MIT Hive/Civic Design Meeting: Monday, 10/2
Civic Design site:
User Types:
- Visitors (lurkers)
- Members (visitors + posting ability; also perhaps some exclusive/member-only content in the future – make membership more valuable by restricting access to visitors
- Admins – Civic Design team, RAs who’d populate site early on
On-boarding Process:
- Hive team will help train – think about what you need and how we can train your people
Phases/Design Principle Taxonomy:
- A set of folks who really focus on the phases, a set of folks who focus on the design principle.. so then the question becomes – do we want to focus on the phases, and then sort by design principle once you know what phase you’re in; or focus on the design principle, and then see where people are at in their process
- Which one to prioritize? Can do user testing, have the decision be user-driven
- Organize a quick usability test
- Teams are organized around design principles – how to make membership more enticing? Wanting to join one of these teams to do work – if you really want to be part of the team, you have to be member
- Phases as a collection has its own power, design principles each have their own power; but not do primary sort around the phase… almost as if the phases are static… how do we design to be effective
- Some sort of post/podcast or something that explains why the phases are important on homepage
- Find ways to modify existing homepage; or like a cover page to learn stuff
How the projects work:
- What are the fields that are important to have in here? Talking about with team about what that would be – for next meeting: defining what these fields are on the projects page
Ongoing, different “species of projects” – a lot of “show and tell” – where do those documents reside? Create “Attachments” as another field, which is associated with project – and if you want them more broadly available, you’d have to make a post of it
* Staged roll-outs: design a whole season of podcasts releases – building anticipation with each new stage; part of the task of the new launch – do kind of a quiet launch that includes one design principle and one or two phases with related content (a post, a podcast, a video)
“Let’s build a field around civic design” – as we go forward, a kind of mission statement;
Themes/ideas that you want to communicate visually – connecting our complexity, create something in the public space that holds it
What other sites do you get inspiration from – not participedia
Civic Design map for website – balancing Hive’s “one-size fits all” model with narrow customization, though the CD map could also be generalized as a way for users to enter into spaces that they don’t know a lot about; a map/graphic-based approach
Moving Forward, for next meeting:
To Do, Civic Design:
- Start thinking about content – what material will constitute a post, a podcast, a video, a project, etc.
- For Project Page, define what the fields are – (Right now, they are “Research Problem,” “Solution,” “Story”) – rename these fields so they make sense for a Civic Design project
- Think about a tag-line or mission statement for Home Page
To Do, Hive:
- Come up with some designs for site – branding, color palette, logo, etc.
- Think about ways to incorporate Civic Design site-map into Hive template
- Also think about content/content strategy, best ways to populate site, staged roll-outs, etc.
Down the road –
- Organize quick, initial usability test
- Quiet launch with only a few content objects