Should Social Media Listening Be a Part of Your Design Process?
UX & product designers are already doing it. Can architects and landscape architects use social listening data to improve the built environment?
Every designer wants their projects to be a success with their intended audience, be it a public park or a commercial building. Many project teams now incorporate public outreach into their planning efforts to help the project team better understand the needs and concerns of the community. While the information gathered during such activities like public workshops has become incredibly useful, it is still limited by the number of people who have the time and inclination to physically show up at an event. The sample of the community made available by such methods is pretty small when measured against the actual size of a given community. What if there was a way to ‘listen in’ on a larger community’s habits and preferences and develop a deeper understand of how they, as a group, utilize their existing public spaces? What we are talking about is called ‘social listening’ and this article will explore methods already being used by other design disciplines that could have impact on the way creators of the built environment approach their preliminary research and planning efforts.
What is Social Media Listening?
Basically the definition of social media listening is, “The process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the Internet.” Big corporate brands use this extensively as do journalists wanting to gauge public opinion, in real time, on major events. This sort of information is not usually relevant to the design process, but if we think about what is being said about a place and/or specific activities instead of a company or individual, this allows us to expand the definition a bit to include data that would be of interest to architectural designers and developers. If we think beyond Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to include crowd sourced review sites like Yelp and Trip Adviser, then we can expand our listening efforts even more with feedback gathered directly from people who are actively giving their opinion on matters of usability, safety, beauty, etc. within a given community. This could be extremely relevant to any planning efforts that seek to connect with a community’s requirements and deliver a well loved and well used project.
What is the Method?
There are many, many platforms for gathering this type of data. The first step is to define what you want to learn and from whom. If you are looking for information on where people walk their dogs, maybe an image search on Instagram of dogs limited to a city location could give you an idea if people tend to stick to their neighborhoods or go further afield on walks? If your project is a mixed use center, maybe reviews on Yelp of local restaurants could give you an idea of the tastes of the community and help you with your proposed tenant mix? Once you have defined what you are looking for, you can make an educated decision on which social media channels to monitor. A platform like Hootsuite gives you the ability to set up a dashboard with all the parameters of your search and then just let it go! This method is also sometimes called ‘passive search’.
How to Use The Data?
A good example of how this data has been effectively used, is the social media strategies of public parks. While many parks are far from a new build, Parks and Rec departments have been at the forefront of using social media data to aid in their maintenance and planning efforts. By using social media more as a “customer service tool than a marketing tool.” Public parks and their governing organizations can respond in real time to visitor complaints and provide feedback directly from visitors that can inform future plans for expansion or redevelopment.
Another exciting use coming from public parks is promoting next generation thinking about “… applications for the integration of social media and augmented reality.” This might take the form of displaying park and trail maps, fitness trails, and/or facility hours. (https://patimes.org/social-media-for-public-parks-and-recreation-organizations-bridging-the-communication-gap/)
How you ultimately incorporate your social media listening data into your design process is up to you, but the point is to give designers an insight into how social media listening can give them access to the real world opinions of the community they wish to connect with. This method can be a powerful compliment to more traditional methods of outreach, common in the architectural design industry.
