3) TRECC Planning: Interview with Stakeholders: Peter and Sheila

Reflective log- Our Approach to user interview

This first part of the reflection log is about the planning of the the user interviews. We plan how to approach the interviewees, our goals and questions.
The second post 3.5 will be about the actual interviews and outcomes.

Who do you involve and what insights do you hope to gain?
It is important for us to understand the current situation as well as identify the key problems from the different sides.

We will be interviewing Peter Cockbain (and Heather Docherty) , who represents the city council (fair housing unit) and Sheila Spencer, who represents the community perspective. We hope to gain and insight to the perspectives of the stakeholders regarding the planning process and community involvement. At the end, we will ask each stakeholder: to make our project a success, what 3 wishes they might have in regards to improving the communication (planners and public) and community engagement.

The main goals and insights of the interviews
For Peters Cockbain interview, we plan to focus on the methods of engagement deployed by developers and councils and the evaluation of their effectiveness and outcomes.
We will ask about how they approach different groups and how they communicate with the public and the challenges that come with.
For Sheila Spencers interview, we look at the role of the user and how the community experiences planning projects and the public engagement. We will also look at their relation between the authorities and public as well as the the communication issues around this.

Method
We decided to use a Qualitative approach in users context. The key idea was to understand the practices that take place. We will focus on the existing situation and what each side perceive as the key problems. A Semi-structured interview will take place where we have a set of questions, but allow flexibility around topics and give room for open discussion. In both Interviews we try to guide the stakeholders through our questions, and to focus on the engagement and the relation between the authorities and communities.
We will ask the interviewees to sign consent forms, agreeing to be recorded for notetaking purposes.
For each interview we will have a person (or two) asking questions, and always one or more to take notes (electronically and/or paper format) as well as record.

Further Progress
Thomas and Rory have been assigned to do research for previous cases so we can gain more insight into similar situations and the implications that came along. It will give us a better understanding of old practices, the weaknesses and the opportunities.

3) North Tyneside youth council – stakeholder interviews

Our approach to user research has been specifically based on the key stake holder North Tyneside youth council. These a young people aged between 13 – 18 therefore it is particularly important that our method is suitable for the age group.

What methods do you employ? (i.e. see lecture 2), Who do you involve and what insights do you hope to gain? What did you plan for your user interviews?

The initial method was contextual enquiry as it includes user conversation. With emphasis on the talking aloud method and artefact use. We feel this would be best as sometimes younger people can express their thoughts and ideas verbally or through visuals aid such as drawings. With large groups such as a youth council it will also encourage a collaborative detailing practice. Where all members are included rather than a survey or questionnaire style. Along with this method we also decided to conduct one of our meetings with the youth council using a design research method. It was intended to run the session in a workshop format. We created poster prompts to allow the members to write down ideas and thoughts in a creative way including different coloured pens in order of importance. Through these posters we has planned for a particular points or question to be on each so it wasn’t to over whelming. The points were of significance to help us better understand what the stake holders wanted achieved. With putting two methods into place we could create a strong attention to values and experience, but also making tangible with the use of posters and interactive activities.

Although we have had one meeting with the youth council members we do hope to have a more productive second meeting. Unfortunately, we did face some challenges with the adults present. They did take over the session and asked many of their own questions. Making it difficult to run the work shop style session with the youth member. Although it was beneficial because it clearly outlined we have a lot further to go with understanding clearly what they want achieved through the digital method. As it was different to what we had expected, they don’t want an app or anything online due to cost. So we are revisiting this as they want something much more simpler.

For our future research we hope to follow a workshop style for the youth with an additional element of wither surveys or questionnaires for the adults involved. This would allow for both groups to have a platform of opinion and ideas without one dominating. During week 4 we have also decided to outline some goals based on feedback from our previous blogs and what we learnt from our client meetings.

Key issues or issue the North Tyneside Council want achieved from a digital method
Is there a particular emphasis on the environment in the area if so do they wish for this method to help solved these issues?
Who should this digital method be aimed at? Youth council member or general public?

