Practicing data inclusion: Co-creation of an urban data dashboard

Abstract

Co-creation of urban data and informatics with community partners facilitates the development of insights and actions that are grounded in residents’ experiences and aimed at achieving social change. Despite rising interest in co-creation strategies, instructive guidance on implementation remains scarce. To address the shortage of instructive guidance, we provide a detailed account of how the resident, community, and institutional partners in the Healthy Neighborhoods Study co-created a dataset on neighborhood health, and a data dashboard that allows for all partners, as well as the public, to access and use the data to support neighborhood-level action and regional planning. We focus on the collaborative and iterative design process used to co-create a digital tool to access, analyze, interpret, and communicate community-generated data. While co-creation strategies require an upfront investment in relationship building and facilitating a more complex process, they carry significant benefits in producing truly representative datasets and data tools and services that advance data inclusion, laying the foundation for social change.