Key Vision
Local action for global change
Community connection, both locally and globally to create positive change led by local people.
User behavior you would like to encourage on the platform
A belief that we can tackle the big issues of society through greater community connection anchored in positive action on the root causes of societal issues.
Coming together to take positive action to the street, and build positive social change projects.
This leads to out tw routes which mirror each other, but place emphasis on opposite sides â much as the gatherings and projects are for the same purpose in the real world but relying on slightly different tools.
Route 1, Gather.
An online hub which encourages people to meet other community members nearby to carry out positive activities that target societal issues the user (community member) cares about.
This section is targeting both
Average people
- Want to do something to make the world around them more positive, and take constructive action on issues which we often feel powerless to change
Existing volunteer communities
- Operate to bring more peace and happiness to the world through meeting to conduct positive public activities
- This route/section will focus primarily on Community and Social interaction focused around a shared goal
(as a side note, many of these Iâve seen lamenting the change to social media which makes it far more difficult to lead their communities without a huge budget)
Route 2, Build
A project management hub designed with the limitations of online volunteering in-mind.
Lots of interest and good intentions, but very high drop-off rates.
This is designed as a Micro-volunteering site where complex projects are voted on, then built by our community without needing funding or a particularly skilled, wealth, or connected founder.
Micro-volunteering feels like a glossary term. It sounds straightforward, but what other micro-volunteering platforms can we look at to get a better understanding of it?
Itâs achieved by breaking projects down into small chunks which anyone can find and complete.
this sounds deceptively simple but will quickly become the most critical skill/component of the platform functioning off any points system. It takes practice to be good at breaking things down into actionable, quantifiable parts. We will need to talk about building this into the way we allow users to begin planning any types of projects/tasks.
This section is targeting people who want to use their skills (or learn a new skill) and apply them to make a positive change in the world.
That will either be through building:
- Projects
- Global Flash Mobs (which are basically projects)
- Building our platform and movement
âwhich are basically projectsâ again makes me want to ask âthen why not call it projects?â I know youâve explained the difference many times but it just feels like introducing needless complexity. Whatâs the worst that would happen if we just called it a project?
These projects are often on a Global scale but should always be carried out by local people as one of our core community values is âempowering local people to create change themselvesâ
Who else would carry out the projects if not locals?
Users can also suggest and discuss new ideas for âPublic Happiness Gatheringsâ
⌠writing this I realise that this function should be in the 1st section. Right now itâs in the 2nd.
Categories
- Art, Music, Dance and Poetry
- Health and Well-being
- Public Playfulness
- Human and Community Connection
- Environment and Sustainability
Are these the project categories?
Important Design Considerations
The site was being designed to have a scoring system.
Points which users received for their efforts as many of our members who left, when asked why said there was no-way to keep track of their progress, or goals to aim towards and they felt a scoring system with ranks would help them advance.
Give users a way to know where their progress has put them on the map/timeline of what they are working on with platform.
- How do they know that they are making progress?
- What is their ETA? Where are they headed?
Require first very clearly stating goals and landmark events in a project timeline.
- Outline foolproof guidelines of how we define tasks, how we track the completion of them.
- Is it moving a card to âdoneâ in the kanban? Is it tagging a post âcompleteâ?
This needs discussion
online community engagement is a bit easier to track or award points to, see redditâs karma for examples
I am personally looking into a side-job in the blockchain world so I began exploring whether we could use that to reward people in our own currency instead of points. What started as a personal project has received a lot of interest when I showed it to people, so it is being actively pursued.
Not yet relevant to UX team
From a UX point of view, carry on imagining a points system, where all user actions to benefit their local community, build projects, or grow our community, receive points.
From a technical point of view, those points will be on an Ethereum based blockchain, which may or may not be worth something. Either way it will bring a lot of energy into grow our build which serves the mission.
Build infrastructure that is designed around awarding users with points for engaging with and contributing to the community platform
Specific activities (in the world) from users you would like to promote or constrain
We want users to feel more connected to their local community, and positive people nearby.
This is societies greatest power. A painfully relevant example is the hard-right surge we face across the world right now, is focused on dividing all groups in society because a divided society can be easily stoked to blame each other for all issues, rather than coming together and solving them.
This gives them complete control because society can no-longer advance, or protect itself as that requires coming together. Our mission is to be a uniting force.
