HDTwin Council Application

HDTwin Council lets you run a deliberation — a simulated focus group or poll — with a panel of Human Digital Twins, then explore and share the resulting report.

This guide follows the hosted service at council.hdtwin.eu, from signing in to exporting results. The screenshots show the Italian interface; the English control names used below are translations, and may appear differently if you change the interface language.

Before You Start

To run a deliberation you need:

• Access to HDTwin Council — an account may be required.
• A panel — a compiled .hdt file. If you do not have one, the Get a demo panel tab offers a demonstration panel, and a personalised demo can be booked from the same tab.

Unfamiliar with terms such as panel, deliberation, or seed comments? See the Glossary.

1. Sign In

Open council.hdtwin.eu and choose one of the sign-in methods offered on the page:

• access token by email;
• Google;
• GitLab.

A panel must be loaded before you can create a deliberation, so the next step follows immediately.

2. Load a Panel

The panel page offers two tabs:

• Upload panel — load a panel from a file or a URL.
• Get a demo panel — use a demonstration panel provided by the service.

To load your own panel, select Select file or URL and choose a .hdt file or enter its URL. If you need to confirm that your panel is supported, use More information about panel formats and requirements. The page also links to HDTwin studio for panel customisation.

Once the panel loads, the application takes you to the new deliberation form. A panel summary appears at the top of the page; expand it to read the panel’s description and details.

3. Configure a Deliberation

Enter a Title and a Description for the question or topic you want the panel to consider. You can type both yourself, or select Apply preset to populate the form from a preset — then review and edit the values before continuing.

The form offers two further controls:

• Verbosity — the response style you want from the participants: No comments, One word, Tweet, or Free form.
• Predefined comments — the statements the panel starts from, also called seed comments in the Glossary. Enter a statement and select Add to include it, and use the delete icon beside a statement to remove it. Add them when you need them; the form marks them as required when No comments is selected.

4. Start the Deliberation

When the form is ready, select Start the debate. A confirmation dialog lets you review the panel, the selected verbosity, and credit information before the deliberation begins.

The dialog shows the maximum credit amount and your available balance. The service states that it charges only for actual usage — review the values shown in your session before confirming.

Select Confirm to start, or Cancel to return to the form without starting.

You are then taken to the report page. While the deliberation runs:

• the message “Deliberation is running…” appears at the top of the report;
• the report refreshes every 10 seconds, updating with new votes and statements until all participants have finished.

Completion time varies with the size of the panel. You can stop the deliberation at any time.

5. Read the Report

When the “Deliberation is running…” message disappears, the deliberation is complete. The report header shows the topic, its description, the creation date, and an overview of the results.

Depending on the deliberation, the report can include:

• Overview — participation and activity metrics, including voters, votes, statements, and averages.
• Divisiveness — how much consensus or disagreement exists within the panel on the topic, including any detected consensum.
• Panel sentiment — how participants voted on each statement, overall and by opinion group.
• Majority — statements for which at least 60% of participants voted either way.
• Opinion groups — groups of participants whose voting patterns were similar to one another and different from those of other groups.
• Areas of uncertainty — statements that more than 30% of participants passed on.
• Graph — a visualisation of the relationships between statements and participants. Follow the instructions shown alongside the graph to explore it.

The report header also provides these actions:

• Print — opens the browser’s print dialog; use the browser’s Save as PDF destination to keep a PDF copy.
• Export Data — the report’s data export action.
• Dashboard — returns to the deliberation list.

Fore more information read Understanding HDTwin Council Reports

6. Manage Deliberations

The Dashboard lists your deliberations and their status. A completed deliberation shows its topic, status, participant count, and retention information — select View Report to open its report again.

Select New Deliberation to start another one. The panel you loaded remains available in the panel summary at the top of the page, so you can reuse it without uploading it again.

Delete a Deliberation

Select Delete beside a deliberation to open a confirmation dialog. Read the warning carefully: confirming permanently removes that deliberation and cannot be undone. Choose the cancel option to keep it, or confirm to remove it and return to the Dashboard.

7. Next Steps

• To understand where panel files come from and how they are built, read the HDTwin studio Panel Builder guide.
• For data protection and responsible-use obligations when working with synthetic personas, see the Compliance section.
• To look up any term used on this page, see the Glossary.