The intent of this workshop was to ideate around the goals, the meaning and the representation of what Mind the Gaps is for us.

It works by one of us starting the sentence by “Mind the Gaps is…” and by saying a word. The person next to them would say another word, and so until someone says “fullstop”. When it happens, the sentence is considered as finished and we start a new round of collaborative ideation.

  • a framework to understand discrepencies between feelings of citizens and policy makers #democracy
  • a system to collect, visualise and educate citizens and local governments about data and its complexities.
  • a sensitive approach to data commons which incorporates citizen sensing, open data and a mindful understanding of well-being in the cithey #babam!

We then listed 3 words we found representative what Mind the Gaps is about:

  • thought provoking
  • inform
  • engaging
  • co-design
  • people focused
  • politically sensitive
  • cold data
  • invisible
  • resilience

We bounced on these words to write several one liners. We then collated our trials into the following and satisfying description of the project:

Mind the Gaps is a thought provoking experiment to bring citizen sensing closer to policy making. It is a system for open data collection about well-being and inequalities in cities.

It will invite citizens to paint a more comprehensive picture of their experience of their neighbourhood.

It adds qualitative and granular data to existing robust datasets. This will aim to stimulate open discussions and help policy makers build more resilient cities.