We want to teach users
- they have the power to change the world around them
- change is achieved best through collaborating with others around a positive idea
- how to then share their ideas so the rest of the world can benefit
Any technical limitations?
The site is built in React, using Discourse to power the communications and community building. This is due to decisions made by the web dev team.
WP/ Community News
We also have a Wordpress site for community news. Andy was planning to remove, but recent posts on web dev forums many people have advised that Wordpress is still better for blogging that a React native solution.
âBuildâ (the action center) and âSuggestionsâ
âBuildâ (the action center) and âSuggestionsâ are a html page with javascript hooks dynamically generating cards from trello cards.
Diana needs more explaination this is a little too technical to understand methinks
Design changes here [build and suggestions] are difficult
Andy is the only one who has coded on this area, and isnât a skilled web developer so changes take a lot of time to achieve.
Small changes here are possible to give essential functionality improvements.
Beyond this a full redesign to be built fresh in React (our platform) or Ruby on Rails (the discourse forum) is best.
Follow up on this, it is a critical detail when considering a smooth design handoff to development for the implementation of actual UX consultation artifacts
Project Management Suite
We are currently building project management into Discourse, which seems logical as it has incredible features for the developers to work with, and (what I believe is) the webs biggest open-source community to offer support.
All software we use should be Opensource or a similar fair use license.
Weâd need to discuss the other license as a team if itâs not Opensource as it could become a major issue at some point down the line.
You should use the existing site as the base for your ideas.
If you want to throw something out completely and start over (like the action center for example, which does needs it), please ask me (Andy) 1st.
UX Priorities
thread here: Roadmap and Priorities
Diana import
General:
We are working towards consolidating all of our teams and community onto the new website (whilst leaving Slack open and syncâd for those who like to use it during work)
Teams may wish to use external tools, but the hub for communication should always be our site.
Teams: quick and dirty fix
- Remove hard roadblocks slowing our teams progress down. Danny came across a lof of these due to our spread over different platforms and stage in redesign. timeline should be one week
- Remove hard roadblocks preventing users from joining the site and completing the two main tasks.
- Meet other users nearby for positive action.
- Collaborate on building the community or on projects.
Post soft launch
Make your online home a joy to visit
Other thoughts not listed here that you think are pertinent
Our main way to on-board new users in the beginning is through existing communities hosting their global flash-mobs on our platform.
They will do this by advertising on traditional social media but withholding meeting points and times, and linking to their activity posted on our platform, where users will come to find those details.
They will not do this if there is any fall off in the number of attendees because weâve forced them into a sign up process
Time Frames
I want to expand our teams so we have more energy and voices and can grow into a community, rather than the 5 or 6 hubs who communicate with me. This will greatly speed up the implementation of your designs and the support available for them.
Whoâs in Charge? Spoiler: All Yâall.
We want to build the site towards a user/owner model, so all users of the site are its owner and decision makers.
A hierarchy is still needed globally, and in each team and project, to prevent chaos. Weâve begun designing a decentralised governance system where users become the leaders based on their action. This means we are all the leaders, and the users, and the owners.
Knowledge Base
Right now we are operating a traditional model with myself and you as the leaders, over the next year that will be deigned to fall back. I felt that important to mention as it was something that came up discussing the documentation with Danny.
I realised I needed to explain this 1st to convey why a knowledge base was important that users will be the ones creating and improving their own documentation in the future.
Community Culture and Growth Strategy
As a community builder, the initial tone in a community is essential. New users come in, learn the norms and perpetuate them. Its very difficult (not impossible though) to change a culture once itâs embedded.
exclusivity
The site should encourage users to invite their friends, whilst also setting the tone for who to invite. Something like âonly invite your most positive and proactive contacts while we are growing pleaseâ - to make it seem exclusive and set the tone for everyone new who is invited âŚooh!
slighty inconvenient to participate fully without an account
What if we allowed groups to use the site for their global flash mobs, and users to visit the site and see whatâs going on, but not to actually join. We could make it exclusive in the beginning so it doesnât blow up before we are technically ready to support that, and to really set the tone.
clear expectations for who qualifies
Only the most positive and pro-active people are invited, who are later instructed to invite the most positive and proactive people.
maybe just semantics but diana thinks âthe most positive and proactiveâ needs to be better defined because⌠by whose standards?
#membersonly
Everyone wants to be in a party they canât get into, and they will absolutely know that the expectation is âpositive and pro-activeâ in our community.
