The Challenge
The mission of the non-profit Forum for the Future is to work with global business, governments, and other organizations to solve complex sustainability challenges. They "apply futures analysis, system innovation and sustainable business practices to transform systems and embed change". However, they were finding that the data they needed to transform was starting to get locked in business silos.
The Process
As the UX lead on the Favorite Medium team, I facilitated an in-depth organizational brainstorming session, where we discussed the people currently involved in the collection and analysis of data and figure out what other types of people could be brought into the mix. Once we understood these different potential user groups and what would motivate them to participate, I then facilitated a feature-generation brainstorming focused around those user needs.
The Insight
The key motivator that cut across the nine identified user groups was a desire to be heard. Aside from Forum researchers and direct partners, data collection was hidden from most other people. To get people to participate, we needed to create a public forum where people could see how their contributions make a difference.
The Solution
The key to this solution was to provide topic hubs that people could join. Once they joined, they could contribute to that topic and track how their contribution might become a weak signal which could then become a trend. To do this, we prioritized and simplified ways for users to contribute. I managed the dialog between our development and design teams to explore extending Wordpress plugins for Dropbox style content contributions; the key was to provide the richest functionality while still allowing complete branding of the modules. To showcase approved contributions (and thus, encourage more contributions), we placed a timeline of content below the content entry system.
