Co-design approaches to inclusive policy agenda setting through autogenous civic engagement with a focus on the unengaged: Shy attenders, lone whiners and I-Don't-Carers

Abstract

Co-design is considered an effective tool for engaging citizens in policy processes to reflect their situations and perspectives on setting a policy agenda. However, current approaches mostly target a few active citizens. Other citizens are still marginalized or play limited roles in responding to given policy issues. For inclusive policy agenda setting, this research proposes co-design approaches triggering autogenous engagement so that passive citizens can also present meaningful policy resources based on their original intentions and interests. From the literature review, three target groups who are not currently engaged in policy agenda setting processes were defined: the Shy Attender, the Lone Whiner, and the I-Don’t-Carer groups. In the main empirical studies, co-design methods tailored to the target groups were developed and evaluated in the context of local youth policy development in Yuseong District, Daejeon City, South Korea. First, a policy puzzle game was developed to engage the Shy Attender group in developing policy ideas. The gamified rules for feasible and acceptable ideas enabled the target group and other expert/activist participants to exercise their own expertise for an in-depth valuation of proposed ideas. Second, a co-storytelling method was developed to engage the Lone Whiner group in defining policy problems based on their own dreams and concerns. Joyful meddling through creating fictional adversities for one another enabled the target group to elevate their personal problems to the collective, social, and institutional levels. Third, an incidental life posting method was developed to engage the I-Don’t-Carer group in mining their policy needs on social media platforms. Playful grumbles through sharing daily life content enabled the target group to build empathy and manifest their collective needs. Finally, a local hero nurturing game was developed to carry the most apathetic individuals in the I-Don’t-Carer group through the policy idea stage. The tiling interface and hero’s narrative enabled them to integrate individual needs into a shared value and mobilize their local knowledge for feasible and compact solution ideas. Synthesizing the major findings, a model of autogenous civic engagement for policy agenda setting was constructed, and co-design utilization strategies were proposed.