European Commission’s 2022 Platform Foresight Study Put Design and Policy in Focus

The European Commission’s 2022 procurement for a participatory foresight study on next-generation online platforms placed platform design and consumer behaviour within a wider policy question: how could the platform economy evolve, and what might those changes mean for European Union policymaking? The work was not a narrow experiment on marketplace user experience. Instead, it was a two-year exercise intended to identify long-term trends across online platforms and assess their policy implications. The Commission published the call, reference CNECT/2022/OP/0049 , in August 2022. Its official announcement of the foresight study on the future of online platforms lists a submission deadline of 22 September 2022 at 16:00 CEST . That makes the procurement a completed historical call, rather than a current tender opportunity. The framing remains relevant because interface design, recommendation systems and other platform choices can influence what people notice, compare and select online. But the Commission’s stated objective was broader than any one marketplace design question. It sought a structured view of the platform economy’s possible future trajectories and the public-policy issues those trajectories could raise. What the 2022 study was designed to examine The Commission described the project as a two-year participatory foresight study . Participatory foresight brings relevant groups into a structured exploration of future developments rather than attempting to predict one fixed outcome. In this case, the study was designed to identify ten topics in collaboration with Commission services, then examine long-term trends and their potential policy relevance. Design’s influence on consumer behaviour was part of the broader theme, not the full scope of the procurement. That distinction matters. A study focused solely on a marketplace interface might measure how a particular ranking, default or layout affects a defined consumer decision. The Commission’s foresight work i