Date of Graduation

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Design in Communication or Design (MDES)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Art

Advisor/Mentor

Maxwell-Lane, Marty

Committee Member

Hapgood, Tom

Second Committee Member

McMahon, Bree A.

Keywords

City Council Meetings; Civic Engagement; Design Critique; Graphic Design

Abstract

Are local governments designed for equitable citizen participation? While civic engagement aims to empower citizens and support representative governance, barriers to participation can hinder those outcomes. City council meetings, key venues for public input, pose specific challenges such as long durations, dense content, and intimidating formalities. These issues disproportionately affect Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012), who frequently report feeling underinformed or having limited time to engage. This thesis explores how city council meetings might use multimodal mediating artifacts, inspired by design critique practices, to make public discourse more accessible for Gen Z adults.

Grounded in activity theory and Habermas’ public sphere theory, this research frames city council meetings as dynamic systems of discourse, where a citizen’s ability to contribute depends on the tools available to mediate communication. The author introduces multimodal mediating artifacts as unique instruments that utilize more than one mode of communication simultaneously for greater accessibility. To address the communication challenges within city council meetings, the author also turns to another structured form of discourse: the design critique. Contemporary critique practices, in particular, provide intentional, participatory frameworks for exchanging feedback that challenge traditional power dynamics. In this thesis, critique is used as an inspirational model for supporting inclusive, equitable public discourse.

Using Fayetteville, Arkansas’s city council meetings as a case study, this research identifies obstacles to participation through auto-ethnography, interviews, and observational analysis. These methods inform the design of a multimodal intervention encompassing a digital platform with touchscreen interfaces in and around the meeting environment. Drawing from critique structures, these interventions introduce new channels for engagement that are informal, asynchronous, and multimodal. Features are designed with Gen Z in mind, leveraging their comfort with digital communication and screen-based interaction, to build awareness for local issues and reduce knowledge barriers to participation. Ultimately, the work envisions how city council meetings could better support diverse audiences and how multimodal mediation tools can invite and inform civic participation.

Comments

Complete thesis can be viewed as supplemental file.

Additional Files
Digital_ThesisDoc.pdf (12464 kB)
Complete thesis.
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