CUTGroup

CUTGroup’s New Proctor Program

Sonja Marziano

CUTGroup HourVoice Test SessionA few weeks ago, we held our first orientation with 17 new CUTGroup Proctors. This was the first step in formalizing a proctor program, training people who were once highly active CUTGroup testers to learn more about usability (UX) testing and CUTGroup test processes and help build better technology in a new way. Similar to our Documenter Program, creating a CUTGroup Proctor program allows us to help train people in new skills and bring new people into the technology ecosystem.

CUTGroup Proctors will be paid to help with current test tasks such as facilitate tests, transcribe sessions, write results, help edit videos and more. They will also allow us to grow the program by using skillsets that we didn’t have before, by helping us conduct tests in multiple languages or reach new groups of people to include in the CUTGroup.

Over the last year, we have expanded the CUTGroup into Cook County, but as we include new testers we want to keep our experienced testers engaged. The proctor program also allows us to build our community, moving active testers into new roles and creating more spaces in tests for new testers to participate. I am overwhelmed by the number of CUTGroup testers who wanted to be part of this opportunity. I invited 30 active CUTGroup testers and over half of them replied, “Yes!”

Thank you for being a part of the CUTGroup! I am writing to you because you have been a big part of CUTGroup and very active in tests. I appreciate all of the time you have spent helping us, and I wanted to see if you would be interested in becoming a CUTGroup proctor.

As you know, CUTGroup proctors are a huge part of helping administer tests and capturing responses and feedback from testers. Since you have been on the other side of the test so often, this could be an opportunity to continue to participate in this community and help us build better technology in a new way.

(Snippet from my email)

A couple of our new CUTGroup Proctors have experience with technology and even user testing, but the majority of them do not. Some of them do not consider themselves to be very “tech-savvy” but are interested in learning new digital skills. Our proctors are educators, nurses, mothers, veterans, researchers, marketing specialists, and customer service representatives (just to name a few). Their backgrounds and experiences are assets to the CUTGroup and they are invested in helping build better technology for our communities. Here are some of the reasons why they wanted to become CUTGroup Proctors:

“I believe in the value of research and appreciate the idea of getting feedback from local community members. This then supports the notion that every person’s voice and opinion carry equal weight.”

“I’m interested in being a CUTGroup proctor because I’ve really enjoyed the process of being a participant, but also because I am eager to get on the other side of the table and learn from the work that is being done.”

“I’ve had an opporunity to participate with this group in the past and see how dedicated the team is to make sure they ‘get it right.’ It’s the feedback from ALL Chicago residents that helps build products services that truly work for them/us.”

“I’m open to learning new and interesting things and working with different people.”

Last week, I facilitated a proctor workshop to teach about how to administer a CUTGroup test. We went through some information about what UX testing is and why it’s an important part of building technology. We also worked together on some exercises to develop questions for an upcoming test and capture feedback. The goal was to move away from giving feedback as CUTGroup testers and begin to observe and listen as CUTGroup proctors. I also wanted them to understand how skills from other jobs can be applied to their experiences at CUTGroup Proctors.  

Last Monday, five of these new CUTGroup Proctors participated in their first CUTGroup test! I’m looking forward to sharing the progress of the CUTGroup program.

Smart Chicago is helping build CUTGroup Detroit

Sonja Marziano

Spirit of DetroitWe are excited to announce that Smart Chicago is partnering with the City of Detroit, Data Driven Detroit, and Microsoft, to help build the first Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) in Detroit. This is part of our CUTGroup Collective efforts to convene organizations and institutions in cities to help others establish new CUTGroups, create a new community, and share and learn from one another.

In April, we announced we would conduct UX testing on websites and tools that use data that is part of the White House’s Opportunity Project initiative. “The Opportunity Project expands access to opportunity for all Americans by putting data and digital tools in the hands of families, communities, and local leaders, to help them navigate information about the resources they need to thrive.” While we initially wanted to align this work with the national efforts of National Day of Civic Hacking, we quickly learned that we needed to take smaller steps to building a CUTGroup and planning for a test in another city. We began planning with Detroit, one of our CUTGroup Collective members, and a city that has curated data related to opportunity as part of the Opportunity Project.

