Kristina Williams
"Designing with Empathy"
"Designing with Empathy"
When I started my project, I was thinking about community building. During the exploration of community building a came up with a model of how people find, build, and maintain their communities. (See figure one). In this model, I imagined how community guides would find other people who might enjoy the community and lead them through the integration process and how one might eventually become a guide themselves.
Coming onto the City of Bloomington's transparency Initiative, I redirected my thoughts to what transparency meant and how that could be applied to a government space. I looked into various different podcasts, educational youtube videos, conducted an exemplar study, and reviewed peer-reviewed research. This lead to some of the understandings I have about transparency (see figure 2).
As I conducted this research, I constructed a stake holder map of who would be the most important people to consider and prioritize during this project. This stakeholder map was influenced by the research I had done up until this point. This resulted in 4 major stakeholder groups (see Figure 3). While I could think of more detailed stakeholders, I felt that these four groups best exemplified the types of stakeholders who are invested in this initiative.
I've gained some good insight into how transparency can improve the relationship between the government and the electorate. However, I think that transparency is not an end goal based on my research. Rather, I believe that transparency is a tool towards a different end goal.
I would want to push this project further than what we've been asked. It seems that the Mayor's office sees transparency as the end goal. However, due to the history of the Watergate scandal and the increase in mistrust from the electorate towards government and the media, I believe transparency can be utilized as a tool to help rebuild this trust and build community.
The City of Bloomington has asked for two deliverables: the definition of a transparent government ecosystem and a strategic plan to implement such an ecosystem. I want to take this a step forward. I believe that the end result of transparency should be an engaged electoral who feel empowered to influence change within their government. As such, my design encourages this.
My design is done in three parts:
The City of Bloomington already has the Be Clear Data Portal as an effort in creating transparency for the public. The main issue with this system is that it is currently just a data dump. It is very difficult to navigate and even more difficult to discern any meaningful insights from it.
The goal of the redesign would be to make the Be Clear data portal easy to read, understand, and gain insight from for the average constituent.
The kiosk installations are specifically to address the inequality that steams from transparency that requires an internet connection. A number of Bloomington's electorate don't have reliable internet at home and many access the internet by utilizing data on their phone.
As such the kiosk installations are a means for anyone to access the Be Clear data portal. The screen will be interactable and will provide a similar experience to accessing Be Clear on a personal computer.
Finally, it is important for the electorate to feel like they have the power to effect change. One means of doing this is to gain direct feedback from them. As such, the Be Clear redesign will feature some sort of feedback mechanism.
This mechanism will be highlighted on the kiosks and will be easy seen when accessing Be Clear through a web browser.
I think the most significant hurtle I have to face is myself. I have a number of personal issues which cause myself to feel like I have to fight myself some days just to attend class let alone work on my capstone. I am doing better on this front than I have for the past month; however, I still have those rough days and they never seem to be well timed. My greatest tool to use against this is self-care. I am happy to have my counseling background at times like these because it is easier to see the warning signs of a rough day coming and do my best to mitigate it.
The next hurtle is time. I know my ideas are ambitious and I will need a lot of research to back it up. I don't feel like I have enough time. Granted I am told this is typical for the industry. As such, I am happy to have the experience of feeling like I have to find the "quick and dirty" ways of getting what I want.