Stop 7 of 8 · Later
Public meeting materials
Boards, a one-page handout and a plain-language summary in Claude Design, plus the twelve questions the room will actually ask.
The room
Forty people in a school cafeteria, boards on easels, a table of handouts, and Leila answering questions for two hours. Almost nobody in that room will read the study. The boards, the handout and the eight minutes she spends at a board are the study, as far as the corridor is concerned.
The materials usually get built in the last three days before the meeting, out of report figures that were drawn for engineers, in a PowerPoint template that fights back at 36 by 48 inches.
What the set is
| Piece | What it has to do |
|---|---|
| Four to six boards | Carry one idea each, readable from three feet away |
| A one-page handout | Leave the room with the reader, with the comment route on it |
| A plain-language summary | Two pages, for the agency website and the record |
| A question and answer sheet | The twelve questions, with answers Leila already agreed |
Claude Design builds the boards and the handout as a design you can open, edit and export, rather than a description of one. Ask for one artboard per board, at the printed size, and iterate on the layout in the same conversation.
The stamp rule reaches the boards too. Nothing goes on a board that Leila has not signed off in the report, and nothing goes on a board that the agency has not released. A recommendation on an easel is a recommendation the neighbourhood believes has been made.
[upload the final report] Write a two-page plain-language summary of this study for residents, at an eighth grade reading level. Four sections: what we studied and why, what we found, what is proposed, and how to comment with the deadline. Replace every engineering measure with what a person at that intersection experiences, and give me a table of every translation you made, the technical value and the plain sentence, so I can check them. Use only the findings in Section 7 as written.
Build five public meeting boards from that summary, one artboard each at 36 by 48 inches portrait: project and study area, existing conditions, what we found, what is proposed, and next steps with how to comment. One headline per board, no more than sixty words of body text, room for one map or figure that I will place. Use the agency's blue and grey, and put the project name and the comment deadline on every board.
From this summary and the proposed measures, list the twenty questions residents are most likely to ask at the meeting, ordered by how likely they are. Group them: questions the report answers, questions the agency answers, and questions nobody can answer yet. For the first group, draft a two-sentence answer in plain language with the report section behind it. Leave the second and third groups as questions.