Call: Overview of Survey Results and IA Team Kickoff

First, I just wanted to say I wish I could have made it on this meeting because it sounds like it was really interesting and inspiring. I've just finished listening and I made these notes along the way. Please prod me if I've misrepresented something you said or if I missed something important - it's quite late here now. [NB. My comments are in square parentheses in a few spots throughout]:

=====

Basic intros

[BTW sounds as if someone's sitting in a jungle while this was recorded!]

Wes: in his intro, Wes mentioned a requirement which there wasn't time to expand on later. I think it's worth returning to when we discuss different site structures: he suggested we structure the San Fran site [and, by definition, any major city site] into small neighbourhood groupings but that some steering groups would need to be city-wide. Not sure how this could work - perhaps with a geographical taxonomy vocabulary separate from a thematic vocab.

After intros, Ed gave an overview of the 2009 UK TT survey findings:

• Majority of current TT volunteers surveyed are not very technically literate to a high level and, on the whole, are not interested in using computers - they want to get out and meet other people. They could see the point of having a site within reason but were more interested in meeting face-to-face to discuss their own initiative's activities rather than using the web to conduct those discussions. Weren't really looking for project management support or sharing documents. [I would have butted in here to say that TT volunteers themselves may actually be a certain type of person - perhaps either suspicious of technology or disillusioned with it to some extent. However, those people are not necessarily the audience you're trying to reach for the awareness-raising component of our requirements. I would argue to reach the next step of awareness-raising targets, we need to begin activating younger, more tech-savvy people who are comfortable with Facebook et al]
• The survey focused on what initiatives need, not the network which was focussing its web resources onto their responsibilities to publish the core data of initiatives and what's going on.
• The network also aims to codify experiences in a knowledge-management type of format and not focus on the social media aspects of communications.
• A priority that most initiatives identified was a need to get messages out quickly and easily, to represent their attentions and alert volunteers to events.
• Apparently, the needs of an initiative change as they become more mature and sophisticated. For example, with just a core initiating group you don't need subspaces for project groups. Perceived requirements expand beyond a basic brochure site to embrace groups and basic project management.
• Ed went on to point out cultural differences between the UK and US [implying that might have influenced the results of the UK qualitative feedback].
• But the tools need to fit the people. Earlier generation initiatives in the UK went through a similar process to us a while ago. It's important to take technical capacity as well as socio-technical issues into account.
• Conflict resolution is an issue as people can get quite emotional on web-based discussion platforms. Need for new processes and facilitation.
• Important to still respect the possibilities of the web.
• Have noticed an emerging need for "support tools" which came from last years' TT conference [I'd like to know more about what Ed meant by Support Tools] and reaching out and diversity. [recording is unclear here but I think Ed says] "Language is terribly important" but he then goes on to describe a need to provide buddying (either inside or between initiatives)[I think there's a lot of information which comes around these points that are probably quite important and need expanding on].
• Email, newsletters and the local press are still heavily relied-on as communication channels.
• Twitter and blogs as well as online forums are being used tentatively but forums were found to cause high levels of conflict.
• Priorities identified by the survey were basic info pages, project pages and events and, while file sharing was identified by many users as being important, Ed wasn't convinced that was really true.

Questions for Ed on his overview:

André quickly asked about Ed's concerns about Google Groups and it was mostly around data ownership [which hopefully won't be a problem with this team.]

Paul asked about what Ed sees as being the major barriers to volunteers using the sites and did he see it as an issue of competence of the users or the complexity or is it an education gap? Ed replied that on the whole there were many people who weren't into the web. He also mentioned there's a correlation between the complexity of the TT and the complexity of the needs. It's up to you to use. At the release or introduction of a new initiative's website, you have to ask who's the facilitator, where are the domain experts, who are the champions and assign roles.

He also mentioned you should aim to find an editor for the site and identify "reporter(s)" for each thematic group within an initiative to ensure content is added regularly and make sure the site features useful content. And he also suggested you should review the site occasionally and the sections which aren't being used should be "pruned" or removed, which is happening in Totnes.

Paul then raised a very interesting question about expanding this to the much bigger issue of offering access to content via a whole array of media channels such as mobile apps, SMS, printable content (i.e. newsletters for noticeboards), kiosk-type terminals in community cafes, etc.
Ed mentioned the fact that the Feed aggregator will be able to offer a report printer. He then elaborated on the fact that the UK will move further towards mobile being the primary access point for the web and added that it's a far more diverse channel with less socio-economic barriers so essential that we're able to offer content/functionality over mobile. Ed also mentioned that he's seen some really innovative ways of using SMS to coordinate groups effectively or as a collaboration tool. Providing interfaces for users who don't have access to the web is vital (examples given were faith groups and those on low incomes) and that the poster is still a very strong way of communicating.

André mentioned how vitally important it is that we ensure the interface is really clear and as simple as possible.

