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

TL;DR

This paper presents Voice to Vision, a sociotechnical system designed to improve transparency and shared understanding in civic decision-making by integrating community feedback with planning processes through co-designed data infrastructure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel participatory design and a complete sociotechnical system that enhances transparency and legitimacy in civic decision-making processes.

Findings

Planners value systematic sensemaking tools for diverse inputs.

Community members want to see reflection of their input and process transparency.

Digital platforms can promote shared understanding and legitimacy.

Abstract

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.