In the last months, I have been working closely with the CUTGroup Detroit team to share ideas and insights from our CUTGroup experiences in Chicago. We have discussed recruitment and communications strategies, as well as test planning and design. In the upcoming weeks, Detroit will begin recruitment and in mid-August, we will conduct a test around a tool that helps people understand more about commercial or other non-residential properties in Detroit.

This work with Detroit is the start of an ongoing relationship through the CUTGroup Collective. Smart Chicago plans to be available to help CUTGroup Detroit grow and create better technology and where we will learn from Detroit experiences to help other cities build CUTGroups.

Acknowledgments

I am overwhelmed by the support and hard work of our Detroit partners to make this happen. I wanted to acknowledge them here:

First, we are grateful to the Knight Foundation, which makes the CUTGroup Collective possible. They are funding this work through our Deep Dive, where we are part of a cohort representing a diverse set of approaches to expanding community information and increasing community engagement.

The City of Detroit and Garlin Gilchrist, Director of Innovation & Emerging Technology, is leading the strategy and vision of CUTGroup Detroit.

Data Driven Detroit (D3) is managing the recruitment and logistics of CUTGroup. D3 is an organization that provides accessible high-quality information and analysis that drives informed decision-making. Our appreciation for their involvement goes to Erica Raleigh, Executive Director, Noah Urban, Project Lead & Senior Analyst, Kibichii Chelilim, Data Manager & Programmer, and Boitshoko Molefhi, the MSU InnovateGov Summer Intern.

Microsoft is extending their support for Civic Tech in both Chicago and Detroit to focus on CUTGroup Detroit. Microsoft’s Detroit Civic Tech Fellow, Ivoire Morrell, has been a key person in planning and putting together the pieces in building CUTGroup Detroit. Ivoire works closely with Shelley Stern Grach, Microsoft’s Director of Civic Engagement, who always provides important insights in every conversation and who made CUTGroup Detroit part of Ivoire’s project plan.

We are excited about what we can do together and look forward to sharing what we learn this summer!

CUTGroup Presentation at Gigabit City Summit 2016

Sonja Marziano

2016-Gigabit-City-SummitA couple of weeks ago, I went to the Gigabit City Summit, “a three-day learning and networking opportunity exclusively designed for leaders in current and emerging Gigabit Cities,” hosted by KC Digital Drive. I was invited to present on the Civic Tech track entitled “Build a Volunteer Coding Brigade.”

Here are some of my remarks and my presentation:

While I do not run the volunteer coding brigade, I do run a program that pulls together residents, staff from community organizations and municipalities, and technologists for the goal of improving technology. The Civic User Testing Group (or CUTGroup) is a community of 1,500 residents in Chicago and all of Cook County who are paid to test websites and apps and help create better technology.

This program is a successful part of including resident voice in building technology in Chicago. A few months ago, we also launched the CUTGroup Collective which is a network of people in other cities who are interested in the CUTGroup model. We started this network to help others replicate the practice of CUTGroup.

The CUTGroup Collective consists of people working in government, universities, community organizations, and technology who are actively thinking through how to incorporate the pieces that make a CUTGroup: usability testing, digital skills, and community engagement.

The premise of CUTGroup is simple: we pay residents a $5 VISA gift card to join, and then $20 VISA gift card for each test that they participate in. CUTGroup tests happen all over the County in libraries and public computer centers and we will test websites and apps created at hack nights, websites that non-profit organizations created to help their communities, and government websites.

This is a resource that Smart Chicago provides to our technology ecosystem at no cost because we see that the immense value CUTGroup adds to technology while the technology is being built. Smart Chicago helps determine the goals that our partners want out of UX testing, then design UX tests for their specific piece of technology and their needs.

Then, on a given CUTGroup night, we hang out in libraries in different neighborhoods and we’ll pair developers to test with residents and see how or if their tech is serving residents’ needs. On CUTGroup evenings, we will see all levels of digital skills, different devices, ages, accessibility needs, and different backgrounds. We are very interested in tester’s backgrounds and their offline and online experiences: how people find information and get through their everyday lives, with or without technology.

