Each of the neighborhood walks had around 25 participants – in a district where roughly 2,500 people live. In contrast, 141 people joined the online dialogue. What was particularly encouraging was that the participants represented all age groups. We also have many students in the neighborhood, and they took part as well. Later, we saw that the online dialogue reflected the population distribution much better than the walks. Only 12 out of the 141 participants had also attended the walks.

Yes, it’s clear: physical participation alone is not enough. But for digital participation to work, you really have to be committed.

It was obvious that many people really enjoyed the playful approach with BrainE4. It was completely different from a traditional survey, where you lose interest the moment you even see it. The gamification aspect was very well received.

The fact that people could submit their own ideas and suggestions was very important. This way, we knew what residents wanted and what was on their minds – we truly listened.

Personally, I would like to see the developers enable map integration, so that the ideas submitted by users can also be assigned to specific locations.

During the neighborhood walks, we identified locations and topics that concerned the residents. At the same time, the online dialogue was already running, and we immediately entered this information as ideas and opinions into the web app. This allowed those who weren’t present to comment on them as well – and we instantly received feedback from the larger group of participants. BrainE4’s ranking system confirmed the views of the smaller group. An excellent validation!

Not at all. As a planner, you need clarity and confirmation from the community. That’s extremely valuable.

An important learning was that BrainE4 reaches its full potential when people are actively and directly approached and motivated through flyers and other initiatives. The design of the flyer must absolutely not look like advertising – it has to have an official appearance.

BrainE4 is truly innovative. We didn’t immediately see all the new possibilities the system offered. That’s why our initial hypotheses weren’t as meaningful as they could have been. In a second online dialogue, we would definitely be able to leverage its potential even better.

We would test our own hypotheses more thoroughly from the very beginning. However, we received excellent support from the BrainE4 team, which allowed us to adapt and extract a lot of valuable information.

Yes. It became clear that there are actually five different locations in the neighborhood where we will implement test measures before rolling out the shared space zone. We based this on the data we received. We focused on what made it into the top five of the idea ranking.

That it is absolutely essential to have a digital tool that is seamlessly and well-coordinated within the participation process. In our next participation project, we will definitely need it again.

When it comes to collecting ideas and suggestions and discovering insights through a playful approach, it can be used in a wide range of sectors. I also believe it would be very effective for smaller cities. Often, there’s just one planner handling all traffic-related issues, and BrainE4 can definitely provide strong support in such cases.