Exploring democratic thinking for the Open University
- Developed an interactive public engagement tool to explore democratic attitudes and everyday extremism.
- Designed a user experience that encourages thoughtful reflection without judgement.
- Delivered a sophisticated, data-capturing back end to enable academic insight and analysis.
The ambition
When The Open University approached Enigma Interactive to design a bespoke digital tool as part of the EU-funded OppAttune Project, the challenge was clear: create an engaging, interactive experience that encouraged users to reflect on their own democratic beliefs and capacity for dialogue. The tool needed to resonate with a wide audience, remain neutral in tone, and be underpinned by robust academic research.
Developed in partnership with the lead researcher on the project, Professor Kesi Mahendran, the diagnostic tool is part of a larger academic endeavour to combat political extremism through attuned dialogue. The project investigates how oppositional political narratives evolve and what strategies can limit their spread. Our role was to build a web-based tool that could be used by the general public to reflect on their political engagement style and everyday extremism.
The tool needed to:
- Be engaging, intuitive, and visually accessible to a wide range of audiences.
- Avoid influencing user responses through design or content bias.
- Serve both as a public education tool and data collection instrument for future research.
What we did
Collaborative Process
The Enigma Interactive development team engaged in close consultation with the Open University project leads throughout the project. This was essential to understand the nuances that had to be considered when collecting data and the importance of what this project had to deliver. Their academic framing informed every step of the development process, from the wording of questions to the sequencing of modules and user flow.
Frequent feedback loops ensured we struck the right balance between accessibility and intellectual rigour, while our design team rapidly prototyped and iterated to meet both technical and philosophical goals.
Designing for thoughtful engagement
From the start, the team recognised that this wasn’t a typical questionnaire or diagnostic. It needed to feel respectful, deliberate, and reflective, more like a thoughtful conversation than a test.
The visual design uses a subdued collage style that strikes a careful balance: approachable but not playful, serious but not sterile. Interactions, like card-sorting and value-based prompts, were specifically chosen to make users pause and consider, rather than click through quickly. This considerate UX was a core requirement from the client and shaped everything from layout to motion design.
Data collection and scoring
Capturing meaningful data while maintaining a seamless user experience posed several challenges. Questions had to be presented in non-hierarchical ways (e.g., no obvious rankings), and multiple response types required nuanced scoring mechanisms.
Our developers built a sophisticated form architecture behind the scenes, allowing for:
- Precise data collection aligned to academic scoring models.
- Adaptive responses based on user input.
- Presentation of personalised results, including insights on democratic engagement styles and potential for attuned dialogue.
Management of a complex stakeholder group
Though we worked directly with The Open University, this project is part of a larger, multi-institutional framework involving researchers across Europe. This meant navigating evolving requirements, complex governance, and multiple rounds of academic feedback.
Through early consultation workshops, regular check-ins, and detailed feedback loops, we maintained alignment across priorities including visual neutrality, rigorous logic, user-centred design, and scalable deployment.
A secure soft-launch
To prepare for full public rollout, this platform was soft-launched behind a secure login to allow for final tweaks, testing, and academic review. It is scheduled to go live publicly in September 2025 on The Open University’s OpenLearn platform, supported by a coordinated media campaign aimed at sparking national dialogue and reflection.
Results
Meaningful and attuned dialogue
Built to scale
Limiting evolution of extreme narratives
Set to go live in September 2025 on The Open University’s OpenLearn platform, the tool is designed to scale. It will be promoted widely, including via mainstream media partnerships, and aims to prompt thousands of people to reflect on how they engage with democracy.
More than just an online quiz, this is a meaningful intervention in political discourse. It shows how thoughtful digital design can support civic engagement, academic discovery, and ultimately a more inclusive democratic culture.
The response from The Open University team has been overwhelmingly positive. Describing the interactive as "incredibly well received," they expressed a clear desire to carry the concept forward into future projects, with discussions already underway to explore revised versions and costings for upcoming initiatives. Reflecting on working together, they noted how valuable and insightful the development process had been.
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