If the WhatDoTheyKnow homepage is our shop window, what’s our showroom?
Our authority and request pages are more analogous to the warehouse. Full of great stuff, but not easy to see how the products will look back at home.
/learn will be our showroom. It will showcase the best of FOI and its impact. It will help convey the answers to three key questions a potential user may have:
What is FOI? We should cover the basics in a way that quickly gives someone new to FOI a full picture without overwhelming them with the details.
What can I do with it? We want to inspire people that they can make change through sourcing better information. To do this we’ll highlight our stories of impact through our collection of case studies. This also gives people a sense of how you take general FOI guidance and apply it to a specific topic.
How do I use it? FOI can be intimidating as its so open-ended – “What can I ask for? Anything! So, what should I ask for…?”. We’ll go deeper into the key patterns of use so that its easier to know how someone might apply FOI to a problem they’re trying to solve.
Building /learn
I don’t think we can easily make this both content relevant to all Alaveteli installs and have it be clear enough for the UK context, so initially /learn will be a custom theme page.
The page itself will be collection of signposts – a short title and/or description that clicks through to the content. Ideally these will also have a visual element that reinforces the messaging.
What can I do with it? → Case Studies: These are already hosted on the mySociety blog. Here we’ll just create a snippet version that hammers home the key point.
How do I use it? → Field Guides: We don’t have these yet, but we’ll soon be developing them. These will focus on the key patterns of use that we've uncovered through our recent outreach. Maybe these will be imported as help pages, written up as blog posts, or hosted on the research site. Either way, here we’ll just signpost them.
It would be great if we can put together a short video (~1-3 minute) that acts as an even higher level introduction, but we can ship without that initially if we need to.
One important thing we should keep in mind is that this is not about the features of WhatDoTheyKnow. While there’s a place for that, the more important thing is to sell the concept of FOI by giving new users a good mental model of it.
Inspiration from elsewhere
Many organisations don’t just compete with similar offerings, but inertia. Project management tools compete with email and spreadsheets. Workflow automation competes with manual checklists. Half of the battle is expanding the market by helping people realise that they actually have a problem in the first place, and that you’re a good solution. We're trying to do the same here – help people understand that FOI is a great tool in their toolbox and when they might reach for it.
Here are a few examples of businesses that do this well.
If the WhatDoTheyKnow homepage is our shop window, what’s our showroom?
Our authority and request pages are more analogous to the warehouse. Full of great stuff, but not easy to see how the products will look back at home.
/learnwill be our showroom. It will showcase the best of FOI and its impact. It will help convey the answers to three key questions a potential user may have:What is FOI? We should cover the basics in a way that quickly gives someone new to FOI a full picture without overwhelming them with the details.
What can I do with it? We want to inspire people that they can make change through sourcing better information. To do this we’ll highlight our stories of impact through our collection of case studies. This also gives people a sense of how you take general FOI guidance and apply it to a specific topic.
How do I use it? FOI can be intimidating as its so open-ended – “What can I ask for? Anything! So, what should I ask for…?”. We’ll go deeper into the key patterns of use so that its easier to know how someone might apply FOI to a problem they’re trying to solve.
Building
/learnI don’t think we can easily make this both content relevant to all Alaveteli installs and have it be clear enough for the UK context, so initially
/learnwill be a custom theme page.The page itself will be collection of signposts – a short title and/or description that clicks through to the content. Ideally these will also have a visual element that reinforces the messaging.
What is FOI? → Help Pages: While we might need to make some improvements, we’ve got a wealth of knowledge about the mechanics of FOI here. We should cover the basics of the act, making and managing requests, and how WhatDoTheyKnow helps.
What can I do with it? → Case Studies: These are already hosted on the mySociety blog. Here we’ll just create a snippet version that hammers home the key point.
How do I use it? → Field Guides: We don’t have these yet, but we’ll soon be developing them. These will focus on the key patterns of use that we've uncovered through our recent outreach. Maybe these will be imported as help pages, written up as blog posts, or hosted on the research site. Either way, here we’ll just signpost them.
It would be great if we can put together a short video (~1-3 minute) that acts as an even higher level introduction, but we can ship without that initially if we need to.
One important thing we should keep in mind is that this is not about the features of WhatDoTheyKnow. While there’s a place for that, the more important thing is to sell the concept of FOI by giving new users a good mental model of it.
Inspiration from elsewhere
Many organisations don’t just compete with similar offerings, but inertia. Project management tools compete with email and spreadsheets. Workflow automation competes with manual checklists. Half of the battle is expanding the market by helping people realise that they actually have a problem in the first place, and that you’re a good solution. We're trying to do the same here – help people understand that FOI is a great tool in their toolbox and when they might reach for it.
Here are a few examples of businesses that do this well.