Building Better Public-Facing Technology Through Resident Engagement

Cities face an array of complex macro problems that can vary greatly based on local considerations and the needs and priorities of diverse stakeholders. Solutions often incorporate technology ranging from informational websites to digital payment tools to enrollment systems for essential services. These solutions are meant to serve the city’s diverse residents, yet the public rarely has a path to provide input throughout the process. The public must be included in the design, development, and deployment of public-facing technology; the best way to ensure that solutions are accessible and user-friendly for many is through a broad resident engagement strategy that includes multiple opportunities to gather feedback, including through user testing.

There is no question that user testing is an essential part of product design. It reaches beyond just market research and truly focuses on how a user interacts with and uses a product or interface. The methodology around user testing allows developers to get user feedback throughout the design process, thereby allowing for the issues and opportunities within the design of the system to be realized.

Testing a technology or solution should not be the only step; engaging residents in all stages of the process – from understanding community needs to user design to socialization during rollout – is integral to the success of a product or solution. User testing is well-established in spaces with heavy UX design/product testing, but we need to consider it as part of a broader resident engagement across all phases. Public-facing solutions must involve the public; direct resident engagement in technology innovation across all phases of the process leads to better, more sustainable outcomes.

So why don’t residents have a say in all emerging technology and solutions? Of course, not all solutions require resident engagement, especially if they are not public-facing or are not in the right phase for this type of engagement. Putting these cases aside, there are still numerous situations where we should be bringing users into the design and deployment process.

To effectively conduct the proposed unique resident engagement strategy that is required, there needs to be sufficient budget, intentional and inclusive community outreach, and an execution lead willing to tackle this work. Often budget, time, and capacity make building out and running such programs unfeasible. The early stages of projects – the point at which users need to be included the most – are often where there is the least budget and the outcome of the project is most uncertain. We understand that this is a place where resident engagement often has to be cut out of necessity; however, not building in a feedback during the planning, development, and rollout phases can lead to out-of-touch design and additional iterations, potentially leading to more work and higher budgets than originally intended.

Working with an execution partner like City Tech can help to bring a robust methodology and quick turnaround to the process, as well as allow for access to feedback from a diverse pool of residents.

City Tech gathers and understands resident feedback through our Chicago Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) . Our CUTgroup is a diverse group of 1,600+ Chicago residents who can give valuable input throughout the technology discovery and development process, allowing them to have access to and a voice in emerging technology while providing public, private, and social sector partners with feedback to improve product design and deployment. Given the diversity of city residents (the users of these solutions who will eventually have to see, interact with, and use these technologies), it is especially important to be intentionally inclusive. We engage diverse individuals and are inclusive of all backgrounds, experiences, and digital skills through our program. Historically, we have focused on driving inclusivity through diverse geographic recruiting and are now expanding that by starting to focus on specific populations, such as disability communities, to ensure increased representation within CUTgroup. With no digital skills requirement to join, we also give the users a chance to gain experience in technologies and processes that they may not otherwise have access to. With these types of considerations, our CUTgroup can be more representative.

Having an execution arm like City Tech that both engages with the community and drives the project work is important. This unique approach drives successful solution and product development and is something we strive to promote across other organizations and cities. To that end, we have worked to support similar civic user testing groups in cities across North America and are now building out a more formal Civic User Testing Network of these and other groups working towards the same goal of engaging residents throughout the development process. This network will allow best practices and resources to be shared to ensure a more robust process and experience. Cities looking start their own groups can turn to this network for resources and, as the network continues to build, we can even start to implement multi-city tests.
With organizations such as City Tech and networks such as the Civic User Testing Network, we hope to better facilitate engagement from the earliest stages of solution design and development and continue through testing, implementation, and deployment, ensuring that residents have a voice in the technology that will ultimately be developed for and used by them.

For more information about City Tech’s Civic User Testing group and the Civic User Testing Network, visit our websiteor contact Meera Raja at Meera.Raja@CityTech.org.

About the Author: Meera Raja is the Solution Design and Program Development Manager at City Tech Collaborative. In this role, Meera works as a member of the City Solutions team to design and execute new programs and services. Meera also leads City Tech's 2,000-member Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) in Chicago and coordinates expansion of the CUTgroup model to additional cities across North America. Prior to joining the City Tech team, Meera was the Associate Director of Research Innovation at University of Chicago, where she developed strategies to advance nascent and complex research. Meera was previously a consultant for ZS Associates, working on data-driven solutions for the pharmaceutical space. Meera completed her Ph.D. and Postdoc in Chemistry from Northwestern University and received her undergraduate degree in the same field from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.