Designing for dialogue: The challenges of facilitating online civil dialogue for the urban planning process

Abstract

This thesis explores the challenges and possibilities encountered when designing software aimed for civil dialogue within urban development. The project was initiated by ATGIS to explore the possibilities of a public online module for their urban planning tool InPlan. The process of designing and implementing the prototype was conducted through an iterative design process, containing one phase of research and data gathering followed by four stages of iterative design work and was concluded with an attempt to implement our user interface into the InPlan application. The completed prototype enables users to gather information about development projects and to contribute with comments. During the project we have performed interviews with a total of four people from two different municipalities, held two workshops with a total of ten people at Lerum, Sweden municipality and performed two rounds of user testing for our final prototype. Takeaways from these encounters have been compiled into a list of essential guidelines to consider when designing for urban development.