Adaptive Path Blog

I recently had the opportunity to “design my city” through a participative design activity. I live in the very small city of Emeryville, which is just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. The weird and wonderful thing about this town is that it has all the scope of a major urban city, but not the scale…it’s about 1.2 square miles, and has about 7,000 residents. That said, some pretty big companies live there, too.

Emeryville is revising the General Plan to define growth and the urban fabric for the next 20 years, and as part of the process, they held participatory design workshops for community residents. The workshops were designed and managed by MIG (Moore Iacofano Goltsman, Inc.) a firm that works in urban planning and design.

At Adaptive Path, we use participatory design methods, so it was interesting to be on the other side of the table. Some of the things that made the experience work…

• The participants were engaged and passionate about the topic at hand. We were asked to “Design Your City”…what’s not to love? The printed materials all had this phrase and call to action printed on them, just in case we forgot.
• Introduction about the status of the project and the goals of the evening. A 30-minute presentation outlined the big picture of the project, provided definition, outlined the goals and set the expectations of the evening.
• Warm-up exercise. They started us off with a very easy task: look at slides and rate what you think of the image…don’t overthink it. It put folks in the mood of thinking and responding.
• Clear, concise directions for the main participative activity. It was complex, no doubt. But clearly described so that participants knew what was expected, how to contribute and what the goals were.
• Great materials. Big maps (super-big, actually), prepared printed materials, nicely designed handouts. The whole production was very professional, without being cold.
• Small group sessions. For the main activity, the group of 35 broke into 4 groups of about 10. Each group had 2 facilitators: one to guide and one to capture thoughts/ideas of the groups.
• Food. Seriously, don’t ever consider doing an evening activity without providing food.

Overall, it was thought-provoking and educational. Working with neighbors and meeting community members is fascinating, and group dynamics always play out when neighbors get involved with urban planning. That said, it was well designed, well-run and well-received. And it opened my eyes to the power of participation in complex design challenges.

For more on participatory design, check out maketools.com, a site created by Liz Sanders.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Collaboration, Creativity, Experience Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.