Voice to Vision: Enhancing Civic Decision-Making through Co-Designed Data Infrastructure

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Hughes, Maggie, Overney, Cassandra, Kamra, Ashima, Tepale, Jasmin, Hamby, Elizabeth, Jasim, Mahmood, Roy, Deb
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Hughes, Maggie
Overney, Cassandra
Kamra, Ashima
Tepale, Jasmin
Hamby, Elizabeth
Jasim, Mahmood
Roy, Deb
author_facet Hughes, Maggie
Overney, Cassandra
Kamra, Ashima
Tepale, Jasmin
Hamby, Elizabeth
Jasim, Mahmood
Roy, Deb
contents Trust and transparency in civic decision-making processes, like neighborhood planning, are eroding as community members frequently report sending feedback "into a void" without understanding how, or whether, their input influences outcomes. To address this gap, we introduce Voice to Vision, a sociotechnical system that bridges community voices and planning outputs through a structured yet flexible data infrastructure and complementary interfaces for both community members and planners. Through a five-month iterative design process with 21 stakeholders and subsequent field evaluation involving 24 participants, we examine how this system facilitates shared understanding across the civic ecosystem. Our findings reveal that while planners value systematic sensemaking tools that find connections across diverse inputs, community members prioritize seeing themselves reflected in the process, discovering patterns within feedback, and observing the rigor behind decisions, while emphasizing the importance of actionable outcomes. We contribute insights into participatory design for civic contexts, a complete sociotechnical system with an interoperable data structure for civic decision-making, and empirical findings that inform how digital platforms can promote shared understanding among elected or appointed officials, planners, and community members by enhancing transparency and legitimacy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_14853
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Voice to Vision: Enhancing Civic Decision-Making through Co-Designed Data Infrastructure
Hughes, Maggie
Overney, Cassandra
Kamra, Ashima
Tepale, Jasmin
Hamby, Elizabeth
Jasim, Mahmood
Roy, Deb
Human-Computer Interaction
Trust and transparency in civic decision-making processes, like neighborhood planning, are eroding as community members frequently report sending feedback "into a void" without understanding how, or whether, their input influences outcomes. To address this gap, we introduce Voice to Vision, a sociotechnical system that bridges community voices and planning outputs through a structured yet flexible data infrastructure and complementary interfaces for both community members and planners. Through a five-month iterative design process with 21 stakeholders and subsequent field evaluation involving 24 participants, we examine how this system facilitates shared understanding across the civic ecosystem. Our findings reveal that while planners value systematic sensemaking tools that find connections across diverse inputs, community members prioritize seeing themselves reflected in the process, discovering patterns within feedback, and observing the rigor behind decisions, while emphasizing the importance of actionable outcomes. We contribute insights into participatory design for civic contexts, a complete sociotechnical system with an interoperable data structure for civic decision-making, and empirical findings that inform how digital platforms can promote shared understanding among elected or appointed officials, planners, and community members by enhancing transparency and legitimacy.
title Voice to Vision: Enhancing Civic Decision-Making through Co-Designed Data Infrastructure
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14853