Concept phase FAQ
Everything you wanted to ask (and know) about the Planet 4 Concept
Two weeks after the release of the Planet 4 Concept, the project team received a lot of feedback, ratings and questions. All these are being used to re-iterate the concept before jumping right into design.
Let's use this space to shed some light upon the most asked questions sent this way, and also to experiment bookmarking in Medium (thanks to Chen Ye for sharing this great workaround).
Feel free to reach out by mail, tweet or directly commenting all the way at the end of this article if you have more questions, these will be added this list. Also, fill this form if you want to join the Planet 4 Project team for the Design phase.
Concept Presentation FAQs (click on each topic to jump directly to the section):
- The Platform
- Potential impact of this concept in campaigns and change management
- Systems Integration, data collection & KPIs
- Archetypes & Audience Engagement
- Content & Storytelling
- Open approach, next phases and timelines
The Platform
1. What is the planned life-cycle for Planet 4?
Greenpeace's Global Engagement Department (GED) is trying to set operational mode for all engagement systems so that each time a project is completed the tool gets constantly maintained and improved. Planet 4 will be fully developed Open Source, so as long as Wordpress stays alive P4 should be able to continually develop alongside it. Greenpeace’s GED will anyway perform the usual 5-year cyclic review for Planet 4, as currently planned and executed to the entire global suite.
2. Are you considering the NROs who are not ready for an Engagement platform?
Yes. The Planet 4 scope includes a ‘lite’ version of the site, one that focuses more on Content rather than Engagement; also for offices which need a new website sooner rather than later. The plan is there and will come up first as a minimum viable product. It must be said the not everything is going to be launched at once, some of the ideas you see in the concept may actually be implemented in future versions of Planet 4.
3. Will there be clearly defined minimum components any web property should have?
We are thinking of this and have made a note of this for the next phase.
4. Are we building a custom Wordpress template or will Planet 4 be based on a pre-existing one?
It depends on what the design ends up being. If we find a template that has a similar layout, it might be more efficient to remix that pre-existing template. However, if there isn’t a great template we can remix, we’ll need to start from scratch and code our own. Either way, the Planet 4 default template will be unique to Greenpeace.
5. Which plugins/modules will be default Wordpress and how many will be custom?
We ran a lot of Focus Groups with Greenpeace power users (check this Medium post as reference) and feel quite solid in terms of the range of features Planet 4 must have or needs. Most features are native to Wordpress, the rest are either ‘popular’ that we would ‘fork’ or could be developed custom. Here’s how the tech team is planning to select and review Wordpress plugins before adding them to the Planet 4 repository.
6. Will each NRO will have their own individual website?
With Planet 4, each Greenpeace office will have its own Wordpress instance. We wrote more about this on our blog here. We will maintain a series of FAQs on the Individual VS multi-site choice, so don’t hesitate to comment directly in the document.
7. Will Planet 4 come with an app?
We haven’t made a decision on that completely; push notifications, location awareness are now possible on the modern web, so we don’t really need to rely on apps for those functionalities. The only certain thing is that Planet 4 will be completely device agnostic, so seamlessly accessible by laptop, mobile, tablet or wearables.
Potential impact of this concept in campaigns and change management
8. How much do you see campaigning workflows on Greenpeace side changing, based on this concept?
The workflow will change because the system itself is changing, not because of Planet 4. Greenpeace wants and needs to do more Open Campaigning, this is what webbies, Programme, and Campaign- teams made clear at different stages. They all want to see Open Campaigning work and want Strategy & Planning to feed into the system, that’s why the team is also looking at how data from Smartsheet can be integrated into Planet 4.
Ideally, Campaigns should be designed to create explicit actions, in a very easy and meaningful way for supporters and activists, a Planet 4 strategy will need to be incorporated into campaign design concepts. If implemented and understood correctly, this won’t create additional workload, but amplify the campaign impact!
9. What if the change management breaks and the shift to greater openness does not happen? How do wemake sure campaigns will use all of the Planet 4 features?
There will have to a be considerable training to make people understand what the platform can do and to get everyone up to speed. If Campaigns do Strategy & Planning without considering the use of Planet 4 at its full potential, then nothing will change and Greenpeace will keep using our websites the usual way. Someone who knows or manages Planet 4 should be included right from the beginning, to bring to the campaign ideation phase all the value added of a next-generation, action-enabling engagement system.
