Empowering community volunteers through matchmaking services

Empowering community volunteers through matchmaking services

Slingerland, G. (TU Delft System Engineering)
Mulder, I. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)
Jaśkiewicz, T.J. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)

Meroni, A. (editor)
Medina, A.M.O. (editor)
Villari, B. (editor)

2018

In Rotterdam, the participatory turn has spurred various bottom-up communities around public parks. These communities aim to take care of the parks in their neighbourhood and search for ways to demonstrate the societal value of their initiative. The current work explores how digital matchmaking services can strengthen community relationships. A research-through-design approach is applied to identify the main barriers hindering community participation. The final design Park Makers uses both Citizen-to-Activity matching and Citizen-to-Citizen matching as ways to engage citizens in the community. The corresponding research demonstrates that connecting park users (or better: future volunteers) with another citizen or activity matching their personal interest fosters community engagement. From this point of view, it might be interesting to focus further research on the potential value of other matchmaking principles, or even other services, for bottom-up citizen communities.

citizen participation
community engagement
public parks
service design
social cohesion

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:13ddbcf5-ad1b-406b-944d-00b884905c4e

Linköping University Electronic Press

978-91-7685-237-8

ServDes.2018 Service Design Proof of Concept: Proceedings of the ServDes.2018 Conference

ServDes.2018, 2018-06-18 → 2018-06-20, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings, 1650-3686 (150)

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2018 G. Slingerland, I. Mulder, T.J. Jaśkiewicz