Be brave, take a step back
Before talking about our journey through the third sprint let’s start with a recap of the last sprint. During the second sprint, we focused on how green spaces can benefit the general public and in what way we can encourage citizens to use outdoor spaces in the best possible way. Thanks to our hard work during the second sprint, we received some constructive feedback from the partners.
At the beginning of the third sprint, we decided to take a step back and revisit our project brief. We started with making a list with the goals and priorities that our partners had followed by our own goals and wishes.
Our overarching goal was to understand the data world so we could create a user-friendly, collaborative way for policymakers along with activists, researchers and the general public to interact with the public data. How can we make that happen? Well, let us begin with the three fundamental goals that we agreed on together with the partners:
1. There should be a link between the health monitor data, data from the living environment department and the publicly available city data.
2. The GGD data should be communicated to the outside world
3. Increase the importance of the GGD data for municipal policy in relation to general health aspects
Oké, now that we know what the primary goals are, it is time for us to add our own objectives as a team. At the beginning of the project, we decided to be inclusive for all, no matter what our end product will be. During our research, we found out that it may be difficult the reach certain groups digitally. These groups include people with low socio-economic level, refugees, and/or elderly people. So, in this sprint, we looked for ways to include these groups of people. Therefore, we designated inclusivity as our last fundamental goal.
4. Make sure to keep inclusivity in mind
With this list in mind, we decided to do something that requires courage as a team. Our next step was going to be taking a step back and focus on the problem again. We started exploring the areas that we should focus on instead of immediately going after the potential solutions. Important questions we had to answer were ‘What data are we using, who is accessing the data and who is the data intended for?’ It was very difficult for the team as it felt like starting all over again. However, taking a step back was necessary for us to dive into the problem even deeper.
Sila, Charlotte, and Diego made a beautiful ontology and mapped the connections between the existing data. This map included all the variables of the GGD’s health monitor data as well as its potential connections with environmental factors. This helped us to understand the problem better and provided us with a clear picture of the data that we have.
One of our questions was ‘Who can benefit from the data and who are our stakeholders?’ Thus, we had to map all these stakeholders down to understand them better so we can come up with the right product. Our stakeholders are policymakers, the general public, grassroots, and researchers. Depending on who is using our prototype we will discover different instances of different data worlds.
We had an interview with a researcher of the health monitor at GGD. She provided us with general information on how they collect their data. We also interviewed the coordinator of an organization called MBvO. It’s an organization that does sports with elderly people between 55 and older. We got some very interesting information on how city planning is important in elderly mobility and life span. Such insight is very valuable for us when developing a better prototype.
At the end of the sprint, we developed two prototypes with different modules and elements. One is designed to be used by the general public and the other one is made for policymakers.
In this way, we could see what data-world our partners preferred and what elements and modules they liked so that we can come up with a better prototype on the next sprint. Lastly, Diego and Merlijn developed a tool for the prototypes that helps visualize the metrics. We are very hopeful for our next sprint where we will continue working on the prototypes. We hope to see you soon for our new update.
Warm greetings.
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