Turning to Trust Experience Design

Abstract: Please note this seminar will take place at a different (more Asia-friendly) time**

​Join us for a Metagov Seminar with Metagov's newest research director, Dr. Helena Rong. Helena is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Business at NYU Shanghai, with an interdisciplinary focus on urban technology, collective intelligence, and digital governance. Her work examines how emerging technologies (blockchains, decentralized AI, urban IoT) can transform collective life and foster new forms of civic trust. She leads research on Trust Experience Design (TXD), intentional communities and digital nomadism, and the institutional challenges posed by the emerging agentic web. Across her projects, she explores how sociotechnical systems can enable more resilient, participatory, and imaginative modes of urban living.

​In her seminar presentation, she will share about her work with a focus around "Turning to Trust Experience Design (TXD): A Manifesto for the Future of Distributed Autonomous Intelligence in the Wild. Helena has previously worked with Metagov RDs on Open Problems in DAOs and the State of DAOs in China report. She has also co-authored the recently published, "The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds."

Previously, Helena conducted research at MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab (co-authoring the book Value of Design: Creating Agency Through Data-Driven Insights, 2025) and at the MIT Senseable City Lab, working on autonomous urban systems (“roboat” waterborne vehicles for public spaces). As a 2022–23 Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, she studied decentralized trust-building frameworks and tech policy.

​We are so thrilled to welcome Helena to the Metagov Research Community!

game theoryhuman-computer interactionsocial and information networkslaw and economics

Audience: researchers in the discipline

( chat )

---

Metagovernance Seminar

Series comments: For the latest information on upcoming seminars, events, and discussions hosted by Metagov, please subscribe to our Luma calendar: lu.ma/metagov-calendar

- - > > Meeting Link: us06web.zoom.us/j/89433841305?pwd=lIX1rkSiVfqDd7hwwTUppQS8kDmbno.1 < < - -

The Metagovernance Seminar invites individuals working in online governance to present their work to a community of other researchers and practitioners. Topics of the seminar include, but are not limited to, computational tools for governance, governance incidents and case studies from online communities, topics in cryptoeconomics, and the design of digital constitutions.

See archived videos: archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Metagovernance%20Seminar%22

The seminar is intended for researchers and practitioners in online governance, broadly defined. We welcome guests and curious members of the public, but please note that the discussion is moderated. Our governance structure is defined here: metagov.pubpub.org/metagov-governance

Please contact a planning committee member (Nathan Schneider, Divya Siddarth, Michael Zargham, Joshua Tan, and Seth Frey) if you are interested in becoming a member of the seminar.

Where available, a direct link to the archived video is linked beneath the video tags.

Join our community to participate in the discussions around this series: metagov.org/join/community

---

- Time: every Wednesday at 12:00pm ET (GMT-4). - Meeting Link: us06web.zoom.us/j/89433841305?pwd=lIX1rkSiVfqDd7hwwTUppQS8kDmbno.1

---