Week 4: Revisiting Goals & Finding Examples

Our initial goals were to rebuild bridges between people in Walker and encouraging pro-community organisations to cooperate, by promoting activities and opportunities, increasing people’s awareness of what is being offered for them and encouraging businesses present in Walker to social reinvestment. We were to achieve this by creating a set of tools, both digital and non-digital, for the community to encourage volunteering and entrepreneurship and to share ideas and communicate

These goals received positive feedback at interviews of relevant parties and as such remain largely similar. However, encouraging businesses to reinvest in their communities is a side-track, although this may be a way in which the website can be partially funded. Similarly, it would be doing too much too soon to work on both digital and non-digital, as this can provide the greatest immediate benefit. We have decided that a greater emphasis on encouraging people to volunteer is also important, and as such this has taken on a greater focus. As such, our update project goals are:

Promote activities and opportunities for residents
Encourage pro-community organisations to cooperate with each other
Encourage local people to become more involved in volunteering with their local community groups

To ensure that we were on the right track with our ideas, we research three relevant projects that were related to some or all of our project goals.

Example 1: PeopleCan

An initiative in Bradford ran by the council that has the aim of encouraging community action and volunteering.
Provides links to apply for volunteering
It uses Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and YouTube to widen its scope
There is a volunteers’ section which includes a recruitment notice and advertising posters and videos
- There are volunteering ‘awards’ available to the best performers / contributors
- Advantages to CVs are mentioned as a benefit
‘Community Action’ page aimed at prompting cooperating between communities and local government to deliver community projects, eg litter clears
Ongoing events are posted, and there is an option for people to suggest events

Example 2: Voluntary Norfolk

A group based in Norfolk that is creating a volunteering network across the county
Aims are to:
- Encourage social inclusion by the engagement of local people in the community regeneration and development
- Promote, support and develop volunteering and the work of voluntary organisation and groups
- Enable people to contribute their time, skills and talents for community’s benefit
Offer training to help people into work and improve volunteering skills

Example 3: Erewash Partnership

I interviewed Ian Viles, the chief executive. This organisation is based in Derbyshire and aimed at delivering economic development projects and support for potential and existing businesses, and helping local people to access training

If we were to build a community website targeted towards the Erewash borough what requirements would you include?

We currently have a website tailored to business participation & 2 town centre listings… A website aimed at including the community would have to be less technical. A list of business partners & event listings for the borough would be key. A good starting point for us would maybe be to build from our current Ilkeston & Long Eaton town centre websites.

Out of the following features (map, event calendar, help into volunteering access, community noticeboard) would you consider the most important in a community website?

The map and event calendar… because our aim of community enterprise means we encourage the use and betterment of local business & a map would easily lay out where to find them. The calendar… would help promote our & other events in the borough aimed at attracting visitors & therefore business.

In… Walker particularly, it may prove difficult to encourage the community to actually use the website. Have you any suggestions as to what may prompt their participation?

Keep the website easy to navigate… If users can access what they want by an easy route that isn’t too confusing / time consuming… Make it an enjoyable experience as much as a technical website.

This suggests that we are on the right track. Many of our suggested options are functions are suggested or used in the above examples. It is clear an event calendar is a popular function, evidenced by both PeopleCan using it and Erewash Partnership suggesting it. Voluntary Norfolk in particular provides lots of ideas on how to engage with and encourage new potential volunteers. CV support is evidently a worthwhile option.

Week 10: Where Next?

In terms of next steps to take the project forwards, the next immediate step would be to take it back to the community groups of Walker. As the proposal suggests the website should be self-reliant, it depends heavily on their input, which has already been positive. Something akin to a partnership of willing Walker community groups, who can then streamline ideas into a functional mock-up of the scheme. This would allow them to collectively apply for grant funding, increasing the chances of funding being approved.

Based off user test feedback, a ‘What’s New’ section would also be desirable to allow users to identify changes – such as new events, for example. Whilst not the main target audience, there is a wish to include features incentivising children to use the site. Businesses could be encouraged to advertise their activities and job training opportunities too. Comments on the noticeboard should be approved before being posted online as a safeguard against abuse of this feature.