10. Is this the FINAL Planet 4 Concept?
No. We are already in the process of iterating it. This was just a first proposal, and we are giving the team 4 weeks (2 sprints) to modify this concept before jumping into design. This iteration phase will include all the feedback gathered in surveys, individual outreaches and research, and the second Concept will be shared in all existing comms channels (Email, Wiki, Medium...)
11. What will the user experience across different Greenpeace websites be like?
Planet 4 aims for users and campaigns to have profiles and dashboards to show what their impact looks like as a whole. We would like people who come to Greenpeace websites, on whichever site they land, to have a seamless and integrated experience.
Systems Integration, data collection & KPIs
12. Are we working towards a seamless user experience?
We will build a roadmap with systems working/merged together. If we try to have a seamless experience with too many systems it will be overly complicated and slow the entire process down. The plan is to have a high-level roadmap (1 yr out, 3 yr out) and a more detailed map for the shorter term. The concept also considers the ability for users to take action without being logged in or the option to have customised content based on cookies. The opposite side of that is to have a completely integrated experience, for example while being logged in with Social media and at the same time being recognised as a Greenpeace e-activist thanks to records in Greenwire. All these options provide different levels of engagement opportunities, all around, from, to and within Planet 4.
13. Will we develop other platforms to take up some functionalities? What about Greenwire and other existing engagement systems?
To ensure a seamless experience for our users, we plan to integrate existing engagement platforms. We don’t expect Wordpress to do all the heavy lifting, this should happen in other tools, where possible and where appropriate. Basic integrations are part of the scope (e.g. Engaging Networks and Greenwire).
When coming to seamless use experience across tools, one option may be to give Greenwire a quick facelift, to make it look similar to P4 but still providing its unique functionalities. Offices who do not use globally supported tools will have to develop their own integrations.
14. How will Planet 4 be collecting user data and what are we doing with those?
Planet 4 users will have control over what information they will share with Greenpeace. As explained in Question 12 (“Are we working towards a seamless user experience?”), users will be able to take action or consume personalised content without necessarily being logged in or sharing any credentials. Different sort of interaction levels (e.g. 1 — anonymous user; 2 — cookies-based suggestions and personalised content; 3 — Logged User with dashboard) will be explored in the Design phase and iterated.
When coming to data collection and management, the idea is to reduce places where data are stored. CRMs and databases of records will remain the main repository of supporter data. The real challenge is to make data integration flawless and automated, considering the huge diversity among NROs systems’ suites.
15. Will we continue to collect mobile numbers?
Indeed. Collection of user data is of course very important, we will make it possible to collect anything the user is willing to share, but we have to be respective of local laws/opt-in regulations. Collecting mobile numbers and asking for it in a way that encourages it as much as possible is key. We want to be able to convert supporters to donors and also be able to SMS people as part of supporter journeys e.g. “come down to XXX today at 12pm to join protest against XXX”.
16. Do we take into account Privacy, Security and Transparency issues?
Absolutely. Security and privacy are key topics and the entire development of Planet 4 is considering those as the highest priority.
17. How will Planet 4 ‘nudge’ users to take the next step/s? Cookies? Login?
The specific path to take has not been decided yet, but we are seriously thinking about Single Sign On. As explained in the previous question #14, it will depend on the user, whether they want to track what they are doing or not. From a tech perspective, “nudging” users who have records (Login / user account) is not too difficult to automate.
18. Are we developing any new metrics of how to measure engagement in P4?
We are creating methodologies, tools and processes to consolidate the KPIs & analytics identified in the Discovery phase and create accounts for Planet 4 stacks. These basic set of analytics & KPIs will have to be tracked in a standard way, to compare performances across P4 stacks.
We realise, though, that a bunch of new functionalities may bring new metrics, which will have to be measured, tracked and consolidated properly.
19. What kind of reporting will we be able to have and share?
The idea is to be as transparent as possible about performance KPIs.
One of the project priorities is to work with the Insights team to define how data coming from Google Analytics, Bit.ly and other engagement tools can be fed into Data Studio and, where relevant, made accessible right within Planet 4. Funky, uh?
