Matthew Crozier, CEO of Bang the Table considers that it is important to provide engaging ways for community members to provide feedback. By engaging, he means not just asking people to fill out long online surveys, but giving them the opportunity to view other participant feedback, to interact with each other and to enjoy the process of being involved in the discussion.
He considers that whilst online surveys have their place, just as we don’t use one technique all the time in face-to-face citizen participation events, nor should we have only one method in online citizen participation. It’s important to pick the right tools for the right circumstances and the more a community can participate in a discussion in an open manner, the more inviting participation is likely to be.
He offers some examples of engaging feedback tools.
The first is from a site run by the City of Montreal and is an urban planning project. The city has invited the community to leave comments in the form of pins on a map. As you can see the consultation has received a large degree of participation. If you go to their engagement site you may also note the high amount of information provided about the project.
The second is the City of Perth in Australia who used the Brainstormer tool to collect ideas from the community on how to work together for a more sustainable future.
And thirdly, another Canadian site, “Shape Seniors Care,” uses storytelling to build community understanding around old age care. Storytelling is a particularly powerful way of increasing knowledge around an issue.
Posted by on