Long-term, if we were to pursue this idea we would include a feedback system to encourage constructive criticism – both positive and negative – on events, which would allow the event creators to make changes going forwards. This can only be a positive as it allows community groups to improve what events, services and classes they offer and to make it more tailored around the needs of the community. If their offerings are more attractive, it will potentially attract more use and traffic, both to these and the website itself. A more efficient use of funding towards these services means that there is more available to improve elsewhere. Additionally, if they can be shown to be working this will potentially help towards further future funding.

Expanding on the volunteering scheme as the website becomes more well-known and established is also important as a method of encouraging further volunteering. A method of doing this would be to improve rewards as increased site usage and funding allows, possibly to include incentives such as shopping vouchers or vouchers towards education classes. Giving people a route into work at the end of volunteering would be a major advancement in improving the lives of people in Walker. Self-help is a key aspect of what our interviewees suggested would be successful motivation tool.

Branching out into a newsletter would allow for those without access to the internet – around 40% – to see information on the community groups, events and volunteering information organised into one place. It wouldn’t be as comprehensive as the website, but would remove the major problem of lack of total coverage from the website solution concept.

Blog 11: Jesmond Energy Production Platform- What’s next?

We’re now here to conclude the design sprint project and to discuss what we feel would be best for the project in terms of progression. It will just be a shorter blog today than normal as there isn’t as much to discuss as there has been in the past.

Much like every single project going the next step is always where they’re looking to go so it’s only right we do so with this one too. We believe that the next and right step for this project would be to develop the prototype further by addressing the feedback we got from Peter and Steve, then to go out and test the project with real life residents of the Jesmond area and show it to them see how they would react to potentially becoming a member of this social/community energy dashboard and working towards the principles of an energy cooperative in the area.

Coming up for the team now we have our final presentations to our client Tony and hopefully all of our findings and results was what he was hoping to find and that we have aided his cause of helping the Jesmond community!

With the feedback we got from the user tests and discussed below we feel that a lot more research is needed of the local area, people that live there, who would really use the dashboard, feasibility, scouting out local businesses to use them and promote them have a fool proof plan that it really would become successful.

That is all for now!

Team JEPP signing out…

Air Quality Group Week 7

Approaching the set methods to create our prototype we first faced which prototyping resources would be the most effective form of communication with the User Groups conveying the set message of air quality activism in an easy approachable format.

A Prototyping model is built, tested, and then reworked as necessary until an acceptable prototype is finally achieved from which the complete system or product can now be developed. (SearchCIO)

As outlined our approach to prototyping our concept would have to convey effectively our concept while being open to change depending on the user’s feedback, for this Marvel seemed an appropriate resource for prototyping allowing a visual and easy to use fundamental app dashboard concept façade to be displayed and tested by the user groups hopefully allowing easy understanding and honest feedback, to fully display our concept Marvel provided a good displaying platform however to fully depict our concept Adobe Photoshop is also a reliable and efficient prototyping tool to allow concept images to be displayed in a real world image environment to further engage the audience.

To create our prototype our team had to decide on a format that is accessible to a wider audience of pedestrians and commuter of various ages, to effectively target both a pedestrian and commuter audience the prototype would be in two part with two member primarily in each while also working and assisting the other part of the prototype. A Marvel App is to be designed on edition for pedestrians and one for commuters displayed on the adverting space already existing on current bus tops.

To promote air quality activism displaying of accessible information is crucial in engaging the user audience along Gosforth high street both pedestrian and commuter. This is to educate and promote community matters such as air quality pollution in the surrounding neighborhood by creating a need to talk and address these issues which are held back due to the current difficulty of interputating the existing data generated by the air pollution censors already fitted along Gosforth high street and projected by Newcastle’s Urban Observatory.

What to consider in preparing usability tests?

Towards the end of a design project, we prepare prototypes and product mock-ups and use those to gather feedback from potential users. In preparing for usability tests of prototypes and user interface designs, the following pointers may be useful to consider.