Jacob's Information Architecture project

Jacob asked about whether or not we already have a Requirements Specification or similar document and André admitted that there isn't a detailed document in existence yet although there's the beginnings of one on the TD site. Jacob then also inquired about the existence of User Stories or Personas and Paul explained that we don't have anything like that but that the London team had been working on writing up very brief "agile"-style functional narratives. [as an aside, I should mention that, had we had more time, the London team would have made personas and user stories].
André next asked what Jacob would do next, had he been contracted to work on this project. Jacob responded that since he's jumped onboard, there's one word that's come up through many of the discussions and emails and that's "taxonomy" and he suggested that what we might want to aim to design is a hybrid between a taxonomy and a "folksonomy" because otherwise it's really going to fail. Ed corroborated this with experience from their site. Then Jacob went on to expand on this by explaining that the majority of users don't really use tagging themselves [this conversation shifted but I was interested to learn more about what Jacob meant here so will probably start a discussion on it just to clarify]. And Ed added that they use it as a research tool to pick up differences in tagging patterns rather than making a big song and dance about it.

André shifted the conversation back onto Project Management and asked what we'd need to do to get to a "site blueprint" by August 01 and Jacob queried whether he meant a blueprint, a sitemap or a project plan then, André explained he meant all of the above and Paul attempted to clarify by asking what artefacts we really need to produce and what they need to contain. Jacob suggested there are three artefacts: the persona charts, a sitemap and a simple functional specification (i.e. what is the backend situation, a content list or a content analysis of content contributors which could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet based on the taxonomy).

Jacob mentioned we already have a taxonomy [I assume he means the draft wiki I created] but André interjected to point out that we're not sure this is the correct taxonomy for our needs since it's a taxonomy based on the needs of a small initiative. Jacob asked whether that would be an issue and André admitted we don't know yet; he went on to explain that we think someone needs to sit down and analyse all the different axes that a site should take into account whether its time-based, scale of the initiative [by which I think he means the number of nodes or layers in the network], location (urban/rural/in-between).

Ed then asked whether we should take an agile approach, build a basic IA then expand it to meet new requirements as they emerge or whether the needs of a large city such as SF [or London] are complex enough to mean we need to design a complex IA up-front. André suggested that it's worth spending some time thinking about these issues up-front to prevent later issues which can be caused by using an over-eager agile approach. Ed responded by asking whether we could at least start simple in terms of product releases and André agreed that's definitely what we'd want to do.

[I would have butted-in here to point out that the London team have been thinking along the lines of at least designing several IA structures which can flex and grow over time to allow say a "mulling" town to upgrade to the status of "official", then "mature" and presumably we could also grow this to meet whatever needs the Transition movement itself identifies as time passes. On a related note, I spotted the other day that the Aegir site management system for Drupal which André has recently been discussing on the forums has the ability to "upgrade" individual sites within your manifest from one configuration to another, thereby providing a tool we could use to move a site, once the initiative feel ready to expand their functions and tools to the next level].

André then went back to ask what kind of persona Jacob needs to sit down and create: ie. would an urban persona be different to a rural one? [I like Ed's mention of the old lady in Norfolk and the energy entrepreneur in NYC - perhaps we can use them as the basis of our personas?] He then went on to ask Jacob if he'd be willing to take on the task and marshall the troops and take on this task, adding that the date is not fixed.

There followed a conversation around the optimum platform for developing the core IA documents: ie. do we use GDO, TRAC or Ed's wiki site? Although it was felt there's enormous value in maintaining the GDO presence for the team as it is garnering attention right now, a distinction was drawn between the ongoing conversations as opposed to development-level work.
[Having used them, I side with Paul on this issue: the wiki pages on GDO aren't very good - I would prefer to be working either on TRAC, Ed's site or possibly Google Wave since it's so good for collaborative writing]. I was glad to hear that by the end we'd arrived at the conclusion we stay off GDO for document collab activity.

Paul then reiterated his point from our last call about wanting to have a D6 version of the site up and running in advance of the TD7V1.0 release. [It occurs to me that the reason he raised this was because he was thinking perhaps whatever we develop for D6 might be a model for a relatively simple town, rather than a full city-wide network mature initiative].

Jacob agreed to lead the IA process [Jacob, let's talk about how we can play together]. He also thought it would be fine to meet the August 01 deadline. There were no objections to aligning with the IA.

Ed offered to help out with publicising to the network.

André suggested Chris might want to work with Jacob quite closely [I do] and asked if anyone else on the call would like to work with him. Paul and Wes said they did and Ed made himself available for outreach, info and research. André said he wouldn't be on the core IA team though.