Archetypes & Audience Engagement
20. How did we end up with this set of Archetypes?
The post “Personifying the Planet 4 Archetypes” answers this question. The Design team started with 7 different archetypes and narrowed it down to 3 that were manageable. That process is explained in the post Who Are We Designing For? People also land to greenpeace.org to look for information and consume content (e.g. journalists, politicians, researchers..), hence we must think about these use cases as well.
The following diagram shows how pre-existing personas fit inside the Planet 4 archetypes. As we get deeper into the design phase we will continue to ask questions to the global Greenpeace community about our audiences.
21. How does the concept fit within different cultures?
The project team is continuously talking to most offices and everyone has the chance to give feedback and help make Planet 4 a global tool. To shape the archetypes, for instance, colleagues from multiple NROs reached out to local supporters and conducted surveys and interviews. Alongside, the team is having two-way conversations with supporters, the Global Engagement Department, MobLab and benchmarking in the Open Source community. We’re certainly not designing a global tool in a bubble.
We are also looking at research in different areas, what languages they speak, what systems and browsers are being used. For example, Mozilla just released a huge report on African people and their online behaviour, how they interact. By running Planet 4 as an open project, the hope is that when people around the world see what’s happening, they are encouraged to ask questions and give feedback.
22. Will Greenpeace supporters be interested in this? (i.e. getting messages each morning, maps installed in their phone, etc.) What is the assumption based upon that this concept is going to work?
Please bear in mind that this is just a concept. We still don’t know if users will need to download an app or all these options to take action can be achieved by developing WP modules. What we know for sure, is that we must change the way people take action from a Greenpeace website, signing petitions is not enough, people want to become change agents and see the impact their actions have within broader campaigns. The Concept tries to answer these needs.
Starting from that as a primary goal, we benchmarked quite intensively, ran a lot of surveys and hundreds of people gave feedback and inputs, all of which has been refined and fed into the Concept. The technical implications to achieve all that is being proposed are not really defined either, whether it’s going be notifications that will show up every morning, or in-app pushes is still unclear.
What is for sure, is that the development team will try to reduce the amount of steps and design things to keep users engaged.
23. Have there been thoughts on ladder of engagement?
We must recognise the different levels of engagement and that users won’t jump three levels up right away thanks to Planet 4. We may not make all features available in the first version. When coming to design phase, we will look more closely at what the transition to a pure action-driven platform will look like in terms of engagement levels. Prioritisation of features on the Planet 4 roadmap will be determined by both primary platform requirements and engagement priorities.
24. What about people that are on the lower part of the engagement pyramid/ladder? Is this concept exclusively targeting people already engaged?
Campaigners set their own target audiences. Our goal is not to force colleagues to think more deeply about their engagement strategies, but to provide a tool that allows for flexibility. We have a greater chance of impact by influencing others to spread our campaigns and messages on our behalf. People Power requires that Greenpeace work with the community.
25. How do we see the links between action-takers and donors?
Donating is of course taking action, and is what Greenpeace needs in order to operate. Putting Donations into context (e.g. Slide #36) is expanding the definition of action and contextualising them in both organisational and campaign goals. Taking this as a first step, we want to expand the definition of actions. Things that lead to mindshift change.
26. How are we going to ensure there are sufficient “doable” actions to populate the site? Can we really provide all these actions?
This ideally fits within a comprehensive Campaign planning, which should include Planet 4 as from the very early stages, to use the tool at its full potential and include a series of campaign-related actions from the website (also mentioned in Question #8).
When coming to choosing and proposing new types of action, Greenpeace needs and must find new ways to amplify the voices, we have to be creative and explore new ways to engage with change agents (‘take a picture of a detox brand’, ‘build your own poster’ are only examples, but we can do much more!). Technology will have to support these type of new actions taken from greenpeace.org; this will be part of the roadmap.
Content & Storytelling
27. How can we make P4 a platform for user-generated stories and how will these be moderated?
User-generated content (UGC) is a key part of an engagement Content Management System. In the concept there are ideas about how this can be encouraged (e.g. Slides #15 and #32), but this specific topic is not touched deeply yet.
Stimulating UGC and having a pool of external contributors isn’t just about having the right features or workflows, but more a change management process, which is reflected in both “From Secretive to Open Source” and “From Lone Hero to Hero Among Heroes” shifts.
