[OpenRelief Outreach] Making the project easier to understand (was Re: [UX] Website (was: Re: Making the project easier to understand))

Thu Mar 29 07:59:14 BST 2012

Jane, thank you so much for this excellent and detailed feedback. A new remix of the slides is attached. I think slides 2-6 give a great foundation for outreach.

The only suggested change is slide 3.
"OpenRelief is an open source project to develop better communications tools for disaster relief efforts. The tools to clear
the fog."
to:
"OpenRelief is a project to develop better communications tools for disaster relief efforts. The tools to clear the fog."

Many people are emotionally invested in terms like Open Source vs Free Software and that represents a potentially polarizing detail, but more importantly we are gluing Open Source, Open Hardware and crowd-sourcing in general together. Perhaps the most accurate term (and the one least likely to annoy anyone) is Open Innovation. We may missing be an explanation of why this approach is used as opposed to setting up a proprietary company, though perhaps slide 13 covers this. I may be over-thinking things, and in the process reducing comprehension around the project, so please call me out if I'm incorrect. I'm both good at and used to being wrong :)

Regarding the first thing we want people to do, I guess that's head to the site and join the lists they are interested in. I have added some slides to the end to represent this path, while also providing details about our Facebook, Twitter and Pininterest locations.

Regards

Shane
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On Mar 29, 2012, at 4:44 AM, Jane Johnston wrote:

> Shane,
> 
> 
> 
> This is great. I agree that it should be available on the website, and that we should update the site with complementary content (I would go further, and suggest that the site is based around content identical to slides 2-6).
> 
> 
> 
> I have gone through the slides and suggested some copy changes below. These are to tighten up the text to communicate exactly what we do. Some may be a matter of style, so looking forward to feedback. Again, slides 2-6 are the ones to agree on. They are the sentences that all external PR/comms should start from.
> 
> 
> 
> 1 - An Overview   What is OpenRelief?
> 
> 
> 
> 2 - Planning disaster relief efforts is like trying to see through fog
> 
> 
> 
> 3 - OpenRelief is an open source project to develop better communications tools for disaster relief efforts. The tools to clear the fog.
> 
> 
> 
> 4 - OpenRelief solutions will gather critical information for relief workers on the ground
> 
> 
> 
> 5 – This information will help the right aid get to the right places at the right time
> 
> 
> 
> 6 - Our first step is to create a robot plane to investigate and map disaster zones
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> 
> 
> (You don’t need “Brace” slide – interrupts flow imho)
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> 
> 
> 7 - What the plane does
> 
> 8 – How the plane works
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> 9 – Airframe specs
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> 10 – System specs
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> 11 – Milestones
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> 
> 
> 12 - (I think you can lose this slide entirely. We should have communicated this well enough by this point)
> 
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> 13 - We use crowd-sourcing for rapid development, improvement and distribution
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> 
> 14 - We are building a community to test and share OpenRelief solutions around the world
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> 
> 
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> 15 - Be part of this – CALL TO ACTION HERE
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do they email us to tell us their skills / area of interest? Join a mailing list?  Follow us on twitter?...  Thoughts please on the first thing we want interested parties to do.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 28 March 2012 06:03, Shane Coughlan <shane at openrelief.org> wrote:
> Thanks Adele.
> 
> There are quite a few bits to this project, so I am trying to drill down to the fundamental ideas so that new participants can easily join and contribute. The next step is updating the website with complementary content to the slide show.
> 
> Would you be able to provide a little feedback regarding the website design from a User Experience perspective? That would be very useful as we move towards launch. If so, I can send mock-up images to this list.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Shane
> 
> On Mar 28, 2012, at 2:03 AM, Adele Simula wrote:
> > Nice presentation. It has at least made it clearer for me to
> > understand the project in general :)
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > A
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Shane Coughlan <shane at openrelief.org> wrote:
> >> Noriaki and Jane provided some great feedback about making OpenRelief easier to understand. In essence, they suggested reducing some of the complexity, focusing on one key reason people should be excited, and make it clearer how we will proceed.
> >>
> >> I have completed some slides that cover this. Feedback would be most welcome. If this message (or a variant) works, then I will upload a revised website ASAP. We can then use that to get a few more contributors as we head towards the June launch.
> >>
> >> Regards
> >>
> >> Shane
> >>
> >> PS: The power systems for the first two robot planes have arrived in the UK, the first autopilot is on its way from Mexico, and the airframes have been en-route from Hong Kong for almost two weeks. We should be seeing our first photos shortly. :)
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Outreach mailing list
> >> Outreach at openrelief.org
> >> http://openrelief.org/mailman/listinfo/outreach_openrelief.org
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Outreach mailing list
> > Outreach at openrelief.org
> > http://openrelief.org/mailman/listinfo/outreach_openrelief.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Outreach at openrelief.org
> http://openrelief.org/mailman/listinfo/outreach_openrelief.org
> 
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