This type of information combined with data from usability testing helps us provide specific, actionable next steps for the tech we test.

Our motto is: “If it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work!”

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With the CUTGroup, we have tested all sorts of tech including Chicago Public Schools website once they did their mobile redesign, or the Ventra app before it was launched, mRelief that allows you to determine your eligibility for social services, or Chicago Cityscape which uses build permits open data.

We have seen technology be improved from small fixes such as a layout change to big changes like accessibility tags. We also see on the other side when we think about the CUTGroup that our biggest success metric is that people enjoy participating. They like feeling like they are part of creating better technology. And not often enough do we ask people to be contributors to the tech process.

So CUTGroup has been successful in Chicago and we are always continuing to grow the program, be more accessible to new groups of people, and we are interested in growing and creating new ways to help developers use the feedback from CUTGroup tests to make changes. We added text message system to CUTGroup so testers who don’t rely on email could sign-up via text and know about upcoming new tests.

CUTGroup is fluid, changing, and maturing. Other groups in cities ask us about starting a CUTGroup we wrote the book (an actual book) on how we do it.

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It’s exciting when groups in other cities see the value in the work that we do and replicate it. Being open is a leading principle at Smart Chicago.  In technology, the main way is the use of open source code. For the CUTGroup, that was easy. The code for our website and management tool are on GitHub. We share all of our test results, our tools, the questions we ask, and the responses from our testers.

But it also means having open processes, so that people know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how they can affect it. This is about allowing others “in,” wherever that may be in any particular situation.

We wrote the CUTGroup book in September 2014 as a resource to start and run a CUTGroup. These steps were crucial, but we wanted to find a way to allow more people in—to engage directly with workers in other cities not to only to replicate our model, but also establish a network that helps create sustainable and successful CUTGroups.

As we teach through the CUTGroup Collective we want to learn, too about what works other places so we can be more useful and we transcend just sharing the how but more of the why.

Just one example of this is that in CUTGroup we host tests at libraries.

King Library mRelief CUTGroup Test

Why? Libraries provide the infrastructure like meeting room space, power outlets, and WiFi that makes CUTGroup testing possible. They also have a wide geographical reach—in Chicago, there is a library in each one of the 77 community areas—and are typically close to public transit. In addition, libraries are a community space where people feel comfortable and even when going to a new neighborhood you can expect from a library.

This doesn’t mean another city needs to host their CUTGroup in a library to be a CUTGroup. Maybe it’s a church basement, a community health center, or a McDonald’s. CUTGroup could look different across cities but feel the same and reach the same goals.

CUTGroup-Presentation-GCS-Summit-slide10

My vision for the CUTGroup Collective is to convene organizations and institutions to help establish new CUTGroups in other cities, create a new community to share and learn from one another. As I said before we’re still early in this, building and growing, but there is interest from other cities.

CUTGroup-Presentation-GCS-Summit-slide8

And the more I do this work and talk with other cities, I understand how programs or any model being replicated needs direction and guidance but flexibility and opportunity for some experimentation to see how it works in new communities.

That’s where I am at right now. Listening to other cities and thinking through and finding clear ways that CUTGroup can fit into the great work happening in other places.

And I would love to talk to each and every one of you about that.
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Themes from the NNIP San Antonio Spring 2016 Meeting

Denise Linn

From April 6th – April 8th, I attended the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. NNIP is a network of city partners that collects, analyzes, and evangelizes neighborhood data. The idea of “data for local action” underscores this important work. Above all, NNIP is a community of practice.

NNIP_PartnersBadge_Logo_RGB

 

The bi-annual meetings are when partners collaborate in person and share out work. I represented the Smart Chicago Collaborative at the meeting, joining essential Chicago data intermediaries Heartland Alliance and the Woodstock Institute.

