Participant Experience Design: New Communication Strategies to Make Public Engagement More Effective

Planners currently use diverse engagement tools and processes to reach “beyond the usual suspects” and get outside of City Hall to gather input. However, reports, findings, draft and published plans all are still communicated in very traditional forms – long, jargon-filled documents with limited ways to explore the content non-linearly or comment on it. For example, even beautiful and well-designed PDF plan documents can miss communicating the true findings, because they are stuck in one dimension with long, dense blocks of text. Interactive media, instant publishing, and social media have changed the way people consume and process information, which has raised expectations for how planners should communicate. Think about the New York Times’ long-form journalism: short videos, interactive maps and charts, and other interactive media. What if we communicated plans like that? During this webinar, we will: 1. Begin by exploring inspiring possibilities for communicating complex topics, scenarios, and plan documents in simple, intuitive ways; this overview draws from strong engagement principles and summarizes “what you need to know” when planning and budgeting; 2. Specifically discover how interaction design, gamification, and publishing for different devices can reach more (and more diverse) audiences compared to traditional media; 3. Share examples of data visualization techniques to more effectively showcase findings and results; and 4. Open the “floor” for participants to share their experiences, challenges, and ideas. Each focus area will be presented around promising examples of recent planning projects from around North America and feature key takeaways that planners can start using today.

Speakers: Brad Barnett, Daniella Fergusson and Chris Haller – CM Pending

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