IVE directly.
After the break, various points were discussed in small groups: What lessons have we learnt? What are our next steps? And what implications could the results of SIMPORT and the collection of location-based data have in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) using the example of Chat GPT?
Our conclusion: we have learnt that things don’t always go according to plan and that you have to be flexible in order to achieve your goals. However, with the active cooperation of all project partners and with the help of innovative study formats, even unforeseeable events such as the coronavirus pandemic could be overcome. The next steps planned include further publications and the final report. In addition, the solutions developed are to be used and further developed in other projects. We are excited to see what the future holds.
A big thank you goes to the entire team for the great cooperation!