Focus, focus, focus: What’s the most important aspect of your story board to prototype? It’s likely not important to test processes such as sign-ups and log-ins. You may assume that the user has already logged in, they are already at the point of use, where the part of the action states you want to test. Remember the structure of the five-step interview, before you show your prototype, provide a little introduction, e.g., by saying “Imagine you are in the following situation…” (develop context) Then introduce your app.
Clarify the user path: As with story boards, think about the sequence of actions you intend your users to follow as they use the prototype (user paths). How can you design for this sequence? For interface design consider, e.g., appropriate navigation, buttons that give away what to do next, explanatory text (sometimes called ‘copy’) that indicates what users are to do…. Ask yourself what are the five key steps that users need to go through to complete the experience you design for. You can also look at the project repository on the Marvel site, where there are many great examples.
Make it real: The tricky bit of usability testing with the kinds of prototypes we have is to make users believe they interact with the real thing. So consider how you deliver your prototype (e.g. on a tablet?) and what levels and kinds of interactions the prototype efforts users to do.
Speaking aloud: Remember to remind users to speak aloud when you observe their use of the prototype. The ‘speak aloud’ method is a key method in usability testing. Before you give any prompts, hints, or tips, let the user explore your prototype and play with it. Observe what they do and listen what they say. Ask them to things like “What do you think you should do here on this page?” or “What do you wish you could do on this page but can’t?”.
Document and capture: Usability tests are all about testing whether your app works as intended. Keep notes what users do, where they struggle, where they get lost. Remember to make arrangements for how you document the user interactions. For example, in one group we discussed the possibility to develop a template to record observations. This template would list the different pages of your prototype and offer a field to capture written notes. Usability tests also usually depend on protocol analysis, that is alike to a transcript of all statements made by the participant. It would be very good to capture any insightful statements users make.
End on a high note: Do a brief debrief. Have a set of questions read to try sum up the users’ experience and overall impression of the prototype. Always great is the question “If you had a magic want, what three things would you change or improve about this app?” OR “How useful did you find this app” Explore general statements what was useful and what wasn’t, and if the app was usable or not.

Air Quality Group – Week 6 Storyboard

storyboard-box-1

Gosforth high street is a quiet busy street and there are many business on the street. And 96 buses drive through the street everyday which is uncontrolled and air-polluted. So every passenger and pedestrian can see this screen when they walk pass it.

storyboard-box-2

On the right hand side, The tree is our logo and can change depends on the air pollution that can be seen easily. Our whole colors is red, green and yellow (traffic lights color) as it is markedness and attractive. On the center screen, our information is on the left part of whole screen and will not effect bus routes information.

storyboard-box-3

When people scan the code, they can have a link to download our app on apple app store and google play store.

storyboard-box-4

safe route means less-polluted route. Choices can be chosen by ticking the box. This route is planned for people who walking through Gosforth. With healthier routes, more people will choose to walk and this is what we are looking forward and encourage. It may be difficult to use this for car users as they may not want to drive another route as they are not familiar with that and it sometimes has to take more time. If they have to buy something, most of business are on the high street and they do not have other choices. Walk routes are more flexible and easier for people (parents with kids to school, people want to run or jog, people who want to take a walk after dinner) to choose.

storyboard-box-5 storyboard-box-6

We are also considering adding a forum / comment feature on the app so users can get involved in a discussion about how to tackle the air pollution now they are informed.

Blog 4 – Energy Dashboard

After reviewing on our interviews with Tony and Steve, we have evaluated our goals again for initial development on our designs. We had ‘to support residents, organisations and businesses in Jesmond in adopting a more energy efficient approach to their current consumption patterns.’ as our initial ultimate goal, and this does not change.

