Citizen Dialog Kit (CDK) is a survey platform focussed on delivering location-based insights using state-of-the-art interactive displays in public space.
Including guidance based on 10 years of academic research, intuitive dashboards with built-in analytics, and an API for easy integrations.
We strive to make public participation more inclusive by engaging people where they are. With Citizen Dialog Kit (CDK), our goal is to create easy to deploy, yet highly effective new forms of civic engagement. We situate the interaction in the urban environment, the classical agora where people encounter one another and public life takes place.
By making participation local, contextual and situated, we aim to engage a larger population and provide totally unique insights. With those insights, we support the creation of liveable and dynamic places for all people.
The Dialog Box is a unique location-based surveying solution. It bridges a gap in the existing citizen participation and qualitative research methodology that traditionally rely on in-person gathering or online channels.
A Dialog Box can be easily installed anywhere and stay there for months, while nearly any passer-by can use its intuitive push buttons to answer a series of questions. This is possible due to advanced energy saving algorithms that enable extended battery-powered operation, and an Internet-of-Things wireless connection.
It only takes 2 or 3 minutes to complete a typical survey containing 10 to 12 questions.
Real hyperlocal insights into a wide range of topics.
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The concept behind Citizen Dialog Kit (CDK) originates from the Research[x]Design lab of KU Leuven University’s Department of Architecture.
For over a decade and in the context of multiple PhD’s, the lab developed its unique expertise regarding “Urban Interaction Design”, or the design of interactive experiences with information in urban spaces.
We iterated on the design and functionality of Citizen Dialog Kit over multiple years across diverse research project. Experimenting with larger screen formats, different button layouts and interaction modalities.
As interest continued to build over the years, we started an intensive two year project with the energy efficient IoT experts at the DistriNet lab (KU Leuven Computer Science) to create a robust technical foundation for CDK. Meanwhile, we also worked with LUCA School of Arts to refine our methodology and place within participatory processes.
CDK was founded by Jorgos Coenen (PhD), Ennio Pillecyn, Jef Van den broeck, Sandy Claes (PhD, prof) and Andrew Vande Moere (PhD, prof) in 2024.
🌐 Website
🏠 Address: Diestsesteenweg 71, 3010 Leuven - Belgium
Right to left:
Jorgos Coenen | CEO - [email protected]
Jef van den Broeck | CTO - [email protected]
Ennio Pillecyn | Board member - [email protected]
Gregory Denis | Regional Business development Manager - [email protected]
(not pictured)
Paul Biedermann | Regional Business development Manager - [email protected]
Our experience shows that the main factor that determines the demographics of the participants is the location. Selecting a general, central location will provide a varied range of ages, while position a Dialog Box near a skate park or a cemetery will shift the demographics.
Projects like our collaboration with Bruges have also demonstrated that our approach can reach young people with a migration background (up to 25% used a different language at home).
Furthermore, this low threshold form or participation is uniquely suited to capture the voice of the often lacking “silent majority”, or people with a more neutral or nuanced opinion who have less incentive or intrinsic motivation to go out of their way to have their voice heard.
Clearly our approach is a perfect fit in projects related to physical spaces. For example, you can think of temporary setups (guerilla placemaking, parklets, mobility tests, etc.) or urban planning developments, sporting sites and more.
Another approach is to use our tools to reach (missing) target groups on different topics by going to them and into their spaces.
In our experience, it rarely is! In fact, the percentage of weeks when our devices are deployed and there are instances of vandalism comes down to less than 2%.
Dialog Boxes have been installed in rural fields and forest, but also in major cities like Brussels, Strasbourg and Porto for weeks, without supervision. And without instances of vandalism.
Our goal is to reach as many people as possible. We therefor do not require authentication and participation is anonymous. This enables us to reach a wider range of people and to tackle sensitive topics that are harder to engage with otherwise.
We think our tools are complimentary to many other methods of citizen participation. Each method has its specific strengths and only by combining different channels and various levels of can a real diversity be achieved. It is perfectly understandable that not everyone is going to be interested in joining an in-person workshop or citizen panel, however they might take two minutes to answer a few questions on-site. These insights can subsequently be used to inform how other participation methods are prepared and implemented.
Truly excellent citizen participation uses a combination of methods that flow into each other.
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