Public engagement is necessary to improve effectiveness of a project or policy on science and technology or regional development. It is important for significant public engagement to address the following issues including spatial design, process, facilitation and management.
1. Engage with local place and community
Grasp the context of local place and community where people are engaged, understand those who work and live there, and ask for their cooperation or collaboration in different ways.
2. Design space and movement in harmony with the environment
Design space and movement in harmony with place, time, weather and event by which people spontaneously visit and get together.
3. Appeal to amenity and beauty
Arrange relaxing atmosphere, fine food and drink, beautiful landscape and artwork, and entertainment to open up to strangers.
4. Prepare for interaction, discussion and collaboration
Prepare tools for contemplation, interaction and structuration of the contemplation and interaction process and output.
5. Donʼt press a particular fact or value
Be careful to convey information unilaterally or press a particular value even with the aim of explaining the fact.
6. Provide comprehensive and balanced knowledge and views
Provide transdisciplinary knowledge and multilateral perspectives in a comprehensive and balanced way whilst appreciating expertise and understanding ambiguous and contrasting views on uncertain and complex issues.
7. Treat all the engaged persons as an equal
Treat different people as equal for wider engagement, whether organizers or participants, experts or citizens, loud talkers or silent observers, and regardless of race, age, gender, status or experience.
8. Suppress negative emotions and explore our senses
Create a place where unknown issues and novel expressions generate our emerging senses by imagining otherʼs anger, jealousy and sorrow derived by touching their stakes, experiences and ideologies and considering negative emotions would not dominate.
9. Stimulate creativity
Produce a positive outcome from new values created by participantsʼ own imagination and creativity, their interaction, discussion and collaboration.
10. Respect subjective words and actions
Respect participantsʼ own narratives and behaviours whilst acknowledging participants not as quantifiable objects but as independent subjects.
11. Face undesirable futures and head for desirable futures
Put negative aspects for the present and the future on the agenda, open up desirable future possibilities in which people positively and continuously engage, and commit to feasible actions in a responsible manner.
12. Explain the rationale of public engagement and disseminate its outcome
Explain why public engagement is needed and develop a variety of tools to disseminate its outcome to the participants and others.