Ends

I just thought of a few more notes after this evening's call:

There seem to be a fair number of separate high-level requirements for a TD site. I'm sure there are more but here are some I can identify:

• raising awareness/consciousness of the issues to new audiences via online PR, eg. persuading new members to join
• raising awareness/consciousness of the specific initiative to new audiences via establishing strong web presence and online brand recognised for links to environmental, relocalisation issues, etc
• maintaining and increasing volunteer engagement over time, eg. via push communications channel (newsletters or group alerts)
• facilitating group coordination and admin tools eg. project coordination, landshare searching, internal messaging between individuals, note-taking
• facilitating barter/LETS style activities
• connecting people (buddies, projects etc) with suitable volunteers and facilitate establishing their relationship
• contact management or similar (Paul recently raised a question on CiviCRM) - is there something to be said about fundraising? (Ed?)
• knowledge management platform for recording and communicating experiences and achievements
• What else?

Finally a few other observations:

• Does anyone know somebody in the Drupal Assocation who we could ask about the legality of naming our project "Transition Drupal"? I recall Dries talking at a meetup earlier this year about the controversy surrounding the new Ts and Cs now Drupal the trademark and it revolves around naming yourself as the definitive Drupal solution to a particular sector. I'm concerned about whether calling this project "Transition Drupal" will cause such issues down the line... Any thoughts?
• Ed, do you have any web analytics data from any large initiatives which could lead to a more quantitative view of what the most popular sections of those sites might be and what the most used functions and content really is? I'm aware that research which asks users what they do/need can lead to less-accurate results than research than watches them in reality.

here are the user stories that came out of the public consultation for the TN.org site from Josiah - it's conversational as that was our frame but (a) there are some good human stories here and (b) you'll see we were wrestling with some similar issues!

I'm not sure exactly who we're working for - but I'm guessing that it is everyone already involved in Transition and everyone who might want to get involved at some point in the future.

Obviously some people will really want to engage with the on-line incarnation of Transition and will make a huge contribution. Of those there will be a broad range of interests - some very focused on local activity, others interested in the national and international aspects of the movement. I think we can come up with something to meet these people's needs.

But what about everyone else?

The muller with very limited experience of the net who wants to meet others in their area. The gardening enthusiast who just wants to find out how another group set up their food project. The core group without the skills to put up a basic website.

I think we're certainly talking about meeting their needs - but will we? Do we really understand this group?

I'm often surprised at just how little most people make use of on-line resources and at how little experience they have with even simple systems. My partner is a classic example. She uses the internet a fair bit and uses computers at work all the time, yet she really struggles to extract the information she wants and often gets 'lost' in big websites. She frequently gives up on a search, a forum or some kind of electronic transaction frustrated and confused (the last thing she wants at this point is an offer of help from me!!).

So I thought about one of the local Transition Initiatives I know well-ish (not the one in my own town - though I could have done this exercise with them too) and I decided to try and write a short biography of a few core members - those driving the initiative, thinking about their interest in all things virtual and electronic.

What follows is just a thought experiment, it isn't scientific and it offers no answers - but these are real people (names changed) and I think we need to keep them in mind:

All are TT Core group members and commit a great deal of their spare time to the group.

Mary: Retired pottery teacher, runs a small B&B, life long resident of the town and keen cyclist. Since retiring Mary has travelled to South America to do voluntary teaching work and thrown herself into community work back home. She’s an environmental activist of the old school and can be quite fiery. Mary has an email address and checks it every weekend - it helps her keep up with her children in Sheffield and Scotland. Generally speaking she finds she has a lot of messages to go through and so only opens the ones from people she knows; this is mainly to save time but also because she worries about viruses. This weekly email check is her only significant contact with the internet.

James: Is a healthcare professional in his mid-thirties, newly moved to the town and with a young family. He’s keen to get involved with the practical work of the group - it’s a good way to meet like minded people, do something worth while and get out with the kids. James has to work with various IT systems but isn’t a big fan, he’s able to check his personal e-mails at work, but doesn’t have time to reply or to surf the net. When he gets home in the evening and at weekends he likes to spend time with his wife and children so time on the net is limited. James has been persuaded by old university friends to set up a facebook account, but only responds to messages - he’s not an active poster. He has no desire to ‘hang-out’ in a virtual space, but sees the power of the internet to accomplish specific tasks such as researching travel arrangements - he also did all last year’s Christmas shopping on-line.

Jess: In her mid-twenties Jess runs a small business and is very well connected locally. In her spare time she’s active in the local light opera group as well as keeping horses. The internet is her primary marketing tool and she’s had a website built (though she’s unsure how to up-date it). Jess often finds herself in front of a computer but has limited time to dedicate to non-work related research or communications.

Toby: In his mid-forties Toby is a professional book searcher. He works from home which fits in well with his responsibility for his two children. The nature of his work means that Toby is generally in front of a screen for three or four hours a day and is an expert in extracting information from the web. However, his clients are getting better and better at doing their own on-line searches and Toby is increasingly finding that his best contacts are those book shops and dealers not yet on-line. Toby has some basic programming skills and enjoys spending time exploring the more esoteric fringes of the web, he’s a member of and regular contributor to a range of forums, he also maintains his own blog.

I suppose what I'm wondering is:

How do we make sure we connect the virtual and the physical?
How do we ensure that the web doesn't become a barrier or a 'transition info' gatekeeper'?