1 min read
Difficult choices are all the rage at the moment. To be honest, they are nothing new! Households, communities and businesses all confront choices as do governments. Explaining these choices to communities and having engaged conversations about choices are fundamental - or they should be.
Private and public choices converge when it comes to shaping the local environment and Commonplace has the tools to help illustrate those and enable people to articulate their preferences easily.
We offer a straightforward resource allocation tool as part of our standard platform. This is sometimes referred to as a “Budget Question”. This question presents a set of sliders, each representing an option for spending money or allocating a resource. There are a finite number of units to allocate and the sliders enable the respondents to choose different sums according to their priorities.
The illustration below shows how the question works with a budget expressed in Pounds. You can see just how easy it is for respondents to allocate funds!
The question type has wider uses as well. For example, you can ask how a certain number of housing units should be allocated between housing types - family homes; starters studios and flats; and supported accommodation.
This “Budget” question sits alongside other ways of expressing priorities, such as the ability to order a list of options by priority, also offered on your Commonplace platform.
So much of the digital conversation is geared toward getting a fast, sharp reaction; yet so many community issues are complex, subtle and require a balancing of conflicting priorities. It is not as easy as signing a petition - and the question types offered by Commonplace support more reflective online engagement.
The “Budget” question and the Priority question types are offered alongside a growing variety of highly visual Commonplace question types. Together they enable you to support co-design digitally by giving residents the widest choice of means to express a preference, addressing both matters of policy direction and smaller details down to the type of street furniture or park planting.
