Enriching E-Participation through Augmented Reality: First Results of a Qualitative Study

Abstract

Recent disputes over public construction projects show that the public is interested in urban development. When construction projects lack communication about its impact, agenda and costs, citizens might feel overheard and protests may arise. As a consequence, trust in public administration and politics could suffer serious damage. Following the idea of digital government, it is crucial not only to replicate and digitize established participation procedures , but rather to include new possibilities that e-participation offers. In this article, we present preliminary results of a qualitative study on using augmented reality for e-participation. Based on the study's results, we derive meta-requirements for an e-participation application employing this technology. Interestingly , our empirical findings suggest that users only seek information via the application up to a certain level of participation. 1 Introduction Public debates over significant public construction projects in Germany such as the Stuttgart train station, the Hamburg concert hall and the Berlin Monument to Freedom and Unity show that citizens are interested in construction projects within their urban environment and develop their own opinions about them. These examples show that when construction projects lack communication and, in turn, citizens feel overheard, disputes and protests can arise which might affect the overall trust in public administration and politics [1, 2]. One solution to this problem might be to involve citizens better in the initial project development. Following the idea of digital government [3], governing processes should be transformed to the digital age not only by replicating and digitizing established procedures, but rather through employing new digital opportunities. Some research has already shown the innovative opportunities that digital technologies can provide for e-participation [4], such as using wearables [5] and public displays [6] for e-participation. In this short paper, we focus on Augmented Reality