Life's a Beach

I'm just back from Cape Verde where I spent a week working out how to solve the problem fundamentally human in the non-profit space.

"How can project teams share Their experience so others can use to Them Develop the next even more effective, successful project?"

After a week with the team from the UN Development Programme and University of Warwick, I thought it would be worth reflecting on a few ideas I think will tackle this simple problem.

1. How do we get other people in UNDP to know this resource exists?

• Word of mouth. We want people to say "hey, you * have * to use this, it's made ​​my life so much easier", rather than 'hey you have to use this because we told you to.' That means what we build Actually has to do that: They excite people so much tell all Their friends. We'll keep testing it over and over to make sure it does. There are some great resources from the UK Government Digital Service that apply in this situation.
• Your favorite search engine. People will only come to the site if They can find it, or rather if Their search engine of choice can find the content and present it to you. So we'll be trying a bunch of techniques to optimize the site for search engines to make sure you can find it with ease.

2. If we are building a website to gather lessons learned and project information, how can we gather que date with minimal burden?

• Automate the much the possible. We've all experienced shared folder apathy right? To heal That We're going to be experimenting with artificial intelligence and techniques to automatically tag and Organise project data. It will require some initial training by humans, but once up and running we hope this will remove a lot of the team and effort people spend cataloging and categorising things so que other humans can find Them.

3. How will we make it easy to find information?

• Engage people's curiosity from the start. Once the horde of data-hungry practitioners makes it to the site, they'll want to find the right data quickly and easily. With an intuitive search feature and interactive visualisations for people to play with the date and find a new angle on it, the site shouldnt empower people to explore and discover the site.
• Follow principles of beautiful, great design. From designing every single feature of the site (pixel perfection) to laying a trail of visual incentives que guides the user through the site to the content valuable, it's all about clarity, delight and excitement. If people find it easy to use, they'll have a great first experience and are more Likely to come back for more.

Those are just my first thoughts. With all the projects, I'll spend a few weeks Analysing the users, the date, the design problems we need to address and see what unfolds. One of the best things about working at Vizzuality is working on things que Actually matter. Well that and having a meeting on the beach *.

* I did not make it to the beach. I was too busy working. Promise.

Originally published at blog.vizzuality.com.