In recent years, public displays have been studied as a way to foster citizen participation. However, their surroundings and users are prone to high variability, which makes it tedious to accommodate dierent contexts with an optimal participation experience. In this paper, we propose adaptive public displays as a lead for solution in tackling this issue. From a review of the motivators and barriers aecting citizen's interaction with public displays we defined a process model destined to serve as a guide for designers of such systems.