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!

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