The way Greenpeace and most of its websites currently operate do not explicitly encourage user generated content, but this is certainly something that needs to change and something that Planet 4 will have to support at access, login, user management and workflow levels. That said, we all must be aware that UGC requires curation to maximise the impact of the content and contextualise it within campaign goals, to avoid content conflicting or not positioning right. Publication workflows can facilitate this, but the platform itself cannot do all the work, web content managers and campaigners will have to allocate resources.
28. What kind of user permission will there be in the backend?
We do not have have concrete plans on the different User Access levels, but we would like to keep it as simple as possible, this is what our colleagues told us during the Focus Groups. The real challenge will come when different user access levels will have to be applied to multiple content types and instances, and how these exceptions will be managed.
Long story short: we can have all the granularity we can think of, but Planet 4 will not solve the need of the consequent proper and consistent user management at all levels.
29. Will we be doing A/B Testing as well as other user testing?
Yes! We will do tons of testing. This website development process will be iterative. We need to see how the Engagement platform will work in the real world.
30. Will it be possible to tailor content?
In an ideal world the site would adapt to user’s previous visits. We’re looking at user-flows, locations, interests, cookies… The idea is to make it easy for each user to decide what they do and don’t want to share. We want to have a progressive Tech policy.
31. How will P4 integrate traditional ways to push content (Blogs, Multimedia…) with new ones?
We haven’t yet focused on traditional content types, but rather focused on new ways to engage people. Consultations will be opened during the design phase on how to improve the blogs (for example) and how they can support telling the story in more engaging and interactive ways.
31. Will we use Medium for our blogs?
No, we are not considering building our blogs on Medium at the moment, since Wordpress is a blogging platform itself! Greenpeace will host content on it’s own servers, running Planet 4, as opposed to on a 3rd party we cannot control.
The Planet 4 Medium publication is only being used to share the story on how P4 is being built. You can contribute too, if you want! Just write your post and let us know.
32. How will the platform address supporter complaints of excessive donation asks?
This is not depending on the platform. It will really be up to the NROs to set their engagement and fundraising strategies and decide how they best make use of Planet 4 to build relationships with supporters and give them the opportunity to become donors. NROs will decide whether they want an opt-in or opt-out strategy based on their own supporter journey plans and what are the legal requirements in their country, Planet 4 will just be a tool that allows flexibility for online fundraising and payment gateway connections in each country.
33. How realistic is to ask visitors to stay on P4 given how they currently navigate/ interact with our sites?
We want to meet people where they are; integrating with social networks that have their own specific niche, Planet 4 wants to be aware of that, not only by having people sharing on those but also getting them to go to P4 from social networks. If a campaign or an NRO’s doesn’t have a strategy for it, P4 won’t solve all challenges, but we hope it will make it easier for offices to engage more with both new and existing audiences.
Open approach, next phases and timelines
34. How and why is the Project being carried out in the Open?
Everything done from Day 1 of Planet 4 is open and public. Every meeting note, every sprint planning, every presentation and every idea can be accessible from www.greenpeace.org/P4 and the public Google Drive.
As described in the Planet 4 Open Decision Framework, the project team has embarked this journey to the open not only to pioneer the “From Secretive to Open Source” shift, but also to make sure the platform is developed transparently and inclusively, and that the broader non-profit movement can benefit from Greenpeace’s experience when embarking in similar initiatives.
35. What’s Next?
Active feedback solicitation: we need to make sure we have buy-in and participation from all stakeholders. Beside the action-driven analysis currently ongoing (thanks to everyone who filled the form!), the project team will gather feedback from each office by reaching out to engagement directors and likely ask for representatives to provide feedback.
Regular catch-ups will be set up to involve NROs who have done or will be doing their own websites (US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, China and Arabworld).
36. When will Planet 4 be available? What’s the timeline?
Project timelines and roadmap have always been accessible from Wiki and Medium (below is an image of the Phases breakdown), and so far have not been subject to major changes. As what it looks like now, Planet 4 pilot site will be www.greenpeace.org/international and should go live by end of September 2017 (Sprint #21).
The project team is working hard to implement up to 3 pilots in 2017 and support global rollout waves in 2018.
37. Is it true that people interested can join the Planet 4 team?
Oh, yes. There are multiple ways to get involved, you can join one of the tracks of the Design Phase (Design, technical and KPI & Analytics) by filling this form.
There’s plenty of work to do, any help is most welcome!
