In the first week, we start off by understanding our project, the Walker creative neighborhood, and get a clue on what our project is about. We met Joy, one of our client representatives, to discuss on the project. It was a very meaningful meeting as she helped us to recognize the project’s objectives throughout our discussion.
Goal
The main goal of the project is to gather the Walker community. Due to the lack of funding to local community initiatives, the organisations may fail to cooperate with each other and brought down the connection between community. Therefore, our client hoped that some measures can be made to bridge back people in Walker.
With the aid of an online platform, such as a homepage or forum, we wish to build a space especially for the walker community. It will be a Walker-focused page including local organization and volunteer information. We hope that it can become a key in arising residents’ awareness to their community and promote volunteer work in Walker.
In long term, it is hope that connections can be rebuilt between the Walker community and people can also get use to helping each other or leaning for help on their own, which hopefully can increase their living standard or quality. The increase volunteering promote may also solve problems in business. People may also start their own business with the help of other volunteers.
Key stakeholders
Since our project involves digital technology, local people who are able to reach the internet may be our target. They may be looking for events and update information in walker in the website. Among them, we focused on people who have higher possibility in participating volunteer work at their free time, such as housewives or students, as our main users. Students, or other locals, may be interested in volunteering for their own reasons, such as building experience for their CVs, can also easily applying one through the website. We will also have to cooperate with local business in walker since they may also be promoted in the page. Especially community organisation, as they may recruit volunteers via website.
However, considering that people in Walker may experience any technological problems, technology support may be need. We suggested printed newsletter, as another media besides webpage.
Further Research
When meeting other representatives later on, we would like to know more on the status of the existing community group and their projects in Walker. It is important to know if there are already similar projects running now. We may also have to investigate information of walker residents to give a background study of our stakeholders. Their background may vary our decision and how we execute the whole project. Also, it is hoped that we can interview with people having different position in walker and get a full picture of what their needs are. People with different identity may have different goals and expectation in this project.
Great first blog post! I think you have a very clear idea of what they goals of the project are so that’s a great start! In relation to the key stakeholders – it’s good to see that you’re considering things from different perspectives too.
It might be useful to do some research about volunteering too. There is lots of information about volunteering which explores who volunteers and their motivations for volunteering. This might inform some of your thoughts a little more and provide some evidence for the project. It’s great that you’ve narrowed down the key stakeholders and not kept things too broad but still be aware of others who are likely to volunteer. Another common group who volunteer a lot are retired people who still want to be active in their community. It’s good to keep the project focused whilst being aware of others’ needs. What I do really like, is that you’ve considered those who are not served by technology. I think it’s always very important to consider how a technological solution could be more inclusive for some, but more exclusive for others and coming up with alternative solutions.
Hopefully you have started to further plan for the conversations you will have with the organisations in Walker but from what you have included in the blog post, it seems you’re on the right track.
Good work!
Hi there, thanks for the post… There are many positive points in here. Your goals to “to gather the Walker community” seem to fit, perhaps you could specify it further towards something like “to raise the level of volunteer work in Walker and obtain funding for community organisations” or something like that. In terms of your key questions for the project, perhaps you could reformulate it to “would a online forum be able to attract interest of local volunteers?” or something like that. You’ll revise goals and questions over time. Crucially, both give you a guide and aims for your work and the application you will work on.
I think you made a good start at identifying key stakeholders. As you go into interviews with user representatives, do check in whether you can further refine the key audiences that you would need to involve. Perhaps ask the representatives some questions, such as which audiences do you already engage, which ones could you engage more with, and what are the challenges to do so at present… I think your considerations for whether those audiences are able to reach online is an interesting and important question to explore.
Next, go on and draft a schedule for your interviews with representatives from within Walker… There are four representatives and they should give you able feedback for your project, on different audiences… Your interviews will likely take place at offices in Walker… Use your day to get a feel for the area. Perhaps bring a map as a prompt to discuss the area with your stakeholders. Use your interviews to establish key audiences and revise your stakeholder map. Perhaps consider bringing post-its to the meeting to document challenges mentioned and rephrase them into opportunities. In the design sprint book, Knapp talks about rephrasing challenges and problems into ‘how might we’ notes (e.g. local residents are difficult to engage —> How might we engage with hard to reach individuals?).
Please note your interviews are coming up very soon, so ideally post your interview outline here for comments today or at the latest tomorrow. Good work so far. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow in class.