How Features of a Civic Design Competition Influences the Collective Understanding of a Problem

From Fortune 500 companies to local communities, organizations often strive to build a shared understanding about complex problems. Design competitions provide a compelling approach to create incentives and infrastructure for gathering insights about a problem-space. In this paper, we present an analysis of a two-month civic design competition focused on transportation challenges in a major US city. We examine how the event structure, discussion platform, and participant interactions affected how a community collectively discussed design constraints and proposals. Ninety-two participants took part in the competition's online discussion, hosted on Slack. Applying a mixed-methods analysis, we found that participants shared less as they settled into teams and, due to the discussion system, had difficulty seeing how topics connected across channels; we also learned that certain messages led participants to add depth to existing topics. Based on the findings we provide recommendations for civic competitions aimed at building knowledge around a problem.