Personas & Scenarios

Ushahidi Design Framework ProjectCreated by Small Surfaces for Ushahidi14 June 2012

Technical literacy

Deployment team

Report volume

Reporters

Deployment duration

Customisation needs

Guillermo // News Gatherer"I work for a large news organisation, and we want to !nd new ways to source and tell stories. Crowdsourcing helps us get a better understanding of big events as they unfold. Publishing reports from citizens also helps us di"erentiate ourselves competitively."

Getting a deployment up and running quickly.

Making sure the deployment is visually compelling and professional.

Making it easy for citizens to submit reports of all di"erent media types.

Quick and accurate report veri!cation.

Making it easy for journalists to uncover interesting and useful content.

Satis!ersCon!gure deployment to have the right categories, veri!cation schema, visual presentation.

Set up users with di"erent editing permissions, and permissions to see di"erent levels of information.

De!ne report structure and permissions.

Coordinate with veri!cation and geolocation volunteer team managers to make sure the #ow of reports are being processed.

Share sample outputs with management and journalists to help them start using the platform.

Periodically review the reports and outputs to make sure that everything is running correctly.

Usage scenarios

Quality of reports is often low; poor descriptions or highly opinionated.

Journalists are often not interested in using Ushahidi to help source their stories; they sometimes don't see the value.

Frustraters

20-30

500-1000

100 per day

2 months

Guillermo's job is focused on utilising social media for his news organisation. He uses social media to gather information about emerging events.

His goal is both help journalists source new and di"erent stories, and also help connect the outlet better with its audience.

He uses Ushahidi on occasions when there is a big event, such as civil unrest or a natural disaster.

With this focus, he is prepared to invest time in getting to know Ushahidi. While he'd prefer everything to work perfectly right out of the box, he knows that it's important to customise things so it's more e"ective.

He's not a technical person, and so relies on the IT people at his o$ce a lot to get the software up and running as he needs it. They can be slow sometimes, so he'd rather not depend on them.

Overviewmachinator (#ickr.com)

Technical literacy

Deployment team

Report volume

Reporters

Deployment duration

Customisation needs

Rachel // Election Monitor"There's an election coming soon, and our small NGO wants to create a site that allows people to easily share stories about problems in the electoral process. We want to make fraud and corruption more visible to the public, government o!cials, news media and the outside world."

Rachel works for a small NGO that focuses on helping improve electoral processes in Central Africa.

Rachel's got some basic skills when it comes to doing things on the internet (she set up her organisation's web site on Google Sites), but doesn't feel con"dent when it comes to doing more complicated things.

The NGO mostly focuses on advocacy, and this year they have decided to create a site that allows citizens to report malfeasance in the run up to (and on the day of ) local government elections.

Rachel has connected with community groups in 5 districts they are piloting with this year to help get the word out that citizens can submit reports by SMS or calling a phone number.

She hopes that Ushahidi can allow her to easily gather reports through the election cycle and then organise and publish them in a way that will help keep the broader community informed about the process.

OverviewGetting Ushahidi up and running with minimum fuss.

Being con"dent that the data that is being received in the system is secure and private, and that only the correct information is being published.

Being able to get her team up and running quickly to review the incoming report stream.

Being able to easily see the reports on a map grouped in di#erent ways.

To be able to easily see how reporting volumes change over time.

Being able to use the data for analysis and reporting.

Satis!ersInstall Ushahidi, connect to an SMS gateway and allow call-in voice reports.

Review reports once each day (and transcribe calls), and then follow up by phone with both the reporter and the local authorities.

Sanitise and publish veri"ed reports, so no personal information is disclosed.

Ensure that reports are correctly associated with a town & district.

Group reports that all relate to the same incident, and add any follow-up information (such as news reports) to the incident.

Identify reports that should be investigated further.

Review and moderate comments.

Review the work of other people to ensure that everything is operating properly.

Analyse data every week to understand trends and to publish blog summary.

Usage

Getting users to submit quality reports.

Sometimes di!cult to understand the map.

Frustraters

2-3

50-100

10 per day

8 months

advocacy_project ($ickr.com)

Technical literacy

Deployment team

Report volume

Reporters

Deployment duration

Customisation needs

Ahmed // Facility Tracker"My organisation is helping the regional government create a system that maps the number of doctors and beds available at hospitals. We want to use this information to help make the public more aware of the improving availability of medical care in the region."

Ahmed is a project manager who works for the Ministry of Health in a country in the Middle East.

The ministry recently decided that it wants to make it easier for citizens to understand the improvements the government is making to hospitals throughout the country.

The team working on the project identi!ed Ushahidi as a good solution: it would allow them to easily get updates about the number of doctors and available beds directly from the hospitals and display the data in a visually interesting way to the region's residents.

Ahmed studied computer science as an undergraduate, and is responsible for getting Ushahidi up and running, customising it so that it's easy for hospitals to update their current situation every week, and ensuring that the system can show the current status of hospitals as well as changes to the facilities over time.

OverviewTo be able to customise the presentation of the map so that public servants and the public can easily understand what is happening.

Being able to easily visualise the status of individual hospitals on a map in a way that's easily understandable.

To be able to show trends over time for all hospitals in the region.

To make it as easy as possible for sta" in individual hospitals to provide updates of their data.

Easily export data and visualisations for use in presentations and reports.

Being able to easily upgrade Ushahidi to the latest version.

Satis!ersInstall Ushahidi on department server.

Mark each of the hospitals on the map, and add them as 'locations'.

