Author: b7060487

Blog 10 – North Tyneside Prototype Testing Outcome

BLOG 10 – North Tyneside Prototype Testing Outcome 

 
On the Thursday the 7th of December, our whole group took the opportunity to meet with Julia (our main client from North Tyneside council), Teresa (our academic mentor), Oscar (mayor of the Youth Council) and Emily (part of the environmental team on the youth council). The aim of this meeting was to allow them to participate in a prototype testing on our website ‘Tyne-vironment’ that we have made using the Marvelapp website. 
 
Overall, the experience of the prototype testing was very positive and our client’s/stakeholders were very happy with the outcome of our prototype. 

·      The digital method – would be a great way to connect with the young people as they don’t come to meetings so the blog would be a good aspect 

·      Liked the range of questions

·      They can see it as a viable option as it can be  put in the monthly meeting for Emily – could be to discuss statistics or change the questions

·      The children’s council could promote this aswell because this is there peers – they will have the right language to use 

·      Really liked how we have encorporated the youth council into the newsfeed

·     Liked how we focused on a single age group (Primary School) as they recognise that is difficult to get one method to be effective from 5-16. 

 
They did provide us some useful criticism as well that we will be using in the next couple of weeks to improve Tyne-vironment in order to make the necessary changes for our final presentation to ensure that we meet all of our clients needs. 
 
The following are a summary of the notes that were taken throughout the prototype testing that we will hopefully work to improve Tyne-vironment in the coming weeks – 
 

·      Little bit wordy for the small children 

·      Could be more information on how to make choices about recycling when they get the wrong answer

·      Legend on the map for the water refill stations

·      In the future, the water refill stations could utilise the logo that oscar’s campaign will have for water refill bottle’s in North Tyneside however they are still deciding on a logo

·      Implementation of things like existing cycle paths on the google maps page

Overall, the meeting for prototype testing with our client was successful and ran smoothly. We were happy with how the meeting went and the outcome of their feedback. 

Moving forward we hope to continue to have a positive relationship with our client’s surrounding the development of Tyne-vironment and work to improve the website in order to satisfy their needs. 

1) A tool to gather young people’s priorities in North Tyneside

A tool to gather young people’s priorities in North Tyneside
BLOG 1 – Danielle, Sally, Sophie, Adam & Alex

Our group project is ‘a tool to gather young people’s priorities in North Tyneside’. Over the semester in digital civics we will be working with the North Tyneside council and youth cabinet. We will use digital civics to establish a method to enable young people in the area to express their opinions for what makes a good neighbourhood with a particular focus on the environmental issues in the area. There are a number of stakeholders listed in the brief, including North Tyneside Council, Youth cabinet representatives, young people in the wider public and officers in the environment directorate. Some challenges that might be associated with these stakeholder groups include – The council may have financial incentives which could make them biased when it comes to the development regardless of the data that is provided by the youth, however they will also benefit if development is done well as people will move into the area. The youth cabinet that currently exists may not be an accurate representation of the wider population. However, we will consider all stakeholder groups interest when designing our final product.

After unpacking the brief further during the week, the list of questions that we came up with to ask our client (Teresa) at the first meeting are as follows;

  • Is there a specific age group of the ‘youth’ we are trying to engage through the use digital civics?
  • What is the socio-economic status of the people that will be using these methods? – – – This could potentially impact our final design if not all members of the community have access to a mobile phone, there may be limitations to what we design if it needs to be accessible via computer as an alternative.
  • Will there be a chance where we can speak to the youth members in council to discuss whether they have had success on other projects to get advice on how we could approach this?
  • Since the project is looking at new housing development proposals in North Tyneside, is there a particular development happening at the moment that this project should be focused towards? Or is the aim of this long term use for all developments within the area and therefore it should be a more flexible design?
  • Is there a particular method that the client would be leaning towards us using in our prototype for example; an app, a blog, engagement on social media or are they open minded to see what we come up with ourselves.
  • Whilst this project aims to get young people to express their priorities for their neighbourhood, is there a system in place that successfully allows the rest of the population to contribute their opinions that we could potentially take ideas from? Or is gathering priorities an issue for the entire population in North Tyneside and we have just been asked to focus on this specific population group.

    We also realise that Teresa is not our main client and therefore after the meeting we may still have outstanding questions for Julia following the completion of the meeting which we will look forward to exploring further in the coming weeks. We hope after our meeting we will have a better understanding of some parts of our project so we can keep moving further.