Lessons learned from South Bend deploys

[daguar]

Taking you up on your offer over at #197 here @rduecyg — do you mind throwing down insights you gleaned from doing 2 additional redeploys in South Bend here?

cc @ttmp @waltz

[waltz]

I found it really hard to communicate what the app's limitations were. People would usually think that it can do ~~annnything~~, but of course it can't.

I think this could be helped by having a nice pre-canned sentence that explains what it can do.

[daguar]

a nice pre-canned sentence that explains what it can do

:+1:

[daguar]

Also cc @lanebecker here — that kind of insight's super helpful from a product perspective.

Lane — would be great for you to watch the repo. If not that's cool I'll just hijack your laptop sometime and add the watch myself. :shipit:

[hampelm]

@daguar I've found it helpful to have a talking points doc for every serious thing I'm working on. 5Ws and an H. Makes online profiles etc. so much easier, too. Might make sense in a readme, but often is best kept in a private doc.

[daguar]

Bugging @rduecyg here — can you throw down some of the thoughts/notes from the South Bend deploys (in particular the Parks one that was so successful?)

[daguar]

@hampelm: Awesome idea, thanks!

[rduecyg]

I can get into more detail this weekend. But a high level summary:

• Physical, prominent, and persistent calls to action are very useful. (e.g. a large sign in a park that's there for two months is way better than a poster on a bulletin board with 20 other posters or some mass email)
• Promotion and outreach campaigns around the application are super important. Without an effective campaign no one will know or care about the project.
• The application is really built to ask questions about locations. Although it can work in other situations it works best when tied to places.

Features:

• multilingual feature (probably spanish first)
• multiple choice question option
• multiple channels for submitting feedback - text message, web form, email survey and voice survey all funneled back to home page.
• ability to promote via social media
• Increased ease of deployment (i.e. recording messages, standing up app, ingesting location data, etc.)

(I will add more thoughts this weekend...)

[migurski]

:dancers:

[daguar]

Thanks so much @rduecyg! I've captured your high-level summary in an initial README section called "Outreach and Marketing": https://github.com/codeforamerica/cityvoice#outreach-and-marketing

Feel free to submit more tips/thoughts/advice!

[daguar]

From @rduecyg, a nice sum-up:

I think the location element of the application should be emphasized in any messaging. CityVoice can be wiggled into use cases that are not location specific, but it really sings when it is closely tied to specific geographies.