Con!gure report structure / data model, and de!ne aggregate analysis structure.

Upload initial baseline data about hospital statistics.

Create user accounts for individuals at each of the hospitals.

Review reports on a weekly basis to check whether all the hospitals have provided updates and that the provided data is correct.

Work with Ministry of Health IT sta" to have the map published on the departmental web site.

Review problematic reports and follow up with hospital sta".

Usage

Having to chase people down for the latest data.

Incorrect data in reports.

Frustraters

3-4

60-90

60-90 per week

4 years

arabspring (#ickr.com)

Technical literacy

Usage frequency

Submission volume

Motivation

Davi // Concerned Citizen"My son was assaulted by the police a couple of months ago, and was in hospital for two days. I found out about a site that lets you report police violence like this; I reported my son's case, and I now check the site every couple of weeks to understand what is happening in my city."

Davi lives in South East Asia, and owns a store that sells children's clothes. Over the last 12 months she'd heard more about incidents of police violence from friends, but wasn't sure what to believe.

Two months ago, though, her son was assaulted as he was walking near a group of protestors.

Davi was furious about what had happened, and found out about a web site that lets you report incidents of violence, and so went to check it out.

She wanted to make sure that the site was safe (she didn't want more trouble from the police), and then reported the incident with her son. A couple of days later someone called her to check on her story.

She trusts the site, and now checks it every couple of weeks to !nd out what's been happening in her city.

OverviewBeing able to quickly understand the purpose of a map.

To understand the meaning of data that's represented on the map, and understand how the reports relate to related events in the city.

To have con!dence in the data that's being shown on the map.

To know that her information will be kept private.

To feel con!dent of what information to provide when submitting a report.

Satis!ersUnderstanding purpose of web site.

Reviewing map to understand patterns of violence in di"erent parts of the country, and the reasons for the di"erent reports.

Understanding what violent incidents have been happening in her city.

Submitting a report of violence with con!dence that her information will be secure.

Sharing reports she sees with her friends.

Usage

Not sure what happens after a report is submitted.

The map can sometimes be hard to understand with lots of reports.

Frustraters

2 times per month

1-2 times total

tbsmith (#ickr.com)

Technical literacy

Usage frequency

Submission volume

Motivation

Francios // Journalist"My news channel has started using Ushahidi to help get stories from citizens in big events. In the rush of the new cycle I want to use it to quickly help give me ideas for new stories, and insights for the stories I'm already working on"

Francois has been working as a journalist for almost 8 years now. He !les reports both for television and web. He is based in Dakar, Senegal and is responsible for covering the entire West African region.

Just a few days ago citizen protests started to break out in a neighbouring country. It hasn't been possible for him to get close to the unrest because the government is not letting journalists in, so he has been doing his best using telephone calls with his contacts to !nd out what is happening.

People from the main o"ce of the news outlet got Ushahidi up and running so that citizens could post information, images and videos about what's been going on.

He has been dipping in to the Ushahidi deployment to help get leads for new stories and also to help identify media that he could add to his television reports.

OverviewBeing able to easily see what's changing on the map.

Being easily able to identify clusters of related reports.

Being able to easily export data and media from the system for use in reports.

Satis!ersVisit the Ushahidi instance a couple of times each day and identify if there are any notable changes to the situation.

Identify interesting stories that are emerging.

For interesting items, review what has happened to the reports since they were originally submitted, to establish how con!dent he is in the report.

Identify interesting quotes or media assets that could be used in a story that was started outside the system.

Collect reports that look interesting and could be useful later.

Usage

Lack of detail or context in individual reports can sometimes make them hard to understand.

Overwhelmed by the volume of uninteresting or useless reports.

Frustraters

2 times per day

None

guillaumelemoine (#ickr.com)

Technical literacy

Usage frequency

Submission volume

Motivation

Alamby // Report Veri!er"When there's a big event, I work with a team of people to help verify reports that are coming into an Ushahidi deployment that's being used to capturing and share information about the event. I need to be con!dent that the report is accurate before it's shared with the public."

Alamby is a student at the University of Washington. She heard about Ushahidi from some friends almost a year ago, and decided to o"er her time to help support the work of people in emergencies.

She works with a distributed team of people who verify and geo-locate reports when a big event occurs.

Just recently civil unrest erupted in a West African country, and she was asked to help support the work of a news organisation that had created an Ushahidi map to cover the unrest.

She needs to use her French skills to !rst translate the reports into English, and then follow up with the reporter (by calling them through Skype) to ask questions about the report. Based on this she rates the report for veracity.

She wants to be able to do her work easily and quickly, and to be sure that nobody else is working on the same reports as she is.

OverviewEasy to identify what needs her attention.

Easy to know what steps need to be taken in order to complete the veri!cation of a report.

Easy to coordinate with other people reviewing reports in the system.

Sense of accomplishment after completing a few hours work.

Easy to review work before !nalising.

Easy to correct errors after the fact.

Satis!ersIdentifying new reports that have not yet been translated and veri!ed.

'Check-out' individual reports for work while she translates and veri!es the report.

Adding translations of reports.

Calling reporters to verify the report. Noting conversations in the system.

Marking the level of con!dence in the report.

Group reports together into events where there are multiple reports about the same topic.

Identifying an error in a previously translated report, and returning to re-translate the report.

Usage

Poor report quality making it di#cult to follow up on.

Frustraters

4 hours per day

20-40 per day

joming ($ickr.com)

Gabriel White, June 2012gabriel@smallsurfaces.com

www.smallsurfaces.com