Request Yo Racks

[rgreinho]

What problem are we trying to solve?

The city of Austin offers the possibility to apply for the free installation of bike corrals on the right of way/parking spot close to businesses. The process requires the requester to write an email to a specific service of the city, and include additional information about the location and the business owner(s).

But there are two problems with this approach:

• The first problem is that people do not want to spend the time to write the email and collect the necessary information.

• The second one is that, in spite of the fact that the people in charge of the program are willing to help, the process is not completely straightforward:

  "There will generally be at least a few back and forth messages associated with a bike parking request."

“Request yo rack” proposes to simplify the process by automating all these tasks, and reducing the requester efforts to 3 simple steps:

1. Select the location on the map
2. Review/Edit the information
3. Submit

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from this project?

• All the bikers who cannot find a rack to lock their bikes when they go to their favorite places.
• The business owners by attracting more bikers.
• The neighborhoods by having less cars in theirs streets.

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

free installation of bike corrals on the right of way/parking spot close to businesses

What help is needed at this time?

The Request Yo Racks project is a collection of open source projects hosted on Github.

At this stage, the project can be deployed locally using Docker and can be used as a proof of concept.

We need help mostly with the design/UX and the web components, but anything related to the API, the documentation or the deployment is more than welcome.

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

• Create the design/UX
• Collect more data
• Complete the workflow

---

Project management

Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:

Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).

• [x] Create this idea issue
• [x] Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
• [x] Start the conversation about this new idea on Slack (this project uses #general )
• [x] Respond with at least one update on this issue within the next month

Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:

Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:

• [x] Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
• [ ] Take 30 minutes to complete Open Leadership 101
• [x] Create a GitHub repository and Slack channel for work.
• [x] Create a README file in your project repository. This file should help newcomers understand what your project is, why it's important, and kinds of help you're looking for.
• [x] Create issues to describe each task that you plan to do or need help with and how a contributor can get started on that task. You might start and stop a lot, so consider issues as your to-do list.
• [x] Create a team for your core contributors
  • This will make it easier for you to manage your github repo access. People on a team have the same level of access. Admin access will allow your trusted contributors to make changes as needed.
  • You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
  • View some of our teams: https://github.com/orgs/open-austin/teams
  • Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
• [x] Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your team all at once
  • You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @leadership on Slack to get this set up.
  • This will make it easier to get the attention of the core contributors of your project in your project slack channel which may have some spectators or more casual contributors.
  • People can be added and removed to your group as contributors join and leave.
• [ ] Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files
  • Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
  • Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.

Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:

To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.

• [x] In your README, link to the Open Austin Code of Conduct or write your own code of conduct.
• [x] Create file: LICENSE to give your project an open license, allowing for sharing and remixing.
• [x] Create file: CONTRIBUTING.md so others know how they can contribute.
• [x] Create an easily shareable project management artifact, like a Civic Tech Canvas or Open Canvas
• [x] Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:
• [ ] Tell the City of Austin. If your idea is in a shareable format and can benefit people around the city, go to that site and follow the instructions on the bottom of the page to showcase your work there.

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.

[twentysixmoons]

Hey @rgreinho ! this project was picked up at the Austin Design Week Design-a-thon! there's a group of individuals that want to hack this forward. Do you have time to connect? They'll be looking more at the design side of work needed this week and doing a presentation on Friday. I've linked them to the resource and issue you created here.

You can join the design a thon slack here: https://join.slack.com/t/adw-design-a-thon/shared_invite/enQtMjU5NTM3MDM4ODk5LWNjNGZlZTgwYjdkZjNiZWRiYzVkNGIzM2U5MmYzOGJmNmY1Mzk5YjE2MWY4YmE1MzljODZlZTZkNmJmZmU4YzQ

And their channel is #tsm

We also have a city employee in the channel from the transportation depart!

More info on the design a thon here: https://austindesignweek.org/design-a-thon

[twentysixmoons]

Hey @rgreinho since some traction is here I suggest taking the next step on the project checklist we have above! This project could def use it's own channel outside of the ADW one.

[2echoi]

Hello there! I am a UX designer and I ran into this project. Do you guys need some help?

[rgreinho]

@VictoriaODell Absolutely! I'll work on the checklist over the week end. @2echoi We totally need help with the design. If you can try to setup the application (https://github.com/request-yo-racks/request-yo-racks-web) you could see the current design. You will just need a Google Developer key to be able to see the map, but even without it it could give you a good idea of what I did.

[twentysixmoons]

Project update from November 10th:

Kinda late to post this but want to document this somewhere public.

This project was picked as 1 of 5 Open Austin projects for people to work on at this year's second Annual Austin Design Week and first-ever Design-a-thon!

A group of 4 students: Ian Macalinao, Dylan Macalinao, Joshua Raichur, and Andrew Tian chose this project idea and did research and ideation on how it could be expanded They worked with Open Austin member and Transportation Department employee, @johnclary! They also got in contact with the project idea owner @rgreinho.

They produced this deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uruLZjflsYkBCHw02Ms4LfWHEWz5H7iP10fFdg26G4/edit?usp=sharing

And won the Design-a-thon!

[rgreinho]

@2echoi I started to create some issues of what I think would help the projects move forward. I believe the 2 main ones are:

• Create a style guide
• Improve planning canvas

If that makes sense to you, just pick one and we can continue the conversation in the appropriate issue.

If you have other and/or better ideas, do not hesitate to mention them, either in the slack channel or by creating other issues.

[twentysixmoons]

Just here to update that this project has a channel in our Open Austin slack now called #p-request-yo-racks and a user group handle "@ryr". You can join slack by going to slack.open-austin.org to get an invite.

Jump in and say hey to @rgreinho and others working on or interested in working on this project.

[rgreinho]

The project is moving forward after the last hack night!

A few people expressed some interest and proposed good ideas to reorganize the frontend to make it more engaging while keeping the flow ultra simple.

On the infrastructure side, I'm baking a one-command-setup-script for developers, leveraging the existing docker components, but introducing Minikube and Charts. It will make it easier to develop locally as well as deploying quickly to demo the project.

[rgreinho]

The Project Champion Night was very productive! 5 new members showed up with design/UX/frontend skills.

Kyle proposed the official release date to be "bike to work day", which I thought was a great idea. Therefore the product will be officially launched on May 18, 2018.

Action items for the new members:

1. Join the slack channel
2. Setup the POC following the guide on the RYR documentation site
3. Work on the styleguide (see issue #8)

Action items for Rémy:

1. Publish the notes I gathered from the people who participated to the Austin Design Week
2. Define milestones for the project

[rcboler]

Hi there! UX designer and big bicycle fan, here. Just saw this a little while ago, love it. Are y'all still aiming for Bike to Work Day? Anything with UX design/content/visual design/user testing I could help with? @rgreinho

[rgreinho]

Hi @rcboler ! We are on track to release the first version on May 18th.

You should join the request-yo-racks Slack Channel (https://open-austin.slack.com/messages/C82FGEPMZ/), and I'll be more than happy to explain you what's left to do, who does what, and anything else you may need/want to know.

In the meantime, you can look at the project organization, and we have a full setup guide to help you get started.

[mscarey]

I added the Inactive tag because of @rgreinho's announcement that the city had changed its bike corral process in a way that made it unnecessary to send the requests through a third-party app. I'm sure that the civic interest in this issue was a factor in the city's decision to change its processes, so congratulations and thanks to everyone who worked on this.