Designing digital feedback technologies : exploring new forms of citizen engagement in public services

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of the design of digital feedback technologies that promote new forms of citizen engagement in the production of public services. It draws on public policy documents, health and social care literature and socially engaged work within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to inform the design of new digital feedback systems. Novel feedback systems were produced to explore how digital tools may capture peoples’ views and opinions, while investigating citizen participation in service innovation. It is an exploration and examination of the emerging public sector spaces of coproduction and cocreation that focuses on how those facing marginalisation, such as citizens with a learning disability or special educational needs (SEN), can come to have a voice in care service design and delivery. Three case studies were conducted with community partners: Case study one describes my work as part of a steering committee collaborating with local government staff, voluntary sector workers and parents of children with SEN in designing an online directory of services. Case study two reports my collaborations with charity organisations to design a digital feedback system, ThoughtCloud, for capturing and sharing the views and opinions of users of care services with a learning disability. Case study three documents my work with young people with SEN in designing and trialling a mobile application, Appraise, supporting them in shaping service provision through novel evaluation processes. These technologies were designed in partnership with users of care services, iterated through in-the-wild testing and evaluated through observation and stakeholder interviews. The contributions of this work include: learning that emphasises the importance of designing digital feedback systems that are accessible and legible across diverse stakeholders; how the use of video and audio media as feedback can alert us to the provenance of the data collected and create evidence of citizen participation in consultation; the need for developing sensemaking tools that can help surface narratives and support perspective sharing; and a description of the concept of ‘middle-out’ design as a means to practically framing the voluntary service sector design space.