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What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?

Alex Kale, Danni Liu, Maria Gabriela Ayala, Harper Schwab, Andrew McNutt

TL;DR

This study investigates how interactive visualization can support participatory budgeting in Chicago by employing a design-probe approach with PB experts to examine graphical elicitation and dashboards as tools for expressing preferences and understanding process transparency. Grounded in utility-theory concepts and prior work on graphical elicitation, the authors reveal that visualization can enhance voter deliberation and clarity about budget constraints while exposing challenges around accessibility, literacy, and trust. The work contributes a concrete formative design-probe, qualitative insights into how visualization shapes PB deliberation, and recommendations for building civic capacity through visual tools in political systems. It also argues for sustained involvement of visualization professionals in civic design and identifies directions for empirical work on deployment, ethics, and effectiveness in real PB contexts.

Abstract

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic approach to allocating municipal spending that has been adopted in many places in recent years, including in Chicago. Current PB voting resembles a ballot where residents are asked which municipal projects, such as school improvements and road repairs, to fund with a limited budget. In this work, we ask how interactive visualization can benefit PB by conducting a design probe-based interview study (N=13) with policy workers and academics with expertise in PB, urban planning, and civic HCI. Our probe explores how graphical elicitation of voter preferences and a dashboard of voting statistics can be incorporated into a realistic PB tool. Through qualitative analysis, we find that visualization creates opportunities for city government to set expectations about budget constraints while also granting their constituents greater freedom to articulate a wider range of preferences. However, using visualization to provide transparency about PB requires efforts to mitigate potential access barriers and mistrust. We call for more visualization professionals to help build civic capacity by working in and studying political systems.

What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?

TL;DR

This study investigates how interactive visualization can support participatory budgeting in Chicago by employing a design-probe approach with PB experts to examine graphical elicitation and dashboards as tools for expressing preferences and understanding process transparency. Grounded in utility-theory concepts and prior work on graphical elicitation, the authors reveal that visualization can enhance voter deliberation and clarity about budget constraints while exposing challenges around accessibility, literacy, and trust. The work contributes a concrete formative design-probe, qualitative insights into how visualization shapes PB deliberation, and recommendations for building civic capacity through visual tools in political systems. It also argues for sustained involvement of visualization professionals in civic design and identifies directions for empirical work on deployment, ethics, and effectiveness in real PB contexts.

Abstract

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic approach to allocating municipal spending that has been adopted in many places in recent years, including in Chicago. Current PB voting resembles a ballot where residents are asked which municipal projects, such as school improvements and road repairs, to fund with a limited budget. In this work, we ask how interactive visualization can benefit PB by conducting a design probe-based interview study (N=13) with policy workers and academics with expertise in PB, urban planning, and civic HCI. Our probe explores how graphical elicitation of voter preferences and a dashboard of voting statistics can be incorporated into a realistic PB tool. Through qualitative analysis, we find that visualization creates opportunities for city government to set expectations about budget constraints while also granting their constituents greater freedom to articulate a wider range of preferences. However, using visualization to provide transparency about PB requires efforts to mitigate potential access barriers and mistrust. We call for more visualization professionals to help build civic capacity by working in and studying political systems.
Paper Structure (24 sections, 5 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 24 sections, 5 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Participatory Budgeting in Chicago
  4. Software for Participatory Budgeting
  5. Graphical Elicitation
  6. Utility Theory
  7. Design Probe
  8. Probe Walkthrough
  9. Design Choices & Rationales
  10. Simulating PB Data
  11. Interface Versions & Revisions
  12. Method
  13. Participants
  14. Procedure
  15. Qualitative Analysis
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Current PB ballots tend to be a static paper-like form which include cost estimates, project descriptions, and sample images. Here we have adjusted an real ballot to describe the projects used in our probe.
  • Figure 2: In our design probe, participants weigh their preferences about projects on a hypothetical PB ballot in three stages.
  • Figure 3: On the final page of our probe, participants viewed a dashboard of simulated voting results. This dashboard also included a clickable map (not shown) to select which wards to compare.
  • Figure 4: In addition to \ref{['fig:map']}'s heatmap, our dashboard included a strip plot for each selected ward showing how participants' allocation of funds compared to that of (simulated) others.
  • Figure 5: Participants typically changed their preferences in light of the new information revealed at each stage of the design probe.