Workshop Report - Early Design Session
Introduction & Background
Our initial
design workshop was hosted on the morning of Monday 19th February,
with some of our partner organisations and their volunteers, together with
student volunteers. The goal of this
workshop was to introduce the website to some of the target audience, and get
their feedback on how some of the key features of the website are proposed to work. In particular, we were interested in how
volunteers chose volunteering or citizen science projects in relation to our
model criteria. This was to make sure
that we are measuring these important features appropriately in preparation for
matching people to projects when the website is in use. Additionally, we looked at how types of
people and types of project could be categorised, which will be used to provide feedback on projects once they have been completed. The aim of these exercises was to define as
few groups as possible, whilst ensuring that they have meaningful definitions. We had a total of 15 participants in addition
to staff members, from student, volunteer and conservation backgrounds,
including Michelle Brown from the National Trust, Ben Limburn from Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust and James Boyland from Bournemouth Borough Council.
Workshop participants underway on our activity session
Talks
Dr Anita Diaz
welcomed the participants and introduced the project. Following on, Dr Alexander Lovegrove (that's me!) explained the background and aims of the project – the ultimate goal being to
enhance participation in conservation volunteering by providing the website as
a central location for information and an effective search platform. Following on from the introduction, we
introduced our design layout for the website that gives a loose idea of how the
webpages will be structured, how the match system works in practice, and what
the results will look like.
Participant Activities & Results
We gave our
participants five activities in order to find out their opinions on the website. These were 1) whether the interface for the
match input should be slider or box-based, 2) what attributes were important
when choosing a project and what influenced these decisions, 3) what types of
people took part in volunteering and whether these could be placed into broad
categories, 4) what different project types exist in conservation volunteering
and citizen science, and finally 5) which sample logo designs were preferred
and should be developed further. In
addition, discussion was held throughout the tasks and workshop for additional
feedback, useful information, and suggestions.
Professor Rick Stafford leads some of our participants in a discussion about our website match system
Outcomes
The suggestions from our participants proved to be extremely useful and will result in some adjustments of our model design and feeback system. Overall, it looks like our model attributes were all rated highly, so will be important in finding a good match between people and projects! It was also clear from the
workshop that we will need to add outreach as an additional
category of (broad) project types. In
terms of categories of people, we may need to consider those looking for fitness
rather than social or learning-based goals, but this could potentially be
included in the existing categories of people, and additionally could be
addressed by the model input for activity level / or how strenuous the project
is. Additionally, some of the model
inputs may need restructuring, particularly skill level, time commitment, &
activity level / how strenuous the activity was, at least in terms of wording.
We have developed a number of options going forward based on this great feedback and will be really exicited to implement these changes. Without participant involvement, it would have been very difficult for us to detect where we needed to make adjustments to our designs.
Logos, Website Appearance and Future Workshops
During the
next few weeks we will further develop the logo, together with website tag alongside
our students, in some project meetings held on campus. This will be restricted to students who
attended the workshop. Following these
sessions, the logo will be sent out for a public survey - so there will be further opportunities to take part. We are also looking to get our student volunteers involved in the website appearance, likely during April,
with an opportunity to overview current design work and select a final
appearance of the website.
Preparation also
continues for the 21st May workshop, where we will launch for
conservation organisations.
Expanding Our Contacts
Futhermore, we will be expanding our
contacts later in advance of the May Workshop and bringing more conservation
organisations on board. We are aiming to
work with key local organisations for the trial period of getting the website
working in advance of a wider, National roll-out in October. Please get in touch if you are interested in participating at any of these future stages!
Comments
Post a Comment