With the details of what the client want in the energy dashboard we are going to developed, we tried to do some more in depth research on different dashboards as examples for us to get an idea on our initial design. Each of us brought in an example of an energy dashboard we found on the internet and indicate what is the pros and cons of every single detail of it, hoping to pull all the best things about each dashboard together to create the most suitable one for Jesmond. There were examples from America, Lincoln University and other companies, each has a different feature depending on the building it serves (eg. university campus, accommodation, commercial building etc)

However, we would still need different datas from the stakeholders in Jesmond in the future for further development. We would also need to decide on creating an app or a webpage for the Jesmond residents based on which one we think would allow more people to look at it constantly and conveniently.

Blog 3 – Energy Dashboard

Summary of our user interview

On Wednesday 19th October in Cafe 1905 in Jesmond the team met up again with Client Tony and a recommended contact Steve Emsley to get his knowledge, insight and opinion on Renewable Energy and the Jesmond area as a whole for the benefit of our research for our design concept. After tea’s, coffee’s were all purchased and all formal introductions were done we asked Steve and Tony whether it was ok for us to audio record the interview for us to review after to ensure we had everything they both talked about, which they were both happy with.

We had our interview schedule ready with all the questions we wanted to ask Steve and following on from this are all the comments and advice that Steve and Tony gave to us from the questions we asked that we thought would be helpful in continuing on the process of this project.

He is a retired social worker, has worked in environmental fields before, had written for the evening chronicle on green issues, has and still does many talks on energy saving and was involved in the transition newcastle campaign which ran till 2012.
Likes having a planet to live on.
Has done various talks on renewable energy and people came to his house to have a look at the energy system installed. Held a walk in session in Jesmond in 2012 at 1901 cafe where face to face conversations were had, had a strong interest from local people. People who wanted to engage did, it’s a slow process and very political. Tony also commented that political climate and financial constraint had a drop off in awareness of climate change from the government.
Fossil fuels to climate change are the serious problems which are also hard to understand not just renewables that people don’t understand, people don’t think of climate change as a problem. When doing his talks tries to present things in a simple way but it is a very complex subject so is difficult to convey in a simple way sometimes. Writes to newspapers to keep the subject alive. Stated renewables could be a way for people with money to find something to invest in as bank rates etc are no good. Tony also stated that good publicity was needed, that it needs to be made easier for understanding.
Steve shared his energy data in the evening chronicle, 20-30 articles. Thinks that existing users of renewable energy sharing their data is important for people to see that you can actually save/make energy, money etc. Stated as long as he was aware what was happening with his data he would be more than happy to share his data online, Tony also agreed. Steve also stated that larger companies who have financial power should be helping out with renewable energy. Tony commented saying that the local authority should lead by example using solar, double glazing etc. they aren’t doing enough.
Had a consistent level of production. 5 and a half years had solar panels now and very pleased, has now reached crossover point where Steve is now creating more than they’re putting in.
Doesn’t really have an opinion thinks they should all be going towards renewable energy. Will spend more time and effort getting his opinion and point of view across to the local people. Doesn’t believe that people can not afford it. Believes media has a role to play to raise awareness. Tony commented that it’s all about finding the cheapest company for their energy which is wrong, again mentioned that the government aren’t doing enough on the matter.
Peak oil has already been found, that’s why there are wars. Bears little relation with renewable energy. Saudi Arabia raised market prices. Carbon dioxide levels are disastrous, flooding, draughting, price of foods.
Based on questions 8 reaction, answers we skipped asking this question.
Hadn’t used an energy dashboard before, but would gladly put his energy data onto one and use it for beneficial purposes for the Jesmond area. Would be good to have comparative data on different types of energy levels. Energy performance certificates for homes are very important but seem to get pushed aside. Tony stated that city council do it for poverty, police for crime so their should be somewhere you can go for energy information, data, help etc.
Thought we’d cover a very good detail of work and was pleased we got to meet and wish us luck with our project and if we should need any further help just to reach out and ask.

After this interview with Steve and Tony and all their comments on the different subjects we had covered we felt we had a good basis of information which we can start to use to help us in the designing of our prototype. Again the word that has kept cropping up and did again was the words awareness and understanding which re iterates back to our goals at the start of the project which shows we’re on the right track.