Designing for Civic Action: A Collaborative Design Session with Code for America Angel Kittiyachavalit, Elizabeth Hunt, Emily Wright, Sheba Najmi
Jan 28, 2015
Designing for Civic Action:A Collaborative Design Session with Code for America
Angel Kittiyachavalit, Elizabeth Hunt, Emily Wright, Sheba Najmi
Hi, We're Code for America
A new non-profit that brings the technology and process of startup culture to city governments to make them more transparent, open, and efficient.
● 8 cities
● 26 fellows
● 262 public open-source projects
Angel
Emily
Liz
Sheba
Agenda
9:00 - 9:30 Overview
9:30 - 10:00 Explain design challenge
10:00 - 10:10 Break
10:10 - 11:25 Work on challenge in small teams
11:25 - 11:35 Break
11:35 - 12:30 Discussion and Q&A
Today We'll Be Talking About
● Opportunities for UX in the gov and civic spaces
● Observations and insights we've gained through our fellowship
● Defining the new practice of civic engagement
THE OPPORTUNITIES
Government Interfaces
Government Computers
Department of Motor Vehicles
Bus Signage
Missing Sidewalks
OBSERVATIONS + INSIGHTS
Observations
● We don't often have user research or input to guide us
● We often go from sketches to design or straight to code
● We work in pairs (or threes) on a team — designers also code and test
● We are always measuring and evaluating
Insights
● Build to explore ideas and tactics
● Experimentation as process
● JFDI (Just F***ing Do It)
● Open Source is great!
● UX people are needed
THE CHALLENGE:CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Why Civic Engagement?
● Cities are interested because civic engagement can help crowd-source tasks with fewer city resources
● It's such a new space that the rules aren't defined. Help us define them today!
What We Want To Do Today
Come up with tactics to improve civic engagement
● How can we encourage people to help out the city by taking responsibility for a piece of city infrastructure?
● How can we keep people interested in doing that over a sustained period of time?
Feature Questions To Consider
● Incentives: Do people need incentives? What kind?
● Fun: How do we make the activity not feel like work?
● Social proof: Can we leverage this need?
● Reminders: How do we keep people engaged over a period of time?
● Urgency: How do we create a sense of urgency without being burdensome or communicating too often?
● Recognition: How can we recognize people who participate?
Experience Questions To Consider
● Acquisition: How should people learn about Adopta?
● Activation: What things will drive people to sign up?
● Retention: What things will drive people to continue participating?
● Referral: How can we leverage existing users? What could we use that leverage to do?
● Revenue: What types of business models might exist for Adopta?
Idea-starters
● Take away the important parts
● What would your closest friend do?
● Make it more sensual
● Change specifics to ambiguities
● Make what's perfect more human
● Voice your suspicions
● Use an old idea
● Faced with a choice, do both
● Use "unqualified" people
10 min Break
Design Challenge - 1.25 hours
Discussion + Q&A - 1 hour
Thank You
Angel - [email protected] // @angelk
Emily - [email protected] // @emilyville
Liz - [email protected] // @ezoehunt
Sheba - [email protected] // @snajmi