Measurable quantitative metrics are most often utilised to evaluate the success of smart cities, but they can be blind to many impacts of smart interventions on social networks.
Simultaneously, it is possible that smart interventions are designed to perform under certain metrics, which paints an unreal picture of their impact. For this reason, in the final stages of Smart Kalasatama, we have evaluated its social impact through qualitative research methods.
Gathering qualitative data on opinions and attitudes of the residents towards the city services has given valuable insights on how to improve Smart Kalasatama and future projects. Even if this is a common practice in projects with citizen involvement, the information gathered through qualitative research does not often strongly influence on decision-making processes compared to measurable quantitative data. How do we increase the impact of qualitative research on the decision-making process and how do we apply the learnings in practice? The challenge of this workshop is to reflect on the validity and importance of qualitative data to evaluate living labs and ideate on the methods to utilise it during the decision-making.