This blog post is organized by the major themes that captured my interest at NNIP:

  • NNIP’s new commitment to centralizing data training resources
  • The challenge of capturing and quantifying civic participation
  • The promise of integrated data systems for future neighborhood research
  • The need for more usability testing of local data tools

You can read a similar recap blog post from the fall 2015 NNIP Meeting in Dallas, Texas here.

NNIP 2016 4

NNIP’s commitment to data training

On the first day of the San Antonio NNIP meeting, NNIP announced a new project with Microsoft Technology and Civic Engagement: “Expanding Training in Using Data and Technology to Improve Communities.”

According to the project website:

This project focuses on expanding training opportunities for local audiences who work professionally or as civic activists to serve communities and improve neighborhood conditions. Training can help these dedicated individuals use data and technology to perform their daily work more efficiently, effectively, and inclusively.  Examples include ways to access, interpret, combine, and analyze data, as well as approaches to visualize and communicate data-based stories and results.

NNIP will conduct a scan of civic training and resources across its partners and other organizations. To further inform that scan, there will be a working session at the next NNIP meeting in Cleveland. With the results from the scan and cross-city collaboration, NNIP plans to publish a guide on data training and share a bank of open curricula for local organizations to use. This would be an amazing national resource for organizations within and beyond the NNIP network.

I look forward to following this project and seeing how Smart Chicago can contribute to the bank of knowledge that NNIP assembles. Smart Chicago sees data and digital literacy as essential pieces to a healthy tech ecosystem. We have already committed to this type of training and capacity building through the Chicago School of Data and Connect Chicago. Smart Chicago has ample resources and lessons to share from our work and we are supportive of other cities seeking to replicate our models.

The challenge of capturing civic participation measures

At Smart Chicago, we see technology is a means to civic engagement and prosperity rather than an end in itself. One of the most interesting conversations at the San Antonio NNIP meeting was about quantifying and measuring civic participation in innovative ways. Representatives from Portland State University, DataSpark RI and the University of Minnesota shared their recent work in this area.

When thinking about civic participation indicators, a natural question arises: how can we go beyond voter participation and registration data to capture a more holistic picture of civic engagement in our cities? I was inspired to see NNIP partners using measures like non-emergency 311 reports and AmeriCorps volunteer data to understand local engagement and civic action across neighborhoods.

I was also interested in how different ages and demographic groups practiced civic participation.

One of my favorite resources shared was DataHaven’s 2016 Connecticut Civic Health Index which uses data on charitable giving, community meeting participation, and trust in neighborhoods to capture a well-rounded “civic health” indicator.

The promise of integrated data systems for future neighborhood research

NNIP partners from Cleveland, New York, Baltimore, Providence, Pittsburgh, and Pinellas County participated in a cross-site project called “Connecting People and Place: Improving Communities through Integrated Data Systems.”

There are several approaches to and definitions of integrated data systems, but in NNIP’s own words:

Integrated Data Systems (IDS) link data at the individual level from multiple government agencies such as schools, juvenile justice, and human services, and can also include data from non-governmental service providers. The systems can be used for case management and for program monitoring and evaluation, and have privacy protections governing access to the data.

At the NNIP San Antonio meeting, representatives from New York and Cleveland shared out their experiences from the cross-site project. New York University’s Furman Center used an integrated data system and machine learning to predict city buildings where residents’ risk of entering a homeless shelter was highest. Case Western Reserve University used their integrated data system to understand and predict kindergarten readiness.

NNIP partners shared other results and advice from integrated data system work:

NNIP has many resources on integrated data systems including a suggested reading list and an ever-growing list of projects across the country.

The need for more usability testing of local data tools

The theme of creating user-friendly interactions with data and technology was interwoven through the NNIP meeting.

On the first day of the meeting, the San Antonio NNIP partner CI:Now discussed how residents’ difficulties with understanding and using online forms impacted CI:Now’s ability to collect neighborhood data. If forms were not user-friendly or if residents in a neighborhood lacked the digital skills to fill out the online forms, there was an obstacle to both civic engagement and meaningful research.

