WRITTEN ON February 23rd, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Design: Co-creation, What do we want?

While we’ve been frothing about DirectGov Ts&Cs and C21stconsulting-spam Public Strategist has come across and recommendssome key NCC research into consumers and the discipline of listening and engagement. People make six simple requests, he summarises:

Listen to us: “…something more like you’re doing here [deliberative forum], and people actually listened and did something, things would be better.”

Talk to us face-to-face: “…because if it’s not face-to-face people won’t believe they’ll do anything.”

Come and see how we live: “…they should send people to live in the community to find out for themselves – it’s ok listening to us, someone needs to be there to see what it’s really like.”

Help us make our voices heard: “It’s difficult for us to get anywhere, to say what we want.”

Give us feedback – no more ‘fake listening’: “They make a big deal about collaborating and listening to everyone, which they do but in the final [council] decision the weighting given to local people is 20%.We’re the ones who have to put up with it, why isn’t it 80% for us and 20% for them? It’s an indication of the fundamental problem. They’re communicating with us in the sense that they’re getting our views, but they’re not listening and responding appropriately.”

Be honest with us: “…if you can’t do anything for people, tell them you can’t.”

Bookmark; read at leisure. If people listen to Ed Mayo’s outfit we might yet work out how to understand our customers, which is the start point to sorting the rest of it out.