When people with various skills and backgrounds work together in a network, they become larger than the sum of their parts.
Sunshine Coast Regional Council know this and appointed PunkLogic in May 2011 to create a new website that supports community groups and artists in the region.
The site was partly envisaged as a replacement for CIS – an old online directory but the content needed to be far richer and make use of social tools for publishing and sharing content.
Seven months later, we’re almost there. The new website is called CommunityHub and it is designed to change the way artists, not-for-profit and government organisations promote themselves on the Sunshine Coast.
Initial Research
The project began by understanding the needs of each stakeholder group: members of the community, community groups and Council themselves.
Communicating Design
Wireframes were drawn up as a visual reference to engage with stakeholders further.
In an organisation as large as Council, a wide range of feedback was provided based on the knowledge and experience of Council staff who regularly liaise with the community. We evaluated feedback and observations. We amended our wireframes accordingly and we developed them into the prototype of the site to conduct yet more user testing.
Face time with real users
We used the prototype to observe how real users would manage important processes on the site. Our participants were encouraged to speak their mind freely and comment on their actions. A big thanks goes to the community group representatives who gave up their time to share their insights.
The new CommunityHub is scheduled for release in late January 2012 as a BETA with the full launch expected a few months later. The site allows for eligible groups to create a sophisticated web presence for free.
We placed a strong focus on accessibility and have simplified the way groups create and edit their listing, add news content, publicise their events and manage feedback. Council themselves can also add news and events and each article can be commented on and shared via popular social networking sites.
Collaboration is exciting
We are excited about the potential and the journey Council’s team are embarking on. A journey of creative collaboration.
Collaboration between groups
We hope to achieve visibility of services, community groups and initiatives leading to greater awareness and collaboration. Social heroes and their important work will be featured alongside artists and crafts folk. Multicultural groups alongside service clubs. Mature learners alongside families.
Collaboration between council departments
Another great outcome which is already happening is collaboration within council. Category champions from different council departments are starting to collaborate dynamically on content for the same site.
Collaboration with the wider community
One really cool feature is the way the site’s content is summarised and sent via email in digest form to subscribers. Users can sign-up to receive content by category or location to ensure relevance.
Facilitating collaboration
Conversation Flows
We have developed workflows (conversation flows) for all participants from community members to Council staff.
Editorial Planner
We created spreadsheets for nominated Category Champions within Council to plan and co-ordinate the content they publish.
Project Management System
Collaboration and communication are the foundation for creative problem solving, accelerated learning and increasing capacity.
The project itself will benefit from Council’s focus on collaboration. We hope it will involve community champions contributing news and articles and sharing their expertise.
We are looking forward to feedback and engaging in more user conversations and observations to learn what can be improved so that the service can develop further.
Let us know how you go with it!
Tags: Collaboration, Community, Creativity, Drupal, Information Architecture, prototyping, Sunshine Coast Council, User Interface Design