The NNIP meeting’s session on website redesigns also echoed the theme of usability challenges. Building or improving portals or data products requires feedback. Unfortunately, there is not always a local organization or civic process in place to dedicated that that usability work.

Given this repeated theme throughout the NNIP meeting, I was pleased to see Nic Moe of Austin’s Children’s Optimal Health facilitate a “camp” conversation on how partners can embrace UX testing.

Smart Chicago would like to be a resource for NNIP partners interested in broader civic engagement and usability testing. Smart Chicago wrote the book on civic user testing. We also share best practices from our CUTGroup project through the new CUTGroup Collective. We are pleased to invite NNIP partners into the CUTGroup Collective and help organizations build a civic user testing community in their own cities. In addition to making data and technology tools better, this testing is also vehicle for meaningful resident engagement and skill-building.  

You find out more information about the CUTGroup Collective and get involved with the community here.

NNIP San Antonio was a thought-provoking convening hitting on many moving target projects and questions that Smart Chicago grapples with daily — from the Array of Things Civic Engagement work to Healthy Chicago 2.0 on the Health Atlas. We are pleased to collaborate with this network and seek new ways to contribute to and add value to this community of neighborhood data practitioners.

You can access the presentations and materials from the San Antonio NNIP meeting here.

Code for Miami is a Knight Cities Challenge winner for CUTGroup

Sonja Marziano

Today, Code for Miami, a Code for America brigade, was announced as a Knight Cities Challenge winner for their Miami Civic User Testing Group. The goal of the Miami Civic User Testing Group is “Ensuring that people building local government technology use real-world feedback throughout the development process by creating a user testing group that will identify user experience issues more quickly, while making websites and apps more accessible.”

As a flagship Smart Chicago program, the Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) has helped to establish sustained, meaningful collaboration with residents around data and technology. Code for Miami plans to implement the CUTGroup processes and methodologies laid out in our documentation, and we will be working with Code for Miami to help with the process of building a CUTGroup through the CUTGroup Collective.

We recently launched the CUTGroup Collective as a way to convene organizations and institutions to help establish new CUTGroups in other cities and create a new community to share and learn from one another. Smart Chicago’s CUTGroup and CUTGroup Collective have also been supported by the Knight Foundation through the Community Information Challenge Grant that was awarded last year to “continue to design, build and demonstrate the power of digital tools to the community and empower residents to use news and information to improve their quality of life.”

We look forward to work with and learning lessons from Code for Miami’s experience of building a CUTGroup and helping other cities also learn from those experiences.

Congratulations to the Code for Miami team – Rebekah Monson, Ernie Hsiung, and Cristina Solana!

CUTGroup Collective & The Opportunity Project

Sonja Marziano

Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 3.52.32 PMSmart Chicago will be partnering with CUTGroup Collective members to help build CUTGroups in other cities and then conduct UX testing on websites and tools that use data that is part of the White House’s Opportunity Project initiative. “The Opportunity Project expands access to opportunity for all Americans by putting data and digital tools in the hands of families, communities, and local leaders, to help them navigate information about the resources they need to thrive.”

Our role is to help organize these CUTGroup events around National Day of Civic Hacking, a national event that “brings together urbanists, civic hackers, government staff, developers, designers, community organizations and anyone with the passion to make their city better.” Smart Chicago has hosted National Day of Civic Hacking events in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and has been a leader in the national planning.

This year, Smart Chicago is interested in creating lasting impact by focusing our time, efforts and resources on direct engagement with residents around technology through the CUTGroup model. All of this work will happen through the CUTGroup Collective, our effort to convene and strengthen organizations and institutions in cities to help establish new CUTGroups, and create a new community to share and learn from one another.

We will team up with developers who have built projects using opportunity data and match them with cities that are part of the CUTGroup Collective. We will then work together to design and implement CUTGroup testing in June as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking.

We are excited to do this work, and look forward to creating better technology for residents on a national level. If you are interested in the CUTGroup model and being part of the CUTGroup Collective, please let us know by filling out this form.

If you have worked on an website or tool that uses opportunity data, and want to participate in CUTGroup testing, please fill out this form.

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