Engaging the Crowd: Lessons for Outreach and Tool Design From a Creative Online Participatory Study

In this article, the challenges of realising e-participatory projects in urban planning are described. A participatory case study in Singapore serves as the basis for their presented conclusions. The researchers used a map-based e-participation tool to collect design proposals from participants for the planning site. The user feedback for the tool interface and the study campaign's website together with designer expertise on user interfaces (UI) was incorporated into the redesign of the website and interface of the participatory design tool. From there, some general guidelines for conducting engagement studies and for designing participatory design tool interfaces for non-expert users were formulated. One key finding is that the information presented to the non-expert user must be concise, and the UI must be adapted to the user's habits and focus the user's attention towards completing the study.