Zalmon River Chat AI

2025-ongoing

AI-Mediated Public Participation, Environmental Planning, Speculative Visioning

→Try the Zalmon River Chat AI Tool
→Download (PDF)

Interface Screenshot Placeholder

About the Project

Zalmon River Chat AI is a participatory digital tool designed to support community engagement in shaping the future of the Zalmon River as it begins to flow again. The system guides participants through a short reflective conversation, helping them articulate memories, desires, and future scenarios for the river. Their responses are translated into generative visual postcards, creating a shared archive of perspectives that planners and designers can use to understand community visions more deeply than traditional surveys allow.

Participants upload a personal image or choose from a curated archive, respond to a conversational prompt, and receive a visual interpretation of their imagined future. All contributions are stored in a structured database that supports environmental analysis and participatory planning.

The tool was developed as part of a broader inquiry into public participation and ecological restoration.

What the Tool Enables

1. Accessible Participation

Participants of all ages and backgrounds contribute ideas without requiring technical or planning knowledge.

2. Speculative Visioning

The tool helps people imagine possible futures—ecological, cultural, recreational—through a guided conversation.

3. Collective Environmental Insights

Generated postcards and text responses form a shared dataset that planners can analyze to understand community desires, fears, values, and priorities.

4. Emotional and Sensory Engagement

By inviting participants to provide memories, sensations, and hopes, the tool reaches deeper layers of public perception than traditional planning tools usually expose.

How It Works

Participants upload a personal image or choose one from a curated river archive.

The chatbot guides them through:

  • Reflecting on their relationship to the river
  • Imagining future uses
  • Expressing ecological concerns or aspirations
  • Describing sensory impressions (sound, movement, materiality)

The system generates:

  • A visual postcard (AI-generated vision of a possible future)
  • A short textual vignette capturing their perspective

All outputs are saved into a communal repository to inform planning teams, environmental educators, and designers.

Documentation

Generated Postcard Example 1

Generated Postcard Example 2

Workshop Session

Interface Detail

My Role

I designed and built the full system architecture—from the interaction model and narrative flow to the technical infrastructure behind it. This includes the database structure, data pipeline, API integrations, and real-time generative image logic. Beyond UX/UI, I developed the entire end-to-end mechanism that collects, processes, and transforms community input into a visual and analytical resource for environmental planning.

Experience the Zalmon River Chat AI Tool

Try It Now

Credits

Zalmon River Chat AI (2025-ongoing)

AI-mediated public participation tool for environmental planning

Design, development, and interaction framework: Olga Stadnuk

Developed in collaboration with environmental planners and community partners