CUTGroup Miami, the Epilogue

In 2016, we set out to create something unique in Miami — a Civic User Testing Group conducting grassroots user testing for civic-related websites and mobile applications with citizens from Miami’s diverse communities and neighborhoods.

And for the following sixteen months, we certainly tried our hardest; we started with Miami-Dade County government website, moved to the City of Miami website, and worked on other projects related to transit, referral programs, and public engagement. We’re proud of the accomplishments we made, the contributions we made to civic technology and community engagement.

But with all pilot programs, it was always an open-ended question on how to continue the project past it’s October 2017 project end date, and we never figured out a way to sustain the program in the long-run. So we decided it best to sunset the Miami Civic User Testing Group, at least for now. We have stopped accepting new members to the pool a while ago; per our agreement with the Knight Foundation, we plan on releasing our findings in a digestible, readable format very, very soon.

Thanks to Rebekah Monson and Cristina Solana, for spearheading the Knight Cities Challenge grant. To the Knight Foundation, for actually giving us the grant. To Dan Duffy, Danielle Ungermann, Rob Davis, and Jen Dellis, who helped out with essential parts of this program. And most importantly, to the dozens of proctors and the literally hundreds of Miami-Dade County residents who wanted to give their feedback about the technology cities and counties created to assist the constituents they serve. If you ever feel like wanting to contribute more, there is always Code for Miami meetings every Monday evening at CIC.

We’ll see you around.

Cheers,
- Ernie, Executive Director, CUTGroup Miami