Building a Tool That Actually Helps: Inside PANTHEON’s Participatory Design Process
In technology, it’s easy to build a complex tool in a vacuum, only to find it doesn’t solve the real-world problems of its intended users. When it comes to disaster management, this gap between developers and first responders can mean the difference between a coordinated response and chaos.
The PANTHEON project is built to close this gap.
Our core philosophy is “participatory design”, a process of co-designing our Smart City Digital Twin with the end-users, not just for them. We are holding in-depth workshops with first responders, city administrators, and community representatives in Athens, Paris, and Vienna to ensure the tool we build is a tool they will actually use.
This entire methodology is detailed in our new public report, Deliverable 3.2: “Report on Participatory Design Process.”
This document is our blueprint for user-centered design. It outlines:
- Who our key stakeholders are, from the civil protection agencies to the community groups.
- What we learned from them about the biggest gaps in disaster management.
- How their feedback and needs are being translated into specific applications and design recommendations for the PANTHEON platform.
To share these valuable insights, we’ve broken down this report into a 4-part blog series.
Explore the series:
- Blog Post 1: Beyond the Tech: Why PANTHEON is Built With First Responders, Not Just For Them An introduction to our “participatory design” philosophy and why it’s essential for bridging the gap between technology and real-world disaster response.
- Blog Post 2: The Three Faces of Disaster Management: Who is PANTHEON’s End-User? A detailed look at the three key stakeholder groups—Administrations, First Responders, and Communities—and the specific agencies we’re working with in our pilot regions.
- Blog Post 3: “The Chaos Phase”: What First Responders Told Us They Really Need A summary of the critical problems and gaps that first responders identified in our workshops, from the “chaos phase” of an emergency to flawed cross-organizational communication.
- Blog Post 4: The PANTHEON Vision: 5 Applications to Solve Real-World Gaps An overview of the five key applications we are designing for PANTHEON, each one directly addressing a problem identified by our end-users.
This series is a look under the hood of our user-centered process, showing how we are working to build a tool that truly meets the needs of those on the front lines.
The PANTHEON project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under Grant Agreement N°101074008.