Civic User Testing Group as a Model in Changing the Relationship Between Government and Residents...

Changing the Relationship: Government and Residents

Civic User Testing Group * @smartchicago * @danxoneil

Smart Chicago Collaborative


• Access: if a resident is not connected to the network, they’re nowhere

• Skills: if they don’t know how to coax the Internet, they’re not really anywhere

• Data: if there’s nothing meaningful to look at, where does that leave all of us?

Development idiosyncrasy


• Governments publish lots of great data, but standards are slow in coming

• Developers make lots of apps, but often without talking to anyone outside their circle

• Residents request access to information, but often it is divorced of structure

So we started the CUTGroup


• A set of regular residents who get paid to test civic apps

• Inside public computer centers (Access)

• Where we teach each other about technology (Skills)

• And developers hear direct feedback from residents about their products (Data)

ACCESS: Engaging in situ


• Inside public computer centers– libraries, health centers, community rooms

• Engaging not just residents, but librarians and computer IT people

• Experiencing these rooms as residents, not just funders or developers or researchers

SKILLS: Learning while making


• Everyone learns– residents learn about civic apps, developers learn about user testing, governments learn about people care about

• Engagement through technology: lasting relationships through shared interfaces

• All of this in a different mode of engagement– less heat, more light

DATA: Honing our work


• Residents are users• Users are everything• This is the most common

mantra of startups• We’ve got to make things that

people can’t live without• Things that they love

Let’s do this.


• http://cutgroup.smartchicagoapps.org/• [email protected]• @danxoneil• @smartchicago• /smartchicago

http://cutgroup.smartchicagoapps.org/

http://cutgroup.smartchicagoapps.org/

mailto:[email protected]

Civic User Testing Group as a Model in Changing the Relationship Between Government and Residents...

Technology

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