Public consultation people want to take part in

Interactive 3D experiences – in VR, on screen and on physical rigs – that get people who never come to consultations to take part

For: Surrey County Council, Wirral Council, Network Rail and the Design Council, Cornwall Council, and Bolsover District Council, with Digital Urban

When: 2022 – early 2023

Built with: Unreal Engine, VR headsets, screens with Xbox controllers, custom physical rigs

In short

Councils running regeneration and community engagement want to hear from people who never come to a consultation evening – especially the under-35s. Digital Urban took their plans for high streets, promenades and stations out to pop-up events and let people explore them – in a VR headset, or on a screen with an Xbox controller – by jet pack, pedalo, open-top bus, bike and hot-air balloon. We built the engine room behind it: the multi-user Unreal architecture, all of the interactivity, the questionnaire back end that captured people’s views and exported them for each council, and the optimisation that let detailed town models run smoothly in a headset. Digital Urban made the buildings and the art.

Inside the New Brighton experience: a floating question, how could we improve the facilities here, with answer buttons such as food and drink, over the virtual promenade

The questions sit in the place itself, and people answer where they stand – here on the New Brighton promenade.

The projects

Farnham: jet packs on the high street

Surrey County Council, summer 2022. Visitors strapped on a jet pack – a converted beer keg – and flew along a future Farnham high street at pop-up events in the town. Digital Urban reports that engagement among under-35s rose from 6% to 45%. The events were covered by BBC South Today, and the project went on to win Surrey County Council an ADEPT President’s Award for digital innovation in placemaking.

Farnham: the jet pack at the pop-up shop, and a question answered in the virtual street.

As featured on BBC South Today, 19 August 2022.

New Brighton and Seacombe: an open-top bus and a pedalo

Wirral Council, October 2022. Two experiences built from local young people’s ideas for their area, gathered in school sessions over the summer. In New Brighton, visitors rode an open-top bus along the promenade with a live tour guide in the same virtual scene. In Seacombe, they pedalled a VR pedalo along the waterfront – a real pedalo, where pedalling is what moves you.

Four visitors in VR headsets riding the open-top bus rig, a green bus front with a New Brighton 411 destination board, at the Wirral consultation event

Two visitors in VR headsets pedalling a real pedalo, draped in blue fabric as water under a rainbow kite, at the Wirral consultation event

At the New Brighton event, October 2022: the “411” open-top bus and the pedalo, both live in VR.

The virtual New Brighton promenade: a rainbow cycle path along the seafront, with palm trees, apartments and the tower beyond

New Brighton’s promenade, as local young people imagined it.

A Georgian seafront hotel beside the rainbow cycle path in virtual New Brighton

A colourful seafront arcade beneath tall apartment blocks in virtual New Brighton

A park with trees beside the Fort Perch Rock event space, busy with people

A seafront shelter with a Ferris wheel and palm trees beyond

Around the virtual promenade: the buildings and art by Digital Urban, the tour, interactivity and questions by us.

The Wirral: the in-VR questionnaire, and visitors on the open-top bus.

ExploreStation: stations of the future

Network Rail and the Design Council, 2022. A multi-user tour of a railway station of the future: arrive by train, then walk the new station with fellow travellers at different times of day and in different weather. It toured the UK, including London Design Festival. More on ExploreStation.

Newquay: a bike ride through the town centre

Cornwall Council, September 2022. A virtual bike ride through ideas for the future town centre, at events run by the Newquay Futures partnership.

Shirebrook: a hot-air balloon over the town

Bolsover District Council, November 2022. A bird’s-eye tour of the town’s possible future from a virtual hot-air balloon, with The Future Fox.

Looking up into the colourful canopy and burners of the virtual hot-air balloon above Shirebrook

Up, up and away: the balloon over Shirebrook.

Questions people ask

Can VR be used for public consultation?

Yes. Instead of reading plans or looking at boards, people explore the proposed place in a VR headset – a high street, a promenade, a station – and answer questions inside it. On these projects, people rode a jet pack, a pedalo, a bike, an open-top bus or a hot-air balloon through the proposals, and gave their views as they went.

How do you get young people to take part in a consultation?

Make it something they want to do. In Farnham, Digital Urban reports that engagement among under-35s rose from 6% to 45% once the consultation became a jet-pack ride down the high street. The experiences were built on young people’s own ideas where possible, as in New Brighton and Seacombe.

Does everyone have to wear a VR headset?

No. In most cases the same experience also ran on a screen with an Xbox controller, so people who couldn’t or didn’t want to wear a headset could explore the plans and answer the questions just the same. We’ve also built tablet versions of this kind of experience for other projects.

How is feedback collected?

The questions sit in the virtual scene, next to the thing they ask about, and people answer by pressing buttons with their hands – yes or no, or a choice of options. Every answer is recorded and exported for the council, so it gets feedback tied to specific places and proposals rather than general impressions.

What we did

Multi-user architecture – Unreal Engine projects built so several people, and a live guide, could share one scene.
VR and screen play – every experience ran in VR headsets, and in most cases also on a screen with an Xbox controller, so anyone could take part without wearing a headset.
All the interactivity – the jet pack, the pedalo, the bike, the bus and the balloon, each tied to its physical rig.
The questionnaire back end – questions asked in the place itself, answered with a press of a button.
Data for the councils – every answer exported for each council to analyse: a big part of the job, and the point of the whole exercise.
Optimisation – getting detailed town and station models running smoothly on headsets at busy public events.

Behind the scenes at the New Brighton event: a crew member at the PCs running the multi-user VR sessions, with screen views of the virtual promenade

Behind the scenes in New Brighton: running the shared sessions from the operators’ desk.

Digital Urban created the buildings, environments and art, and ran the events with each council. We’ve also built tablet versions of this kind of experience on other projects.

Not our first time out in public

Getting the public to step up and have a go is something we’ve been doing for well over a decade:

National Media Museum Games Lounge (2012) – a Kinect wall where visitors became part of the exhibit.
Enchanted Forest (Redbridge Central Library, 2012) – an interactive projection in the renovated children’s library that follows children as they move.
Ways of Seeing (Light Night, Leeds, 2014) – the public playing with a projection on a city-centre building.
VR Cycling (2014) – a real, pedal-powered bike in VR on an early Oculus Rift DK1 for road-safety learning: the ancestor of the Newquay bike ride.
Kinetic Flux (Manchester Science Festival, 2015) – visitors’ movements driving light through glass, part of Electricity North West’s conversation about future energy.
Born in Bradford VR (2019) – one of the world’s largest health studies, made explorable in VR.

Why it works

Traditional consultation reaches the people who already come to consultations. A jet pack on a high street reaches everyone else – and once someone has flown down their own high street, they have opinions about it. The fun is the way in; the questionnaire is the point.

The same thinking – making something complex explorable, so people want to engage with it – runs through our work on public engagement with science, from the Virtual Plant Cell to Microbial Puppet Masters at the House of Lords.

Planning a consultation, an exhibition or an event that needs people to actually take part? Get in touch.