"hubbel": A Hybrid Letterbox That Stimulates Civic Participation Through Local Information Sharing in Neighbourhoods

Abstract

Local civic participation is essential to democracy. Yet, citizens need to be informed about local matters to get involved. Becoming and staying informed about developments in one’s neighbourhood is difficult as local knowledge is scattered among online and offline sources, hard to find and understand. Using participatory Contextual Design we curated a novel form of participation with the interactive artifact "hubbel", which combines the digital and the analogue through a hybrid letterbox to crowd-source local knowledge. During our two-month in-the-wild evaluation, the hubbel was heavily used (260 postcards, 2067 visits). It stimulated democratic discourse and (offline) political participation by rendering tacit local issues visible. We propose ways to improve the hubbel’s design so that citizens can more easily share their expertise with others and to avoid harmful consequences like pseudo-participation. Finally, the hubbel demonstrates why analogue components are indispensable for civic participation tools. Supplements and open-source code: OSF-Link.