Citizen-Centered Design in Urban Planning: How Augmented Reality can be used in Citizen Participation Processes

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Most participation processes in urban planning offer poor incentives, especially for young citizens, hence important citizen’s needs are excluded. Our work aims at identifying the degree to which Augmented Reality (AR) might motivate young people. We developed an AR-app with Unity3D to create new interaction concepts for use cases in urban planning. Building projects and environment changes are visualized, so citizens can contribute design ideas to the process. Using a human-centered design approach, we invited different stakeholders to participate. We conducted 40 interviews and a survey, then interaction concepts were evolved by citizens in four participatory design workshops. Our findings show that AR can motivate increased participation in urban planning. We also demonstrate a new approach to engaging low-tech users in designing high-tech solutions such as AR systems by using haptic 3D-tools like Lego or clay. Furthermore, we propose ways in which AR could be used collaboratively and embedded in existing participation processes.