This presentation focuses on ways to enable local people to participate in the design of civic and public life through civic technology.

The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design have run two research projects that used civic technology to engage citizens in local activity, each 2.5 years in length. In the first project (Creative Citizens) researchers worked with a neighbourhood forum in North London, who were creating a neighbourhood plan, to find ways that civic technology (Stickyworld) could engage more people in the creation of that plan. Whilst successful, they identified how civic tech is best used (and why) as part of a digital and face-to-face engagement strategy.

The second project (GATEway) explored local people’s attitudes towards autonomous vehicles as past of a testbed in Greenwich, and used civic technology (Commonplace) to map their attitudes and illicit responses to design provocations, as part of an engagement plan that included face-to-face engagement such as co-design workshops.

Commonplace have continued to work within public sector organisations and produce insights for others in how to engage, in particular researching who can be reached through online platforms such as theirs and how young people are being included (but with room for improvement!) through the use of civic tech.