designing for civic engagement

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 - angel@codeforamerica.org // @angelk

Emily - emily@codeforamerica.org // @emilyville

Liz - liz@codeforamerica.org // @ezoehunt

Sheba - sheba@codeforamerica.org // @snajmi