Maptionnaire – Editor view

Sometimes you hear about an idea so simple and yet so useful that you wish it was yours. That’s the case of Maptionnaire – a platform from a Finnish start-up for quick and easy creation of map-based questionnaires.

The tool is designed for urban planning and environmental organizations to get location-based insights from citizens but the platform can be used by anyone who has to ask the question “Where” to a community, neighborhood, customers, employees or any other group of people.

The idea for Maptionnaire came from a simple idea: “Why would you ask people location-related questions without using an actual map?”. You can try to do it in any other verbal way but a map is worth a 1000 words. Adding interaction to this equation you end up with a map questionnaire which easy to follow, intuitive and it gives the spatial answer which you are looking for. Anna Broberg – CEO of Maptionnaire told us:

“By using modern, efficient tools that citizens of today and tomorrow are willing to use, you could turn the residents’ activity and interest in their surroundings into tangible knowledge that can be used in making decisions about your city to move it into world-class. You can take control of the feedback of the residents and integrate their knowledge to your planning and decision-making systems to create a flourishing and livable city.”

Maptionnaire offers you not only the platform itself but also over 10 years of experience with gathering community data for public and research projects. The company behind the service, Mapita, is a spin-off from Aalto University’s Land Use Planning and Urban Studies research group in Finland. The aim of the group was to change public participation practices in urban planning and development and making local resident insight a more integral element in planning processes. They focused their research on finding ways to stimulate interaction between urban and environmental planners and citizens. All this knowledge and experience allowed for creation of a totally unique tool.

Maptionnaire – Respondents view

“We’ve developed a map-based system that allows building questionnaires and discussion forums that link the feedback and discussions to locations in your city. Our solution Maptionnaire not only crowd-sources the citizen insight, but enables you to analyze, publish and use this information to support your decision-making and citizen engagement. Location in the feedback elevates the value of the user input and enables efficient analyses and visualizations. Our customers around the globe are happy to use Maptionnaire in the cloud without costly installations.”

And indeed the tool is really easy to use. It allows you to ask predefined location-based and non-location related questions in just a couple of clicks. My favorite feature is an open question, where responders can draw on a map points, polygons or routes themselves in an easy way. This and other functions give you unlimited potential for capturing local insights from any community. The results or each questionnaire can be reviewed with Maptionnaire’s built-in analytical tool or exported to any other GIS service if needed.

It’s really cool and useful. Give it a try.

Maptionnaire – Analysis tool view