The very beginning till the prototype of a community platform for open data, OpenLocal
The journey began when FutureEverything came to Hyper Island to give us an open brief around citizen science. As an outcome of our research, we developed a prototype, a community platform for open data. I’ll take you through the journey of our project while we were at Hyper Island.
Open data is data that anyone can access, use or share. Many people see its potential, from more transparent government to businesses and individuals using open data on daily basis, however the impact has not been reached there yet. There has been a gap between this potential and people’s understanding and its application in wider community.
The Prototype
Before you get bored of our story, let me show you what we’ve done.
Here is our prototype.
I’ll explain key pages in case you missed it:
This is our landing page, where people can find open data use cases and you can also filter them by individual and business cases.
This is a story of Alex who made his own cycling app by using open data. This is for individual makers, and the platform guides them through the journey with related learning materials, local events and forums.
This is a story of a deli shop explaining how they used open data to find the best locations to deliver a limited number of leaflets announcing their new delivery service. Like the case for individuals, the platform links to learning materials, events, forums and also agencies certified by OpenLocal.
This is a page to find your data buddy who can help you out as an expert, or who can buddy up with you to learn about open data with you. You can see people’s (nick)names, expertise, interests and their approximate location. Through the platform, you can message people to ask for help, organise meetups or just chat.
There are other features that I didn’t explain here, such as sections for learning materials, events around you and a forum.
The Process
Now I’d like to talk about how we’ve got to this point; our design process. We started understanding what open data is, as we were also new to the subject. We visited existing platforms to understand what is currently available. We then talked to people in the open data community, and also people who have not heard about open data.
From the research, we identified three problems:
- There is lack of awareness of open data and people don’t know how they can benefit from it.
2. Other existing platforms are designed for either geeks or governments.
3. Existing communities are dispersed and usually running one-off events.
After the research, we’ve identified key insights;
- People understand the concept and benefits with tangible use cases such as Citymapper.
2. People need continuous and easy-to-access support, more than one-offs.
After capturing insights, we brainstormed ideas to tackle the existing problems based on insights that we found from research. Then we narrowed down to a digital platform that shows tangible use cases for individuals and businesses.
After researching use cases, we needed to cluster them into categories that will be used in the platform. We conducted card sorting exercises to understand what interests people the most and how people process the content.
We created a style board on Pinterest to be on the same page about how OpenLocal will look like. We used Google Sheets to create content and UXpin to create high fidelity working prototype in a collaborative way.
Delivering the Outcome
We presented OpenLocal and got feedback from FutureEverything, and industry leaders from UsTwo, Sapient Nitro and Hyper Island.
What next?
With support from FutureEverything, we’re now back to research to make sure the community platform meets the needs of the users. As an outcome of the research, we’ll start building the platform from early next year, 2016. Please tweet us if you are interested to talk with us.
