Exploring design guidelines for fostering citizen engagement through information sharing: Local playgrounds in The Hague

TLDR: Design guidelines for playgrounds are identified: physical and virtual spaces where citizens can exchange information about their neighbourhood and inform designers how to create urban playgrounds for citizens to meet, interact, and collaborate to create engaged communities.

Abstract: Citizens’ engagement in their neighbourhood community is pivotal for cities to effectively deal with future transitions. Knowing what is going on and having access to the neighbourhood network are important conditions for this. Although prior research has studied ways to foster information sharing between citizens, the underlying assumptions and design choices are often not made explicit. This research identifies design guidelines for playgrounds: physical and virtual spaces where citizens can exchange information about their neighbourhood. A focus group, a workshop and a case study of an existing playground design were performed in The Hague, NL, the context of this research. A set of eight guidelines was identified, covering how to select playground locations, which information to include, and how to design the interaction between citizens. These guidelines inform designers how to create urban playgrounds for citizens to meet, interact, and collaborate to create engaged communities.